A Common Good? Governing and Contesting Gentrification with Ethics

Max Ott - Berlin-based architect

Discourses on community-oriented planning, on urban commons and the city as a common good have recently gained a remarkable presence in the field of architecture and urbanism. This development indicates both a decisive element of, as well as a potential rupture within the neoliberal conjuncture of governing cities “through freedom” – a conjuncture where austerity measures such as the privatization of public land or spending cuts in public housing are combined with calls for self-initiative and active citizenship, and an emphasis on city dwellers’ social creativity in dealing with the challenges of urban life.
My contribution seeks to address this mode of ‘doing politics with ethics’ by drawing on examples from my research in contemporary Berlin. I will illustrate how, on the one hand, ethics of community have played an important role in organizing the marketing and valorization of a public property within a poor inner-city neighborhood, and on the other hand, have become characteristic for new struggles against gentrification. As a framework to reflect on the relation of ethics and politics and on rearrangements of the current conjuncture, I will take into account some thoughts on connections between the governance of people and their willingness or refusal to be governed „like that (and) at this price“ (Foucault).