Sozialstruktur und Sozialitätsformen im neuen Suburbia

The project sheds light on the urban peripheries as places for innovative forms of housing and living. Despite the focus on inner cities, little attention is paid to the suburban regions that characterize the majority of the population - yet profound developments are taking place in these areas. The interdisciplinary research project combines approaches from Urban and Regional Planning, Open Space and Landscape Planning as well as spatial social sciences in order to clarify the following questions, among others:

• What new forms of housing and living are emerging in suburban neighborhoods?
• Do these approaches work, and how is everyday life organized on site?
• What compromises do the practical realities require in comparison to the grand visions of Urban Design?

The project poses the question of the specificity of forms of sociality in suburban settlements that have emerged since the 1990s. It examines whether a specific form of suburban sociality, i.e. interaction and communitization, can still be identified against the background of the diversification of suburban space diagnosed in the last 30 years, or whether it is rather differentiated along different types of settlements.

The hypothesis is that the forms of sociality are influenced on the one hand by the socio-structural characteristics of the residents in terms of socio-economic status and position in the life cycle, and on the other hand by the infrastructure of a settlement in the form of publicly accessible facilities and open spaces. A central step towards the investigation of forms of sociality, which is primarily carried out using qualitative methods, is to be a quantitative, small-scale analysis of social and infrastructural patterns and developments in the three transects of Berlin, Frankfurt am Main and Hamburg. The aim is to show how socio-structural developments are reflected in suburban areas and to develop a settlement typology of forms of sociality.