City Research

Since the early 1990s, many cities have had so-called "neighbourhood managers". They are supposed to ensure that, in areas with particular social problems, the housing and living conditions are improved, the economic situation is stabilised and the degree of identification with the neighbourhood is increased. The idea is that people should feel more responsible for the place they live in.

As part of the "Nahwelten" (close worlds) study project, Dr. Beate Binder and students from the Department of European Ethnology at Berlin's Humboldt University looked at the way the neighbourhood management schemes work, taking the South Tiergarten neighbourhood as an example. The study focused on fundamental questions: what significance do the various social groups in a neighbourhood attach to their residential environment, and what viewpoint, i.e. what standards and values, does the neighbourhood management apply to its work?

What gave you the idea for this project?

I basically think that, as a means of activating people, neighbourhood management is a good thing, but it seems to me that we really know too little about the neighbourhoods which are designated problem areas. We know too little about the people who live there. The relevant neighbourhoods are selected on the basis of social statistics which produce a very homogeneous picture. Even if these are certainly areas in which problems are concentrated, I think that designating them "social flashpoints" is itself disparaging to the residents. And that strikes me as being a problem, since we have no idea what is going on there, who lives there, what type of people they are, what sort of networks they have. And that attracted our interest: on the one hand the programmes, and on the other the way the people live.

Diashow: From the 'Nahwelten –Tiergarten Süd, Berlin' study project of Dr. Beate Binder

What were your findings in terms of existing structures, the approach taken by neighbourhood management, and the way the residents cope with the stigma of living in a social flashpoint?

We found out that the term "social flashpoint" involves a vast complexity of different ways of life and involvement. The structure is heterogeneous, and by no means as homogeneous as the social statistics suggest. However, we had the same problem as the neighbourhood managers: we lacked the time to reach all groups of the population. It is clear that basically most people try hard to gain respect for their lives or for the way they live. In some cases, this may not conform with the general understanding of what a "normal" life is. Despite this, it is still structured, ordered, a piece of normality. I'm not trying to imply that there are no social problems. But one has to see that disorganisation does not prevail everywhere where there are social problems. But that is precisely what the image of the social flashpoint suggests: that normal life has become impossible there and has to be restored.

Were these aspects taken into account in the neighbourhood work?

The initial efforts by the neighbourhood managers were excessively focused on investment, e.g. the installing of park benches or the improvement of the appearance of sections of the street. Too little use was made of the possibilities offered by social work, such as actually talking to people. On the other hand, neighbourhood management is a long-term measure, since it takes time to build up confidence. No-one who has spent their life feeling that they are not really wanted or needed in this society is suddenly going to take a positive interest in their neighbourhood overnight. That takes time.

Do the residents of a neighbourhood still have things in common, places to communicate, on which neighbourhood management can build?

This is a fundamental problem of urban environments today: places of communication are becoming more and more disparate, and people no longer necessarily have their most important contacts in their immediate environment. Not only many migrants lead a life which takes place only partly in Berlin, but also in other places, such as the country of origin. Transnational spaces arise which do not fit in with the old concept of society. And that is also true of upper class people who jet from here to there and are at home, or no longer at home, in three places at once.

The stated aims of neighbourhood management included more identification with the neighbourhood, more sense of responsibility. Could at least some of this be achieved?

There is a fundamental difficulty here: these are parameters which are impossible to measure. What is responsibility? What units should we measure it in? There is currently a debate about whether the programme should be continued. The trend is clearly towards setting more economic objectives, more easily definable objectives, such as getting people back to work or promoting new businesses. But the social, soft factors like involvement and responsibility are hard to measure, and it is often impossible to say what effect individual measures actually have. That would require a lot more substantive ethnographical research. For example, if we knew more about how life is organised in conditions of social exclusion, more about individual strategies of self-organisation, or how networks function, it would be possible to find more aspects on which to build measures of support.

So is neighbourhood management an idealistic model to be abandoned?

Some projects have certainly become firmly embedded. An example is the "welfare palace", a massive complex of rented apartments in Schöneberg, in which the residents have been able, with support from the neighbourhood managers, to enhance the residential quality and quality of life. There are areas in which it has worked and in which it has been possible to hand the activities back to the residents. Much depends on the imagination and the sensitivity of those involved. And on whether an administration will adopt new ways of doing things. Often, too little attention is paid right at the start to what structures exist in the localities. Often, the neighbourhood work, which in Berlin for example was taken up by long-standing neighbourhood associations, has been too dominated by the associations' own objectives and has not really met the disparate needs of the local residents. Often, there is a lack of neighbourhood managers with an immigrant background. And often there is the problem that middle-class ideas of what constitutes "good urban life" are simply used as the yardstick for the work. This overlooks standards and values which have developed and manifested themselves over a long period in certain environments in various social groups and scenes. It is impossible to ignore this.