Uffer, Sabina
(2011)
The uneven development of Berlin’s housing provision.
PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.
Abstract
Since the end of the 1990s, Berlin’s housing has been described by a transformation
from state- to market-led provision, creating more socially and spatially segregated
neighbourhoods. The underlying processes exacerbating and reproducing these inequalities
have however rarely been addressed. This thesis investigates the question
how the transformation of Berlin’s mode of housing provision generated particular
forms of social and spatial inequalities. It begins from a state-focused approach to
regulation theory and the related debate on the contemporary form of urban governance
of the entrepreneurial city.
The thesis identifies three transformation processes of Berlin’s mode of housing provision,
which are informed by critical realist housing research. First, the privatisation
of state-owned housing and the entrance of institutional investors; second, the reformation
of the remaining state-owned housing companies and their adaptation to the
government’s social and economic demands; and third, the abandonment of supplyside
subsidies for the construction and renovation of housing. The analysis of these
three processes exposes how regulation, production, and consumption mechanisms
play out under particular spatial and temporal circumstances, creating social and spatial
inequalities. A particular emphasis lies on the production mechanisms defined
through the diverging strategies of different institutional investors and state-owned
housing companies.
The thesis concludes with a reflection upon the benefits of a critical realist methodology
for analysing state restructuring. It is argued that only through the application of a
critical realist methodology, the strengths of the regulation theory’s conceptualisation
of state transformation can fully be deployed. The thesis therefore goes beyond an
affirmation of a more entrepreneurial mode of housing provision in Berlin, deploying
a critical realist approach to reveal the underlying mechanisms of the particular mode
of housing provision and its uneven consequences.
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