Subprojects | Concluded Projects

C04
The World Down My Street: Resources and Networks Used by City Dwellers

2018-2021

Do neighborhood still matter for our lifes today? Does the increasing mobility in our cities set the ground for new spatial patterns in social networks? Who benefits from new spatial arrangements that organize our daily life? And does it result in new forms of social inequalities in the city? Which local and transclocal belongings come along with it?

The subdivision C04 “The World Down My Street: Resources and Networks Used by City Dwellers“ investigates these research questions. We will conduct a representative quantitative survey as well as qualitative interviews and participatory observations in four neighborhoods in Berlin. The chosen neighborhoods differ in social and economic characteristics, building structures and local facilities and institutions.

We assume that city dwellers develop specific practices in social networks in order to take care of themselves and their families. Studying people´s access to resources, the conventional sociological network approach overemphasizes the density and distance of social ties. Ties which are more fluid, but still relevant, are mostly overlooked. Therefore, we investigate the tension between new translocal spatial pattern in social networks and the situatedness in a location.