Housing in the Margins Negotiating Urban Formalities in Berlin's Allotment Gardens

Housing in the Margins offers a theoretically informed and empirically detailed exploration of unruly housing practices and their governance at the periphery of Berlin.

• An original empirical contribution to understanding housing precarity in the context of the German housing crisis
• A novel approach to theorizing the nexus of informality and the state in ways that bridge analytical divides between debates about Northern and Southern states
• An innovative account of urban development in Berlin that contributes to the limited discussions of urban informality in Euro-American cities 
• A theoretical understanding of the ways in which negotiations and transgressions are embedded in the making of urban order
• A historically informed narrative of the development of allotment gardens in Berlin with a particular focus on housing practices at these sites

Hanna Hilbrandt is assistant professor of social and cultural geography at the University of Zurich. Her research explores marginality and exclusion in housing and urban development as well as socio-spatial inequalities in the context of global economic restructuring. Focusing predominantly on Mexico City and Berlin, her work pays close attention to the everyday politics of city-making and the structural constraints in which such practises are inscribed.

List of Illustrations vi

Series Editors’ Preface vii

Acknowledgements viii

1. Introduction: Housing in the Entanglements of Formality, Informality, and the State 1

2. Negotiating Formalities: Informality and the Everyday State 15

3. Footnotes on the History of Housing: Allotment Dwelling in Berlin, 1871–2019 31

4. Housing in the Margins: Halfway Between Exclusion and Homeownership 54

5. The Colony and the Turf: Planning and the Politics of Land Use Change 76

6. Constellations of Consent: Navigating the Politics of Regulatory Enforcement 97

7. Working the Legal Threshold: Regulation, Translation, and Boundary Work 116

8. Conclusion: The “Gallic Village” 134

Glossary of German Terms 144

References 146

Index 173

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