717.2
The Socio-Spatial Polarization of Large Housing Estates in East German Shrinking Cities: A Governance Perspective
Despite significant outmigration of middle-class families the housing estates did not experience a collective downgrading as predicted in the early 1990s after the reunification. Instead 20 years after there can be observed a small-scale patchwork pattern of stable and impoverishing neighborhoods. The author argues that the uneven development is not only triggered by the demand-driven housing market in the shrinking cities and by segregation patterns caused by the GDR housing policy. Likewise this development is reinforced by specific planning and governance processes: (1) The Federal Government of Germany supports the development of sustainable urban structures in shrinking cities with large-scale funding programs. The approval for funding is based on defining areas of preferred investment and areas of disinvestment and demolition. (2) There are a growing number of real estate investments in low-quality housing stocks. These private market actors often pursue investment and rental strategies that are contrariwise to the municipal development/ demolition plans. (3) Municipal social housing policies and the allocation of low-income renters by housing companies are spatially selective.
Hence, the author assumes that the small-scale social polarization in the housing estates is reinforced by conflicting investment strategies of public and private actors, by contrasting rental policies of public and private landlords and by the withdrawal of the municipalities regarding to socially stabilizing measures from areas of disinvestment and demolition. Apparently dealing with urban decline is highly restricted by the unequal distribution of power and resources to the actors, their divergent interests and the lack of incentives to cooperation. To develop these arguments the author analyses the case of the continuously shrinking East German city Cottbus.