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Karin Wiest und Romy Zischner
Upgrading Old Housing Areas in East German Inner Cities – Processes and Development Paths in Leipzig
This article deals with upgrading in old housing areas in East Germany from the mid-1990s. Taking societal, economic, and demographic conditions into consideration, it examines the applicability of gentrification research approaches to the situation in the new federal states with reference to four Leipzig neighbourhoods. The diverging paths of socio-structural change in three edge-of-centre old housing areas is traced over a period of eight years. A further case study addresses the interplay between different, successive events like squatting, local government measures, and legend formation as an individual development path. Despite differences in the course these processes have taken, the trend towards the revitalisation of old housing neighbourhoods in East German cities through the arrival of younger, better educated households permits certain generalisations: where the pioneering phase is relatively intense, neighbourhoods rarely attain complete “gentrification.” The structural setting suggests that even in the longer term, upgrading will proceed with less intensity while differences in growth and decline in the urban area are likely to grow.
Deutsche Zeitschrift für Kommunalwissenschaften, Deutsches Institut für Urbanistik
Print ISSN: 1617-8203
Volume: 45, 01/2006