Die ‚gute Adresse‘ – reiche Stadtviertel in Paris und Hamburg von den 1950er bis 1980er Jahren

Abstract

In Western European societies social inequality has increased in the early 1970s and was often located in the inner-city districts of major cities. Especially poor neighborhoods and local mechanisms of social segregation caught the attention of sociologists and historians. The development of affluent urban districts was analyzed to a lesser extent. The following case studies on neighborhoods in Paris and Hamburg show that also in former bourgeois quarters processes of social segregation can be observed. They intensified since the 1970s but rested upon a long tradition of social distinction which dates back to the formation of these districts in the nineteenth century. The academic research of affluent quarters is characterized by national differences. Whereas French social scientists emphasized the relation between urban space and social hierarchy and underlined class borders of the bourgeoisie in the West of Paris, German researchers hesitated to categorize the wealthy inhabitants at Hamburg-Harvestehude as upper-class and avoided to talk about the district in terms of class disparity.