Metropolitan Preoccupations: The Spatial Politics of Squatting in Berlin

In this, the first book–length study of squatting in Berlin,Alexander Vasudevan examines the everyday practices of squatters inthe city and how they speak to wider and enduring questions aboutthe relationship between space, culture, and protest. The bookreconstructs the complex and uneven history of squatting in Berlinfrom the extra–parliamentary protests of the late 1960s and early1970s to contemporary struggles over gentrification and other formsof urban restructuring. It places particular emphasis on the makingof a radical urban politics and draws attention to the inventivegeographies produced by squatters as both a protest against housingprecarity and as a search for alternative forms of shared citylife. Building on current debates about the right to thecity and the role of grassroots activism in shaping newsites of autonomy and solidarity, MetropolitanPreoccupations offers a fresh critical perspective thatcombines detailed empirical research with conceptual innovation. Atstake here, the book concludes, are important questions about theimplications of urban squatting for how we think, research, andinhabit the city.

Drawing on extensive field work conducted in Berlin and elsewherein Germany and making full use of a range of archives previouslyuncited in English, this new study will be essential reading foranyone working in the fields of urban studies and human geography.

Alexander Vasudevan is Assistant Professor of Culturaland Historical Geography at the University of Nottingham, UK. Aco–editor of  Practicing the Archive: Reflections on Methodand Practice in Historical Geography (with E. Gagen and H.Lorimer, 2007) his work has been published in several prestigiousjournals, including  Antipode,  CulturalGeographies,  Environment and PlanningA and  D,  Progress in HumanGeography, and  Social and CulturalGeography. His current research focuses on radicalpolitics, urban squatting and the wider geographies of contemporaryprecarity.