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Manuel Lutz
[1]
- © CMS
manuel.lutz@metropolitanstudies.de [2]
Center for Metropolitan Studies (CMS)
TU Berlin
Ernst-Reuter-Platz 7, TEL 3-0
10587 Berlin
Dissertation
(working) title: Homeless
encampments in the US - moves for survival and self-determination in
the context of urban post-welfare management of the poor.
The dissertation addresses the urban (financial)
crisis that produced again a rise in homelessness that culminates in
the surge of tent cities all over the US. More and more people are
forced to find a place in cities they can't afford anymore while home
foreclosures are at an all-time high. In this context I explore
homeless struggles to cope with and resist the crisis collectively and
the yet little researched urban policies around homeless encampments.
Aside from well known revanchist municipal policies of denial and
repression of homeless survival more tolerating or lenient responses
can be observed. In face of inadequate shelter provision, continued
policing of the poor and rising poverty civil society organisations
and (local) state officials struggle over the accommodation of the
poor and (semi-)formalization of safe zones for the homeless. Homeless
activists and advocates demand decriminalization of tent cities where
homeless may self-manage their shelter as immediate response to the
urban crisis in homeless management. Without doubt cost-effective and
reminiscent to the historical enclosure and banishment of the poor
such local sanctions are highly contested as they reshape not only the
existing institutional and ideological frame of homelessness policies
but touch upon the hegemonic socio-spatial order of propertied
citizenship, too. However, while still marginal and fought for,
sanctioned tent cities are growing phenomena and not only homeless but
the underhoused in cars and RVs are affected by similar policies that
often predate the economic crisis of 2008. Increasingly exchanged
inter-locally there is today a variety of regulatory arrangements for
homeless "camping" that are to different degrees law
complying and considered successful by authorities, the public and
residents. Mapping different examples in the Pacific West and
questioning rationales and practices of state officials, non-profit
organisations, advocacy organisations and homeless activists involved
the research focuses on the question of how and why i.e. tent cities
are regulated. What does this shift imply for urban futures in
advanced capitalist city development?
The
dissertation responds to a recent call for more nuanced analysis of
the local state and its homeless management. Drawing from state theory
and governmentality studies allows navigating between generalized and
idealist accounts of e.g. punitive local state and e.g. benevolent
civil society. I understand struggles over sanction of tent cities as
local field of regulatory experimentation where survival of the poor
resonates with the restructuring of the welfare state. Together the
competing and contradictory rationales produce new forms and spaces of
homeless management. The hypothesis is that this socio-spatial
regulation of the poor extends to the formerly illegalized margins and
highly selectively integrates self-organizing capacities of the
homeless to compensate insufficient shelter provision and to reproduce
social and spatial stratification by social control. Identifying
inter-local patterns of strategic selectivity in the regulation of
tent cities the dissertation assesses (i) whether we have to reckon
with further legalisations of tent cities as a precarious precondition
for a post-welfare regime of substandard subsistence which is less an
interim "stepping stone" for the homeless but rather a
permanent "waiting room for housing", and (ii) whether tent
cities as emancipatory and collective practice of taking back the land
can counter the depredations of neoliberalization and further the
struggle for the right to the city i.e. housing.
Curriculum Vitae
EDUCATION
2008
Doctoral Student and DFG-Fellow at the Transatlantic Graduate Research
Program, Center for Metropolitan Studies, TU Berlin
2008
Diploma in Spatial Planning: "Spaces of Difference - the
spatialization of mobile and unconventional forms of housing. An
examination of Bauwagenplätze and urban development in Freiburg,
Breisgau" (supervised by Prof. Ruth Becker and Dr. Nina Schuster)
1999 - 2008
Studies of Spatial Planning, Technical
University Dortmund
Oct. 2004 - March 2005
DAAD funded research at Rostov State University in Rostov on Don,
Russia
Aug. 2002 - April 2003
CANEUX
funded studies at York University Toronto (FES), Canada
WORKING EXPERIENCE
Apr. 2006 - Mar. 2007
Assistant for the project „WISIONS of Sustainability" at the
Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy, Research
Group I „Future Energy and Mobility Structures
Oct.
2003 - July 2004
Tutor for student project at the Institute for
Spatial Planning, Technical University Dortmund
Nov.
2001 - July 2002
Research assistant at the BMBF
research project „Städteregion Ruhr 2030", Institute for
Spatial Planning, Technical University Dortmund
Oct.
1998 - Mar. 1999
traineeship at ABM - Knorr
architects in Stuttgart-Feuerbach
Publications, Lectures etc.
PUBLICATIONS
2010
“Planungskultur in Russland, Rostow am Don [Planning
culture in Russia, Rostow on Don]”. In:
Mertens, Indra/ Usunov, Katja (Hg.): Im Ausland plant man anders –
Planungskultur im internationalen Vergleich. Institut für
Raumplanung. Universität Dortmund. Dortmund. (with Tino
Buchholz)
2008
„Whose city? – German Wagenplätze and the Right to
the City”. In: Busà, Alessandro (Hg.): The
Urban Reinventors. Issue 3, September 2008
2006
„Planning Urban
Segregation?“ In: Raumplanung 129/. Dortmund: 280-282. (with Tino
Buchholz)
2003
„Räumliche Szenarien für die Ruhrstadt 2030 [Spatial
scenarios for the Ruhr city 2030]“. Dortmunder Beiträge zur
Raumplanung. Projekte 24. IRPUD. Dortmund. (co-editor) www.raumplanung.uni-dortmund.de/pz/download/Plakatf13_02_engl.pdf
[3]
PRESENTATIONS,
CONFERENCE and WORKSHOP ORGANIZATION
2009
“Gentrifizierung. Ein umstrittener Begriff
für eine umstrittene Stadtentwicklung“ presentation
given to „Links im dialog & Rosa-Luxemburg Stiftung NRW“ May 5
in Siegen.
“What right to the city?
German Wagenplaetze and the quest for a “space of true pleasure”
presentation given to UNESCO chair of Urban
politics and citizenship at the University of Lyon "The
Empowerment of civil society in urban policies” October 31 -
November 2 in Porquerolles/ France.
2008
„Lefebvre und aktuelle städtische Kämpfe -
International squatter days in April 2008“ presentation (with Tino
Buchholz) at the workshop "Lefebvre total - workshop für ein
kohärentes Lefebvre Verständnis" July 11-12 at the CMS, TU
Berlin (organized with Anne Vogelpohl).
”Space - some notions on the production of space and implications
for artistic and political interventions” presentation at the
workshop „Internationale Theater Universität“ May 3 at Viadrina
University, Frankfurt/Oder.
“Erfolge und
Instrumentalisierung von städtischen sozialen Bewegungen“
presentation at the BUKO conference „The Right to the City - Soziale
Kämpfe in der neoliberalen Stadt“ April 11-13 in Berlin
(co-organized with members of the AK Stadt/Raum)
2006
“Queer city Cologne” workshop organized for the 16. INURA
Conference "Towards the Shareholder City" June 29 to July 5
in Essen/ Ruhr (co-organized with Inura Ruhr).
2005
”The Growth Turn – a Guideline to the Perception of
Urban Growth from different angles” presentation at the 9.
International PlaNet Congress "option: growth?" July 24 –
30 in Hamburg (with Tino Buchholz)
”Cultures of Access in Rostov on Don” presentation at the 15.
INURA Conference "Contested/ing Rights" June 24 – 30. Juni
2005 in Rome/ Collevecchio (with Tino Buchholz)
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Plakatf13_02_engl.pdf