Matthias Bernt
Dados Biográficos
| ID | 954975 |
|---|---|
| NOME | Matthias Bernt |
| PRENOMES | Matthias |
| SOBRENOME | Bernt |
| ASSINATURA | BERNT M |
| AFILIAÇÕES | Leibniz Institute for Research on Society and Space |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-2380-8830 |
| VERIFICADO | Sim |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 40 |
| TOTAL DE CITAÇÕES | 381 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 39 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 1 |
| PRIMEIRO ANO DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2004 |
| ANO MAIS RECENTE DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2025 |
| ÍNDICE H | 10 |
Introduction
With or without? For or against? Berlin’s housing policy and financial investors
This article investigates the relations between local housing policies and global corporate landlords in Berlin, Germany. While previous studies on the financialisation of housing markets have described the role of the state as facilitating and supporting the entry of institutional investors into the housing market, there is only limited understanding about the relationship between the local state and institutional investors after the latter have…
Institutional investment in urban housing markets
This special issue examines the evolving relationship between the state and institutional investors in the financialization of housing across Europe. Moving beyond narratives that cast the state merely as an enabler, it reconceptualizes housing financialization as a relational process anchored in a state–investor nexus, a dynamic and contested field in which the boundaries between regulation, deregulation, and non-regulation blur through the inte…
Post-Socialist Gentrifications
Contrary to the expectations many urban scholars had after the end of socialism, it has taken almost thirty years for gentrification to become a significant urban development trend in Central and Eastern Europe. The reason for this delay is that there are massive 'commodification gaps'-institutional barriers to the valorization of land and housing-which could only be overcome with great difficulties. In this article, which is based on an empirica…
The Perils of Commodification Gaps
Suburbanisation in East Germany
Rampant suburbanisation is one of the most visible changes evidenced in cities throughout Central and Eastern Europe in the past three decades. In this paper, we analyse how suburbanisation unfolded in East Germany after reunification. We do this against the background of ongoing debates about the usefulness and meaning of the term post-socialism that have questioned the self-enclosed spatiality of the concept and suggest giving the concept of ne…
The Commodification Gap
Special issue Intro
This paper introduces a Special Issue of the Journal of Housing and the Built Environment entitled “Housing estates in the era of marketization – governance practices and urban development”. The issue includes 10 European case studies on how marketization has impacted large housing estates (LHEs) across Europe. The collection includes novel contributions from well-studied countries like France or the United Kingdom, cases from Scandinavia and Med…
Internal migration industries
In this article, we focus on ways in which ‘internal migration industries’ shape the housing location of refugees in cities. Based on empirical studies in Halle, Schwerin, Berlin, Stuttgart and Dresden, we bring two issues together. First, we show how a specific financialised accumulation model of renting out privatised public housing stock to disadvantaged parts of the population has emerged that increasingly targets migrant tenants. With the gr…
Commodification Gap
Dwelling in failure
Immigration, segregation and neighborhood change in Berlin
Den Osten im Blick
Die Kommentare zu unserem „Plädoyer für eine neue politisch-institutionelle Perspektive auf ostdeutsche Städte“ lassen sich grob in zwei Argumentationslinien einteilen: Das ist zum einen eine Perspektive, die Zweifel an unserem politökonomisch-institutionellen Ansatz sowie der Eignung von Ostdeutschland als eigenständigem Forschungsgegenstand anmeldet, sowie zweitens eine Gruppe an Argumenten, die unseren Ansatz unterstützt – aber nach den forsch…
Die Ostdeutschlandforschung muss das Wohnen in den Blick nehmen
Ostdeutschland ist in den vergangenen Jahren verstärkt zum Thema öffentlicher und wissenschaftlicher Debatten geworden. Neben Pegida und AfD haben dabei auch neue Zahlen zur Segregation in ostdeutschen Städten das wissenschaftliche Interesse wiederbelebt. Der Beitrag kritisiert vor diesem Hintergrund die weitgehende Ausblendung institutioneller Perspektiven in der Ostdeutschlandforschung sowie die fehlende Berücksichtigung von ostdeutschen Sonder…
Peripheral Estates as Arrival Spaces? Conceptualising Research on Arrival Functions of New Immigrant Destinations
In recent years, the question of how urban spaces support the arrival of immigrants has found increased attention among scholars. The emerging discussion uses terms like arrival cities, arrival neighbourhoods, arrival spaces, arrival contexts, or arrival infrastructures to refer to local conditions which support immigrant inclusion. This discussion, however, tends to focus empirically and conceptually on neighbourhoods or cities with long-standin…
Shrinking Cities
“Shrinking” cities are cities that have lost a considerable number of inhabitants over a certain amount of time. While most authors consider population losses a central feature, the exact definition of shrinkage is still a matter of debate. There are a variety of theories available for explaining urban shrinkage, which leads to numerous problems in urban development.
Urban regimes’ and ‘migration regimes’
Gentrification between urban and rural
This commentary focuses on gentrification in urban and rural contexts, focusing on five points: the tradition and the use of comparative approaches in gentrification studies, epistemological issues around the concept of gentrification, the opportunities for productively engaging findings from ‘rural gentrification’ studies for a better understanding of urban phenomena and the blurring of differences between ‘urban’ and ‘rural’ in an age of planet…
The political economy of managing decline and rightsizing
While population losses have accompanied urban development since the emergence of the first cities, it has only been quite recently that “shrinkage” has become a field of research in its own rights. Critical scholarly research stands in a somewhat difficult relation to this situation. On the one hand, there are numerous contributions calling for a general “acceptance” of shrinkage and more “openness” towards planning for a reduced population size…
The emergence of “Stadtumbau Ost”
Academic discussions often refer to the German urban development program “Stadtumbau Ost” [Urban Regeneration East] as a showcase example of proactive policies on urban shrinkage. The paper discusses how this program came into being. Based on expert interviews and document analysis, it demonstrates that the primary cause for “Stadtumbau Ost” was not so much a new development policy for depopulated cities, but rather an attempt to manage tackle an…
Privatization, Financialization and State Restructuring in Eastern Germany
Using a mix of survey data, results from a study on local planning politics and fieldwork, this article discusses the interplay of planning and welfare policies with global financial markets in the 'making' of social segregation in Halle-Neustadt, a borough in the German city of Halle (Saale). Here, different developments come together. First, Halle-Neustadt has experienced two waves of privatization, leading to a complete change of ownership str…
How post-socialist is gentrification? Observations in East Berlin and Saint Petersburg
Over the last several years, an increasing number of scholarly contributions have questioned the usefulness of the concept of gentrification for cases outside of the context in which the term was originally developed. The paper builds on this debate and explores the unfolding of gentrification in two contrasting environments undergoing post-socialist transformations. It analyzes the course of urban upgrading in Prenzlauer Berg in East Berlin as w…
Very particular, or rather universal? Gentrification through the lenses of Ghertner and López-Morales
With some delay ‘comparative urbanism’ has now arrived in the long-established field of gentrification research. If there is one thing the debate between Asher Ghertner and Ernesto Lopez-Morales in
Power, politics and peripheralization
Increasing socio-spatial inequalities in Europe have led to a revival of the term “peripheralization” in urban and regional research. In this context, peripheralization is often seen as an outcome of powerlessness. It is stated that peripheralized actors are lacking the capacities to influence decisions or are excluded from decision-making networks. This paper contributes to the understanding of the relationship between peripheralization and powe…
LorettaLees, Hyun BangShin and ErnestoLópez‐Morales2015
Varieties of shrinkage in European cities
The issue of urban shrinkage has become the new ‘normal’ across Europe: a large number of urban areas find themselves amongst the cities losing population. According to recent studies, almost 42 per cent of all large European cities are currently shrinking. In eastern Europe, shrinking cities have formed the overwhelming majority – here, three out of four cities report a decrease in population. Shrinkage has proved to be a very diverse and comple…
Conceptualizing Urban Shrinkage
Since the second half of the 20th century, urban shrinkage has become a common pathway of transformation for many large cities across the globe. Although the appearance of shrinkage is fairly universal-typically manifested in dwindling population, emerging vacant spaces, and the underuse of existing urban infrastructure, ranging from schools and parks to water pipelines-its essence is hidden from view. Phenomena related to shrinkage have been dis…
Partnerships for Demolition
Recent discussions of urban governance have emphasized a trend towards the 'entrepreneurialization' of local politics. This model has been intensively discussed and well documented. However, although this concept has been well tested in economically prosperous locations, less attention has been paid to the situation in marginalized regions characterized by a weak economy and a declining population. Taking eastern Germany as an example of a socio-…
Privatization, Financialization and State Restructuring in Eastern Germany
Using a mix of survey data, results from a study on local planning politics and fieldwork, this article discusses the interplay of planning and welfare policies with global financial markets in the 'making' of social segregation in Halle-Neustadt, a borough in the German city of Halle (Saale). Here, different developments come together. First, Halle-Neustadt has experienced two waves of privatization, leading to a complete change of ownership str…
The Limits of Shrinkage
This essay reflects on the conceptual underpinnings of research on ‘shrinking cities' over the last decade. It criticizes the definition of shrinkage in terms of urban population losses and argues that the state‐of‐the art research on ‘shrinking cities' suffers from a misleading conceptualization of shrinkage which forces essentially different urban constellations into a universal model of ‘shrinkage'. Four problems of this procrustean bed are di…
Is it, or is not? The conceptualisation of gentrification and displacement and its political implications in the case of Berlin‐Prenzlauer Berg
Building on Peter Marcuse’s definition of displacement, this paper examines Berlin’s urban renewal policy since the 1990s and studies how different definitions of displacement support different policy alternatives. It argues that the conceptualisation of displacement is not merely an academic exercise, but has enormous political implications. We show how theoretical differences in the definition of displacement have been taken up by policy‐makers…
How post-socialist is gentrification? Observations in East Berlin and Saint Petersburg
Over the last several years, an increasing number of scholarly contributions have questioned the usefulness of the concept of gentrification for cases outside of the context in which the term was originally developed. The paper builds on this debate and explores the unfolding of gentrification in two contrasting environments undergoing post-socialist transformations. It analyzes the course of urban upgrading in Prenzlauer Berg in East Berlin as w…
Very particular, or rather universal? Gentrification through the lenses of Ghertner and López-Morales
With some delay ‘comparative urbanism’ has now arrived in the long-established field of gentrification research. If there is one thing the debate between Asher Ghertner and Ernesto Lopez-Morales in
The political economy of managing decline and rightsizing
While population losses have accompanied urban development since the emergence of the first cities, it has only been quite recently that “shrinkage” has become a field of research in its own rights. Critical scholarly research stands in a somewhat difficult relation to this situation. On the one hand, there are numerous contributions calling for a general “acceptance” of shrinkage and more “openness” towards planning for a reduced population size…
The ‘Double Movements’ of Neighbourhood Change
This article explores the interrelation of gentrification and public policies in the neighbourhoods of Prenzlauer Berg (Berlin) and Harlem (New York City). It draws on Karl Polanyi’s concept of a ‘double movement’ and argues that gentrification is fundamentally a political process. Thus, while demise in the face of market forces, or even an active support of gentrification, is clearly visible in both neighbourhoods, the relation between public po…
The emergence of “Stadtumbau Ost”
Academic discussions often refer to the German urban development program “Stadtumbau Ost” [Urban Regeneration East] as a showcase example of proactive policies on urban shrinkage. The paper discusses how this program came into being. Based on expert interviews and document analysis, it demonstrates that the primary cause for “Stadtumbau Ost” was not so much a new development policy for depopulated cities, but rather an attempt to manage tackle an…
Gentrification between urban and rural
This commentary focuses on gentrification in urban and rural contexts, focusing on five points: the tradition and the use of comparative approaches in gentrification studies, epistemological issues around the concept of gentrification, the opportunities for productively engaging findings from ‘rural gentrification’ studies for a better understanding of urban phenomena and the blurring of differences between ‘urban’ and ‘rural’ in an age of planet…
Power, politics and peripheralization
Increasing socio-spatial inequalities in Europe have led to a revival of the term “peripheralization” in urban and regional research. In this context, peripheralization is often seen as an outcome of powerlessness. It is stated that peripheralized actors are lacking the capacities to influence decisions or are excluded from decision-making networks. This paper contributes to the understanding of the relationship between peripheralization and powe…
Internal migration industries
In this article, we focus on ways in which ‘internal migration industries’ shape the housing location of refugees in cities. Based on empirical studies in Halle, Schwerin, Berlin, Stuttgart and Dresden, we bring two issues together. First, we show how a specific financialised accumulation model of renting out privatised public housing stock to disadvantaged parts of the population has emerged that increasingly targets migrant tenants. With the gr…
Dwelling in failure
Not Relevant to the System
This essay provides insights into the crisis unfolding in the 'backyards' of globalization, that is, in regions that are largely abandoned in terms of capital and are characterized by de-industrialization and depopulation. We take Eastern Germany as an example to examine how the crisis manifests itself in this context. We look at the turmoil around the failed sale of the Opel car company, the acquisition of pre-fab housing estates by global inves…
Suburbanisation in East Germany
Rampant suburbanisation is one of the most visible changes evidenced in cities throughout Central and Eastern Europe in the past three decades. In this paper, we analyse how suburbanisation unfolded in East Germany after reunification. We do this against the background of ongoing debates about the usefulness and meaning of the term post-socialism that have questioned the self-enclosed spatiality of the concept and suggest giving the concept of ne…
Special issue Intro
This paper introduces a Special Issue of the Journal of Housing and the Built Environment entitled “Housing estates in the era of marketization – governance practices and urban development”. The issue includes 10 European case studies on how marketization has impacted large housing estates (LHEs) across Europe. The collection includes novel contributions from well-studied countries like France or the United Kingdom, cases from Scandinavia and Med…
LorettaLees, Hyun BangShin and ErnestoLópez‐Morales2015
Immigration, segregation and neighborhood change in Berlin
Introduction
With or without? For or against? Berlin’s housing policy and financial investors
This article investigates the relations between local housing policies and global corporate landlords in Berlin, Germany. While previous studies on the financialisation of housing markets have described the role of the state as facilitating and supporting the entry of institutional investors into the housing market, there is only limited understanding about the relationship between the local state and institutional investors after the latter have…
Post-Socialist Gentrifications
Contrary to the expectations many urban scholars had after the end of socialism, it has taken almost thirty years for gentrification to become a significant urban development trend in Central and Eastern Europe. The reason for this delay is that there are massive 'commodification gaps'-institutional barriers to the valorization of land and housing-which could only be overcome with great difficulties. In this article, which is based on an empirica…
Stadtumbau unter Schrumpfungsbedingungen
Von Programmen zu Projekten
Obwohl das Bund-Länder-Programm „Soziale Stadt“ eine mittlerweile kaum noch zu überschauende Zahl von Publikationen angeregt hat (allein die vom Deutschen Institut für Urbanistik (Difu) betreuten Projektdatenbanken unter http://www.sozialestadt.de enthalten mehr als 600 Einträge), ist die Einordnung dieser Gemeinschaftsinitiative in die großen Linien der deutschen Stadtentwicklungspolitik bislang völlig unterbelichtet geblieben. Das Gros der Beit…
Is it, or is not? The conceptualisation of gentrification and displacement and its political implications in the case of Berlin‐Prenzlauer Berg
Building on Peter Marcuse’s definition of displacement, this paper examines Berlin’s urban renewal policy since the 1990s and studies how different definitions of displacement support different policy alternatives. It argues that the conceptualisation of displacement is not merely an academic exercise, but has enormous political implications. We show how theoretical differences in the definition of displacement have been taken up by policy‐makers…
Partnerships for Demolition
Recent discussions of urban governance have emphasized a trend towards the 'entrepreneurialization' of local politics. This model has been intensively discussed and well documented. However, although this concept has been well tested in economically prosperous locations, less attention has been paid to the situation in marginalized regions characterized by a weak economy and a declining population. Taking eastern Germany as an example of a socio-…
Exploring the substance and style of gentrification
Not Relevant to the System
This essay provides insights into the crisis unfolding in the 'backyards' of globalization, that is, in regions that are largely abandoned in terms of capital and are characterized by de-industrialization and depopulation. We take Eastern Germany as an example to examine how the crisis manifests itself in this context. We look at the turmoil around the failed sale of the Opel car company, the acquisition of pre-fab housing estates by global inves…
Peripherisierung, Stigmatisierung, Abhängigkeit?
The ‘Double Movements’ of Neighbourhood Change
This article explores the interrelation of gentrification and public policies in the neighbourhoods of Prenzlauer Berg (Berlin) and Harlem (New York City). It draws on Karl Polanyi’s concept of a ‘double movement’ and argues that gentrification is fundamentally a political process. Thus, while demise in the face of market forces, or even an active support of gentrification, is clearly visible in both neighbourhoods, the relation between public po…
Peripherisierung, Stigmatisierung, Abhängigkeit?
Globale wirtschaftliche Restrukturierungsprozesse, interregionale Wanderungen und demographischer Wandel führen zu einer Verschärfung räumlicher Disparitäten. Die Folge sind peripherisierte Räume, die
Stadtumbau Unter Schrumpfungsbedingungen
Peripheralization and Power – Theoretical Debates
Varieties of shrinkage in European cities
The issue of urban shrinkage has become the new ‘normal’ across Europe: a large number of urban areas find themselves amongst the cities losing population. According to recent studies, almost 42 per cent of all large European cities are currently shrinking. In eastern Europe, shrinking cities have formed the overwhelming majority – here, three out of four cities report a decrease in population. Shrinkage has proved to be a very diverse and comple…
How does(n't) Urban Shrinkage get onto the Agenda? Experiences from L eipzig, L iverpool, G enoa and B ytom
This article discusses the question of how urban shrinkage gets onto the agenda of public‐policy agencies. It is based on a comparison of the agenda‐setting histories of four E uropean cities, L iverpool ( UK ), L eipzig ( G ermany), G enoa ( I taly) and B ytom ( P oland), which have all experienced severe population losses but show very different histories with respect to how local governments reacted to them. We use the political‐science concep…
Conceptualizing Urban Shrinkage
Since the second half of the 20th century, urban shrinkage has become a common pathway of transformation for many large cities across the globe. Although the appearance of shrinkage is fairly universal-typically manifested in dwindling population, emerging vacant spaces, and the underuse of existing urban infrastructure, ranging from schools and parks to water pipelines-its essence is hidden from view. Phenomena related to shrinkage have been dis…
LorettaLees, Hyun BangShin and ErnestoLópez‐Morales2015
The Limits of Shrinkage
This essay reflects on the conceptual underpinnings of research on ‘shrinking cities' over the last decade. It criticizes the definition of shrinkage in terms of urban population losses and argues that the state‐of‐the art research on ‘shrinking cities' suffers from a misleading conceptualization of shrinkage which forces essentially different urban constellations into a universal model of ‘shrinkage'. Four problems of this procrustean bed are di…
How post-socialist is gentrification? Observations in East Berlin and Saint Petersburg
Over the last several years, an increasing number of scholarly contributions have questioned the usefulness of the concept of gentrification for cases outside of the context in which the term was originally developed. The paper builds on this debate and explores the unfolding of gentrification in two contrasting environments undergoing post-socialist transformations. It analyzes the course of urban upgrading in Prenzlauer Berg in East Berlin as w…
Very particular, or rather universal? Gentrification through the lenses of Ghertner and López-Morales
With some delay ‘comparative urbanism’ has now arrived in the long-established field of gentrification research. If there is one thing the debate between Asher Ghertner and Ernesto Lopez-Morales in
Power, politics and peripheralization
Increasing socio-spatial inequalities in Europe have led to a revival of the term “peripheralization” in urban and regional research. In this context, peripheralization is often seen as an outcome of powerlessness. It is stated that peripheralized actors are lacking the capacities to influence decisions or are excluded from decision-making networks. This paper contributes to the understanding of the relationship between peripheralization and powe…
The emergence of “Stadtumbau Ost”
Academic discussions often refer to the German urban development program “Stadtumbau Ost” [Urban Regeneration East] as a showcase example of proactive policies on urban shrinkage. The paper discusses how this program came into being. Based on expert interviews and document analysis, it demonstrates that the primary cause for “Stadtumbau Ost” was not so much a new development policy for depopulated cities, but rather an attempt to manage tackle an…
Privatization, Financialization and State Restructuring in Eastern Germany
Using a mix of survey data, results from a study on local planning politics and fieldwork, this article discusses the interplay of planning and welfare policies with global financial markets in the 'making' of social segregation in Halle-Neustadt, a borough in the German city of Halle (Saale). Here, different developments come together. First, Halle-Neustadt has experienced two waves of privatization, leading to a complete change of ownership str…
Gentrification between urban and rural
This commentary focuses on gentrification in urban and rural contexts, focusing on five points: the tradition and the use of comparative approaches in gentrification studies, epistemological issues around the concept of gentrification, the opportunities for productively engaging findings from ‘rural gentrification’ studies for a better understanding of urban phenomena and the blurring of differences between ‘urban’ and ‘rural’ in an age of planet…
The political economy of managing decline and rightsizing
While population losses have accompanied urban development since the emergence of the first cities, it has only been quite recently that “shrinkage” has become a field of research in its own rights. Critical scholarly research stands in a somewhat difficult relation to this situation. On the one hand, there are numerous contributions calling for a general “acceptance” of shrinkage and more “openness” towards planning for a reduced population size…
Shrinking Cities
“Shrinking” cities are cities that have lost a considerable number of inhabitants over a certain amount of time. While most authors consider population losses a central feature, the exact definition of shrinkage is still a matter of debate. There are a variety of theories available for explaining urban shrinkage, which leads to numerous problems in urban development.
Urban regimes’ and ‘migration regimes’
Urbanization and City Planning (26 obras) · Economics (24 obras) · Political science (20 obras) · Sociology (19 obras) · Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism (18 obras) · Geography (17 obras) · Economic geography (14 obras) · Urban Planning and Governance (12 obras) · Economic growth (11 obras) · Politics (10 obras)