Urban Renewal through Social Capital Building: The “New” Urban Renewal Strategy?

Abstract

Many neoliberal urban planners claim that spurring gentrification in a city is the only way to enact urban renewal. This is problematic, however, because gentrification poses an active threat to democracy in cities. This paper investigates the possibility of renewing cities in an alternative, less damaging way: through building social capital. It uses two examples from Berlin, Germany, of interventions that have spurred social capital—and, in turn, revived urban neighborhoods—to reveal realistic models for opposing state-sanctioned neoliberal gentrification. The concluding argument is that there are other, more democratic ways to make our cities better places, which urban planners must investigate with urgency.