Die sozial-unternehmerische Stadt: Gesellschaftliche Ungleichheit, Reproduktionskrise und Stadtpolitik in Hamburg

Abstract

Entrepreneurial and social urban policies contradictorily depend from each other: growth policies aiming to increase investment and population numbers produce a crisis of reproduction (i.e. housing or care); and social policies aiming to resolve this crisis allegedly require entrepreneurial policies as fuel for tax resources financing social goals. We investigate this interrelationship along the recent housing and childcare policies in the city of Hamburg, Germany. We show that as long as growth and competition are primary objectives of urban governments, a compensatory social policy is needed to legitimate the entrepreneurial axiom – and therefore has a specific character: social policy in the social-entrepreneurial city is actually addressing inequalities, but it eventually is aimed at all classes, secures capital accumulation and is gendered. This paper contributes to understanding urban crises of reproduction by exposing that current social policies aiming to solve this crisis merely consolidate the crisis-prone growth policies.