Discourses of citizenship in transition: Scale, politics and urban renewal

Geographical understandings of citizenship and insights from studies of post-communist transitions inform an examination of discourses and processes of urban change in the city of Leipzig, eastern Germany. Dominant public discourses shaped by citizens and elites include demands for 'careful urban renewal' and 'citizen participation', rejections of party-politics in local action and collective aims of working 'for the good of the city'. All come under pressure from processes of economic liberalisation. Discourses operate through and work to redefine the positions of 'experts', 'citizens' and 'residents' in the scales of the 'city' and the 'local' and produce complex and contested relations of power and control in specific material situations where space, place and scale are more than passive containers of action.