showing 10 related works from this author
Some Reflections on the Economic and Political Organisation of Private Neighbourhoods
2005
The spreading of privately organised and often gated neighbourhoods in many regions of the world has triggered a widespread discussion about the relations between social and urban development. This paper presents some reflections on the economic and political organisation of this type of housing. First, the club goods theory is used to explain the potential attractiveness of this form of housing for developers, local governments as well as residents. However, the club goods theory alone does not enable one to understand the global but regionally differentiated development. Therefore, second, this paper proposes to view the analysis of private neighbourhoods as club economies against the bac…
L'essor des ensembles résidentiels clos en France : un phénomène en expansion et aux ressorts multiples
2003
Les ensembles résidentiels clos ne sont pas un phénomène entierement nouveau en France. Toutefois, les années quatre-vingt-dix marquent un essor important du phénomène et sa relative banalisation, aussi bien du point du vue géographique que social. Les facteurs qui rendent compte du phénomène relèvent à la fois de la structure de l'offre et de la demande. L'offre met en jeu un double processus, d'innovation et de mimétisme, où les promoteurs-construeteurs réalisent un produit immobilier qui doit les distinguer des concurrents. Quant à la demande, elle renvoie à trois processus fortement interdépendants: une logique extensive d'appropri…
Raus aus Suburbia, rein in die Stadt?
2007
Policy and Practice Perspective
Dialogorientierte Umweltkommunikation im Umfeld von Unternehmen
1998
Unternehmen im okologisch sensibilisierten Umfeld ● das Risiko marktlicher Nachteile infolge einer Imageverschlechterung (z.B. Konsum-Boykott, fallende Aktienkurse, sinkende Mitarbeitermotivation) und ● das Risiko, das gesetzliche Auflagen das Unternehmen zu einem ungunstigen Zeitpunkt treffen. Dagegen konne die Beteiligung externer Gruppen dem Unternehmen sogar okonomische Vorteile verschaffen, wenn es gelinge, deren Sachverstand fur okologisch sinnvolle und betriebswirtschaftlich rentable Verbesserungen zu nutzen. Vor diesem Hintergrund uberrascht es nicht, das einzelne Unternehmen den direkten Dialog mit ihrem gesellschaftlichen Umfeld suchen. Dabei stehen sie vor der Aufgabe, im zunachs…
The Discursive Constitution of a World-Spanning Region and the Role of Empty Signifiers: The Case of Francophonia
2007
The cultural turn in political science, history, and political geography has opened new perspectives on the division of the world into geographic entities. Nation-states, regions, districts, etc., are no longer qualified as quasi-natural objects based upon intrinsic qualities but, rather, as contingent results of social or accordingly discursive processes. The Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie (OIF) defines Francophonia as an “geocultural space” (espace geoculturel) and an international community of more than 50 states. In this contribution, the concept of political communities as “imagined communities” and the advancements of discourse theory by Laclau and Mouffe are used in o…
Gated Housing Estates in the Arab World: Case Studies in Lebanon and Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
2002
The authors analyze the cultural, economic, and political background of new gated housing estates in the Arab world with the aid of case studies in Lebanon and Riyadh. Their question is to what extent these developments represent a reappearance of the fragmented settlement patterns in many of the old towns. On the one hand, new compounds of several villas and common facilities housing extended families in Riyadh may be interpreted as a revival of certain sociospatial settings in the old town, in which extended families often shared a common courtyard. The compounds for Western foreigners in Saudi Arabia follow the principle of spatial seclusion of social groups with different cultural and r…
The Global Spread of Gated Communities
2002
A Glimpse over the Rising Walls
2009
The authors focus on societal perceptions of the Polish post-communist transformation as reflected in the rising discourse of gated communities. Guarded, (video-) controlled and/or walled housing estates have been on the sprawl in the Polish metropolises throughout the 1990s and 2000s. However, only recently they have been discursively constructed—under the banner of “gated communities”—as a social and political issue in the country. The authors look at this issue from a vantage point offered by Laclau and Mouffe's theory of discourse, which allows the authors to combine a spatial and a linguistic analytical perspective. The analysis emphasizes the manner in which societal perceptions of b…