The Places Where Community Is Practiced

1. Front Matter

   Pages I-XIII

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2. Introduction

   • Anna Steigemann

   Pages 1-11Open Access

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3. The Meso-Level: Social Life and Trade on a Metropolitan Shopping Street

   • Anna Steigemann

   Pages 13-48Open Access

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4. Theories of the Ground: The Sensitizing Theoretical Concepts

   • Anna Steigemann

   Pages 49-80Open Access

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5. Realities on the Ground: Sampling Process and Methodology

   • Anna Steigemann

   Pages 81-111Open Access

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6. Grounding the Social Life Worlds – The Case Businesses’ Material Space and Social Context

   • Anna Steigemann

   Pages 113-176Open Access

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7. Businesses as Spaces where Community is Practiced? The Socio-Spatial Features for “talking about everything,” “coming down,” and “staying in touch”

   • Anna Steigemann

   Pages 177-242Open Access

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8. Store Owners that Offer “More” – Public Characters on Changing Karl-Marx-Straße

   • Anna Steigemann

   Pages 243-297Open Access

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9. Conclusion: “Lifting the curtain” of Karl-Marx-Straße’s Places where Community is Practiced

   • Anna Steigemann

   Pages 299-310Open Access

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10. Back Matter

    Pages 311-325

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In this open access publication, the social cohesion of urban neighborhoods and their residents is examined, which is often viewed as vulnerable since increased mobility, individualization, wider socio-economic and demographic changes have fundamentally altered the basis for everyday social interaction in urban neighborhoods. Anna Steigemann gives scholarly attention to the concrete places where neighborly interactions still take place and to how these interactions affect local community building. She illuminates and explores the ordinary everyday interactions and social practices in and around shops and gastronomic facilities on a shopping street in Berlin-Neukölln, revealing how these businesses are important places where community is practiced, but also why they are increasingly threatened by commercial and residential gentrification.

• Urban Sociology
• Community
• Neighborhood
• Shopping Streets
• Gentrification
• Public Space
• Social Life Worlds
• Social Context of Local Businesses
• Open Access

• Technische Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany

  Anna Steigemann

Dr. Anna Steigemann is an Urban Sociologist and works as an Assistant Professor at the Chair of International Urbanism and Design at Technical University Berlin. 

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