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A. Gabauer, O. Kafka:
"`Activated´ Neighbourhoods - Bridging the Boundaries of Public and Private Life in Cities?";
Vortrag: AESOP TG Online Conference: PSUC 2021 international meeting. Between THE HOME & THE SQUARE: bridging the boundaries of public space, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Griechenland; 22.10.2021 - 23.10.2021.

The neighborhood as socio-spatial entity is increasingly used by city authorities and policy makers as
a strategic instrument to address issues of coexistence, interaction, and exchange among different social groups. On a conceptual level, the neighborhood can be understood as social realm that embraces the private and public spheres, hence unravels the public- private dichotomy (Lofland 1998). Such spaces of everyday life in
the immediate living environment, where publicness and privacy intertwine, indeed challenge the dualistic notion of private and public life in cities. In particular feminist activists and scholars have pointed to the powerful separation of the public and the private,
and addressed the hierarchical dualism that accompanies it. From a feminist perspective, this means to not only problematize the binary, but to understand it as a political construct, which includes the reflection on why something is made `private´ in the first place (Bargetz 2016: 84).
The concept of neighborhood has been incorporated into community- based policy programs in many European cities with the aim of `activating´ communities at the local level and engaging them
in decision- and place-making
processes (Reutlinger et al. 2015: 11). Such programs are expected to tackle complex social challenges: from segregation, marginalization, poverty, social isolation to the lack or uneven quality of life of urban dwellers (ibid.). Associated with this is a predominantly positive connotation of the neighborhood, understanding neighborhoods
as essential spaces for social integration, participation, caring relations, learning, and exchange. Such idealized and romanticized assumptions, however, tend to neglect conflictual issues. The neighborhood is also often a space of exclusion, conflict, shame, and societal division. Furthermore, critics have pointed to neoliberal forms of instrumentalizing neighborhood communities through `the activation´ of local resources, often driven by the financial aim
of substituting state-provided resources and public services with voluntary work (van Dyk 2018).
By drawing on empirical research conducted in Vienna in 2020,
we seek to critically address the `public-private boundaries´ of
neighborhoods. We analyze the community-based social policy program Soziale Innovationen Wien, which has funded a selection of projects that aim to create `real´ spaces of encounter and mitigate inequality and conflict at the
local level. The conducted study
of a selection of projects reveals that for many urban dwellers, the neighborhood is the socio-spatial reference point for a variety of
social problems as well as hopes for societal transformation. Our analysis illustrates how local actors receive the opportunity to promote their ideals of coexistence, and shows the challenges and limitations that arise. In our conference contribution, we ask what practices typically considered private have been collectivized in the public realm
of the neighborhood, and what perceptions of certain `private´ activities are thus made `public.´ We are interested in how `activated´ neighborhoods are translated into urban planning schemes, how they relate to public space, and to what extent they bear transformative potential for the social fabric of
the neighborhood and beyond.