On the 26th of September over million Berliners voted to expropriate and return to public ownership over 200,000 homes in the city. Deutsche Wohnen und Co Enteignen targeted a number of large real estate companies in Berlin that had control of what had previously been social housing stock. The referendum is not legally binding, requiring the support of the governing parties in the Berlin parliament, who are now tasked with legislating on the issue. The composition of the governing coalition has yet to be determined, although it is clear that the Social Democrats will lead, having emerged as the largest party in the elections on the same as the referendum. This podcast examines the background to this historic victory and considers the implications for housing politics in Berlin and beyond. We remind ourselves what the campaign was about, we look at what happened, what might happen next and the likely challenges in store. We also consider the wider implications of the Berlin case. We are very happy to welcome back two guests from previous podcasts on the subject, Joanna Kusiak and Andrej Holm.

Urban Political Podcast

Housing Expropriation Referendum in Berlin: How it was won and what comes next?

In this episode we give you exclusive insights into the RC21 conference 2021 Antwerp. Our guests share their experiences from sessions, keynotes, and discussions on this year's main theme of 'Sensing and Shaping the City'.

Urban Political Special: RC21 Conference Antwerp

After discussing expropriation efforts in Berlin recently, this episode will widen the discussion of housing commons to perspectives, differences, and potentials in Europe and the US.

Housing Commons & Collectives: European & US Perspectives

‘How can academic research be of service to envisioning alternative planning agendas that reflect the realities of the so-called Global South?’ is the central question that our guest host Inhji Jon stresses in this episode.

Decolonize/Decenter: Planning in the South

Green cities and green infrastructure have become common planning practices. But why is nature good and how does green matter? Do all people have equal access to nature, or are some left out of contemporary climate planning?

Green Cities and Contemporary Climate Planning: Politics and Practices

After Andrej Holm delved into the history of 'Mietendeckel', the rent cap legislation in Berlin, in the previous episode on contemporary housing struggles in Berlin, in this episode Joanna Kusiak explores grassroots activism of 'Deutsche Wohnen & Co enteignen' (Expropriate Deutsche Wohnen & Co).

Housing struggles in Berlin: Part II Grassroots Expropriation Activism

This episode, we discuss the social and political consequences of last week's rent cap ("Mietendeckel") ruling of the German Federal Constitutional Court with Andrej Holm. We explore the history of the Mietendeckel, rising rents, and growing housing activism in Berlin that led to the legislation in the first place. We debate the effects the rent cap had on rents, the housing market and what it meant for people living and renting in the city. Andrej discusses the implications that the ruling has for the left-wing coalition in Berlin, for urban activism, and transformative approaches.

Housing Struggles in Berlin: Part I Rent Cap

This podcast explores how the pandemic is changing density around the world and generating forms of politics. With a diverse group of scholars and practitioners from around the world, the podcast addresses the following specific questions/ themes: How should density be conceived and why is it important to understanding cities (and the pandemic)? What is the pandemic doing to different forms of density? Is the pandemic changing the ‘where’ of density? Is the pandemic changing how we understand density? Do we now need to think about density in a different light or can we use the debates and concepts we’ve used in the past? The podcast is moderated by: Colin McFarlane is Professor of Urban Geography at Durham University, UK. His work focusses on the politics of urban life, particularly in relation to density, infrastructure, and equality. Our Guests are: Hung-Ying Chen is a Post Doctoral Research Associate at Durham University (UK). Trained as an urban planner and urban economic geographer, she is researching the political and cultural economy of land value capture and the sensorial geographies of urban density and precarious politics Roger Keil is a Professor at the Faculty of Environmental Studies and Urban Change, York University in Toronto. He researches global suburbanization, urban political ecology, cities and infectious disease, and regional governance. Lucía Cerrada Morato is the High Density Development Project Manager at Tower Hamlets Council, London. Trained as an architect and urban designer, she is currently completing a PhD at the Bartlett School of Planning. Margot Rubin is a senior researcher and faculty member in the University of the Witwatersrand (South African Research Chair in Spatial Analysis and City Planning) in Johannesburg.

The urban politics of density in and beyond the pandemic

This podcast explores how the pandemic is changing density around the world and generating forms of politics. With a diverse group of scholars and practitioners from around the world, the podcast addresses the following specific questions/ themes: How should density be conceived and why is it important to understanding cities (and the pandemic)? What is the pandemic doing to different forms of density (of different sorts - in transit, in and around city spaces, the neighbourhood, the ‘overcrowded’ home, etc). Is the pandemic changing the ‘where’ of density? Is the pandemic changing how we understand density? Do we now need to think about density in a different light or can we use the debates and concepts we’ve used in the past? The podcast is moderated by: Colin McFarlane is Professor of Urban Geography at Durham University, UK. His work focusses on the politics of urban life, particularly in relation to density, infrastructure, and equality. Our Guests are: Hung-Ying Chen is a Post Doctoral Research Associate at Durham University (UK). Trained as an urban planner and urban economic geographer, she is researching the political and cultural economy of land value capture and the sensorial geographies of urban density and precarious politics Lucía Cerrada Morato is the High Density Development Project Manager at Tower Hamlets Council, London. Trained as an architect and urban designer, she is currently completing a PhD at the Bartlett School of Planning. Margot Rubin is a senior researcher and faculty member in the University of the Witwatersrand (South African Research Chair in Spatial Analysis and City Planning) in Johannesburg. Roger Keil is a Professor at the Faculty of Environmental Studies, York University in Toronto. He researches global suburbanization, urban political ecology, cities and infectious disease, and regional governance.

The transatlantic slave trade had a lasting impact not only on the development of big ports like Liverpool, London, Nantes or Bordeaux, but also in cities that far less frequently associated with slavery. In this episode, four researcher-activists from Bremen and Lancaster speak about how slavery is not just a bygone period of cruel practices far away. Our guests reveal the involvement of these places within the geographies of slavery and emphasize the "absent presence" or "present absence" of enslavism in contemporary Bremen and Lancaster. As a challenge placed in front of urban studies, tracing the historical and geographical links of slavery is discussed as a transdisciplinary and activist endeavor and a vital element of a growing contemporary anti-racist movement. Alan, Geraldine, Maimuna and Sabine reflect on the decolonial engagements and methodologies in their respective cities and chart an outlook to deepen collaboration.

The Urban Hinterlands of Slavery

Emerging film-makers and urban researchers Nitin Bathla, Sandra Jasper, and Tino Buchholz speak about their avenues into film-production, why film amounts to a vital medium for urban research, and what it would mean to enhance its role in urban studies. This episode is also full of urban film inspirations and recommendations!

Film-Making as Urban Research

Amidst the rapidly unfolding ecological crisis, current research is witnessing ever new financial strategies that aim at making money from urban climate risks. In this episode Hanna Hilbrandt invites Emma Colven, Zac Taylor, Sarah Knuth, and Sage Ponder, to discuss the financial and socio-material limits to the viability of urban financialization in the context of climate change. When climate disasters increasingly destroy financial assets and erode returns, how much longer will it take until some financial strategies become unviable? What are the multiple mechanisms finance and state actors use to push these limits into the future and continue to profit from climate change? Which places are indispensable to finance? And what happens when financial strategies become unviable (if that happens at all)? Bringing together research from Jakarta, Miami and Puerto Rico, amongst other cities, we discuss risk management practices that mine value from rising waters, wildfires, or hurricanes, and open up new markets on the back of urban decay. Thinking through wider questions about disaster capitalism, we delve into the inherent challenges to that system. Talking across multiple research sites, we discuss geographical differences in state interventions ranging from forced evictions to fiscal policies. In conclusion, we reflect on contestations on the ground and possibilities for urban research to support these struggles.

Urban Climate Finance at the edge of viability?

Mobilization and advocacy in contexts of massive urbanisation - Part 2

Throughout the global south, many urban regions have become massive. In the familiar renditions of this notion, urban regions, mushrooming in population and spatial footprints, teeter close to chaos, environmental disaster, and ungovernability. Populations are being reshuffled, moved from one area to the other, something which an extensive landscape of built projects that never really worked has allowed as buildings are repurposed for other uses as they also take advantage of contiguities with new developments—sub-cities, new industrial zones and logistical centres. The sheer heterogeneity of developments at all scales, from thousands of small developers to large real estate corporations have equipped regions with a large volume of warehouses, housing estates, mega residential developments, industrial zones, commercial centres, and small enterprise districts that either never got off the ground, only partially fulfilled the intended functions or rates of occupancy, or quickly fell apart. When these “projects” are coupled with large swathes of squatter settlements, temporary migrant housing, and the conversion of older residential neighbourhoods into mass boarding houses, it is possible to grasp the extensiveness of a circulating population that anchors residency across multiple tenuous residencies, remains completely unanchored in serial short terms occupancies, or is continuously displaced as a function of different instantiations of urban renewal, the migration of employment opportunities, or an increasingly opportunistic-cantered sensibility of residents themselves. Yet, massiveness may be the very thing that provides a kind of “safety net.” All kinds of discrepant environments become momentary bastions of largely improvised collectivity, where people try to make some functional use of each other without any pretence of long-term commitments. Momentary, sporadic, and makeshift become the defining metaphors of many collective formations. In this episode, Maliq invites the four participants to reflect on Delhi (Nitin), Karachi (Sobia), Lagos (Taibat), and Manila (Kristian) by addressing these questions: 1. What is it particularly about your cities which seems at times too complex, too all over the place, too difficult to understand with the tool boxes that we have? 2. You have all been involved in attempting to do things in your cities—either in terms of advocacy, community planning, public policy, project development. Can you talk about what you have learned through this process, and how this new learning might be translated into action? 3. In terms of the urban challenges as you understand them, and the complexities of the regions you inhabit, what do you think constitutes viable political experiments, particularly those addressed to issues of spatial justice, economic precarity, and social marginalization?

Mobilization and Advocacy in Massive Urbanization Contexts - Part I

The {Urban Political} delves into contemporary urban issues with activists, scholars and policy-makers from around the world. Providing informed views, state of the art knowledge and unusual insights, the podcast aims to advance our understanding of urban environments and how we might make them more just and democratic. The {Urban Political} provides a new forum for reflection on bridging urban activism and scholarship, where regular features offer snapshots of pressing issues and new publications, allowing multiple voices of scholars and activists to enter into a transnational debate directly. A new podcast episode will be published every month. Start date is September 9. Hosted by Ross Beveridge (Urban Studies Department of the University of Glasgow) and Markus Kip (the Georg-Simmel-Center for Metropolitan Studies at Humboldt University in Berlin) Communications: Sandy Tsai (Anhalt University of Applied Sciences in Dessau) Thank you CMS at Humboldt University for technical support! Music credits: "Something Elated" by Broke For Free, CC BY 3.0 US If you would like to produce an episode with us or have comments, please get in touch! Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/political_urban Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/urban_political Email: urbanpolitical@protonmail.com

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Urban Political Podcast

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