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Die im Jahr 2020 in Deutschland praktizierte Siedlungs- und Wohnungspolitik erhält in Anbetracht ihrer Auswirkungen auf die soziale und ökologische Lage einen bitteren Beigeschmack. Arm und Reich triften weiter auseinander und einer zielgerichteten ökologischen Transformation der Art und Weise, wie Stadtentwicklung und Wohnungspolitik gestaltet werden,stehen noch immer historisch und systemisch bedingte Pfadabhängigkeiten im Weg. Diese werden nur durch eine integrierte Betrachtung sozialer und ökonomischer Aspekte sichtbar und deuten auf eine der ursprünglichen Fragen linker Gesellschaftsforschung hin: Die Auseinandersetzung mit dem Verhältnis von Eigentum und Gerechtigkeit. Im Ergebnis stehen drei wesentliche Befunde: Der Diskurs zum Schutz des Klimas und der Biodiversität berührt direkt die Parameter Dichte, Nutzungsmischung und Flächeninanspruchnahme; zweitens steigt letztere relativ mit erhöhtem, individuell verfügbaren Kapital und insbesondere im selbstgenutztem Eigentum gegenüber Mietwohnungen; und drittens wächst der Eigentumsanteil mit fortschreitender Finanzialisierung des Wohnungsmarktes, sodass das Risiko sozialer und ökologischer Krisen sich verschärft.

This project proposes and applies a research strategy to understand types of cities using the case study of Bogotá. This strategy combines a conceptual framework developed around the notion of ‘centrality’ and ‘urban semiotics’ as a method of qualitative enquiry in order to comprehend complex spatial arrangements as significant constituents of cultural geographies. In this sense, this study problematizes current tendencies such as spatial fragmentation and challenges the argument that contemporary urban ensembles in Latin America are either homogenized within globalization trends or illegible entities with no structural coherence. Bogotá is addressed as an instrumental case study to redraw generalizations developed from different methodological frameworks about the configuration process of spatial structures and their significance within the Latin American geography. Thus the study questions how urban centrality has evolved as an essential socio-cultural phenomenon and in this manner decodes the messages transmitted by main spatial arrangements. As a first step, the study discusses the construction of spatial meaning and its structural interpretation. In addition, the concept of centrality is examined in depth and an urban centrality typology is introduced to enable the analysis of spatial structures in socio-cultural terms. These contents are followed by the discussion of the existing approaches to the topic and their limitations. Subsequently, this research reconstructs the configuration of Bogotá’s spatial structure which is decoded in the last chapter. The study concludes that the highly fragmented and uneven condition of urban space in Latin America can be read. The case study of Bogotá substantiates that there is a code that paradoxically provides spatial cohesiveness within unstable socio-spatial hierarchies. Such a spatial code is deciphered through the reading of Bogotá’s spatial structure whose super-centre denotes ‘the sacralisation of authoritarianism’. This is a ‘structural meaning’ related to a specific or intrinsic logic of spatial concentration that is useful for the further discussion of socio-spatial patterns and the meanings of Latin American cities. The concluding remarks integrate the main arguments and outline lines of action in spatial planning processes.

La prima edizione di questo testo è apparsa negli atti del VI Convegno Internazionale di Studi del CIRICE – Centro Interdipartimentale di Ricerca sull’Iconografia della Città Europea − Università di Napoli Federico II, (Napoli, 13-15 marzo 2014), dal titolo: Città mediterranee in trasformazione. Identità e immagine del paesaggio urbano tra Sette e Novecento, a cura di A. Buccaro e C. de Seta (Collana: Polis, 6; Napoli: Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, 2014; pp. 1216; ISBN 9788849528145), all’interno della sessione 7, Le trasformazioni del paesaggio urbano nella fotografia e nella cinematografia, coordinatori: F. Capano, M. Iuliano, pp. 1085-1098. Il Convegno, aperto a studiosi di ambito nazionale e internazionale, si poneva l’obiettivo di fare il punto sulla storiografia riguardante la città mediterranea in età contemporanea, con particolare riferimento alla sua identità, struttura e immagine, dall’inizio dell’industrializzazione all’età post-illuminista e borghese, fino ai temi inerenti l’evoluzione/involuzione del territorio e del paesaggio post-industriale, nonché lo sviluppo del modello turistico tra Otto e Novecento.

The article presents preliminary results and qualitative analysis obtained from the doctoral research provisory entitled “How do Brazilian ‘battlers’ reside?”, which is in progress at the Institute for European Urban Studies, Bauhaus Univer-sity Weimar. It critically discusses the contradictions of the production of residences in Brazil made by an emerging so-cial group, lately called the Brazilian new middle class. For the last ten years, a number of government policies have provoked a general improvement of the purchasing power of the poor. Between those who completely depend on the government to survive and the upper middle class, there is a wide (about 100 million people) and economically stable lower middle group, which has found its own ways of dealing with its demand for housing. The conventional models of planning, building and buying are not suitable for their technical, financial and personal needs. Therefore, they are con-currently planners, constructors and residents, building and renovating their own properties themselves, but still with very limited education and technical knowledge and restricted access to good building materials and constructive ele-ments, formal technicians, architects or engineers. On the one hand, the result is an informal and more or less autono-mous self-production, with all sorts of technical problems and very interesting and creative spatial solutions to every-day domestic situations. On the other hand, the repercussions for urban space are questionable: although basic infrastructure conditions have improved, building densities are high and green areas are few. Lower middle class neigh-bourhoods present a restricted collective everyday life. They look like storage spaces for manpower; people who live to work in order to be able to consume—and build—what they could not before. One question is, to what extent the lat-est economic rise of Brazil has really resulted in social development for lower middle income families in the private sphere regarding their residences, and in the collective sphere, regarding the neighbourhoods they inhabit and the ur-ban space in general.

For decades in Germany, historical research on dictatorial urban design in the first half of the 20th century focused on the National Socialist period. Studies on the urban design practices of other dictatorships remained an exception. This has changed. Meanwhile, the urban production practices of the Mussolini, Stalin, Salazar, Hitler and Franco dictatorships have become the subject of comprehensive research projects. Recently, a research group that studies dictatorial urban design in 20th century Europe has emerged at the Bauhaus-Institut für Geschichte und Theorie der Architektur und der Planung. The group is already able to refer to various research results. Part of the research group’s self-conception is the assumption that the urban design practices of the named dictatorships can only be properly understood from a European perspective. The dictatorships influenced one another substantially. Furthermore, the specificities of the practices of each dictatorship can only be discerned if one can compare them to those of the other dictatorships. This approach requires strict adherence to the research methods of planning history and urban design theory. Meanwhile, these methods must be opened to include those of general historical studies. With this symposium, the research group aims to further qualify this European perspective. The aim is to pursue an inventory of the various national historiographies on the topic of “urban design and dictatorship”. This inventory should offer an overview on the general national level of historical research on urban design as well as on the level of particular urban design projects, persons or topics. The symposium took place in Weimar, November 21-22, 2013. It was organized by Harald Bodenschatz, Piero Sassi and Max Welch Guerra and funded by the DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service).