Cities can be seen as geographical imaginaries: places have meanings attributed so that they are perceived, represented and interpreted in a particular way. We may therefore speak of cityness rather than 'the city': the city is always in the making. It cannot be grasped as a fixed structure in which people find their lives, and is never stable, through agents designing courses of interactions with geographical imaginations. This theoretical perspective on cities is currently reshaping the field of urban studies, requiring new forms of theory, comparisons and methods. Meanwhile, mainstream urban studies approaches neighbourhoods as fixed social-spatial units, producing effects on groups of residents. Yet they have not convincingly shown empirically that the neighbourhood is an entity generating effects, rather than being the statistical aggregate where effects can be measured. This book challenges this common understanding, and argues for an approach that sees neighbourhood effects as the outcome of processes of marginalisation and exclusion that find spatial expressions in the city elsewhere. It does so through a comparative study of an unusual kind: Sub-Saharan Africans, second generation Turkish and Lebanese girls, and alcohol and drug consumers, some of them homeless, arguably some of the most disadvantaged categories in the German capital, Berlin, in inner city neighbourhoods, and middle class families in owner-occupied housing. This book analyses urban inequalities through the lens of the city in the making, where neighbourhood comes to play a role, at some times, in some practices, and at some moments, but is not the point of departure.

Table of Contents:
Contents: Preface; Introduction: creating the unequal city, Talja Blokland, Carlotta Giustozzi, Daniela Krüger and Hannah Schilling. Part I Making the City Work: Practices of Segregation: Spaces of fear and their exclusionary consequences: narratives and everyday routines of Sub-Saharan immigrants in Berlin, Mirjam Lewek; Secluding: middle class segregation in schools and neighbourhoods, Carlotta Giustozzi, Talja Blokland and Nora Freitag; Cheating the system to get the best for one’s kids: middle class practices and racist marginalization, Talja Blokland and Georg Große-Löscher; In the interest of the child: gendered practices of middle class mothers, Carlotta Giustozzi. Part II Making the City Work: Dealing with Marginalization: A youth club as a site of resources: a girls’ alternative to school and family, Imogen Feld; Loving, sharing and engaging: Sub-Saharan immigrants in a Pentecostal church, Stephan Simon; Social ties and the moral orientation of sharing: information-giving among Sub-Saharan immigrants in Berlin, Rebecca Arbter; The square as sanctuary: finding social recognition among urban poor, Daniela Krüger; Holding on to faith: religion as resource to create capabilities in the face of institutional discrimination, Hannah Schilling. Conclusion, Talja Blokland; Appendix; Index.