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Concentration of Poverty in the Landscapes of 'Boomtown' Hamburg: The Creation of a New Urban Underclass?

Department of Sociology, University of Hamburg, Allendeplatz 1, D- H 20146 Hamburg, Germany

After a brief account of the state of the art of the German discussion on poverty, this paper criticises the lack of a theory integrating the complexity of poverty as a social configuration. Moreover, the reduction on economic aspects of poverty in empirical studies is criticised. Another bias is the lack of attention paid to spatial aspects of poverty: space as a dimension of social inequalities and therefore part of poverty in cities itself, and—particularly in bigger cities—as places where poverty is concentrated. A fourth lack is touched on in discussing urban poverty as dependent on processes of urban restructuring (economic restructuring and political regulation). Hamburg as an example of a very heterogeneous development of social polarisation is used to describe poverty trends both in its magnitude and in its composition (social assistance, unemployment, low income and housing). To analyse the role of 'Enterprise Hamburg' the concentration of poverty is seen as a model of urban development, namely local policies and urban planning. Taking social polarisation as given, the conclusion is a plea for the protection of those spatial concentrations of poverty where economic capital is missed but where a broad range of cultural and social capital is concentrated. These neighbourhoods can serve as an institution of integration and solidarity for urban society.

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