Various economic activities (urban agriculture, industries, services) are conceivable in the productive city. This thematic issue attempts to highlight especially urban production/manufacturing as tangible manifestations embedded in their local settings because they are conflict‐ridden, emanate distinctive spatial characteristics, and require complex planning processes. Therefore, we called for empirical case studies of such locally embedded economies with the productive city. As the contributions in this thematic issue emphasize, these activities can relate to high‐tech (e.g., platforms) but also to low‐tech (garment) and high‐touch industries (e.g., crafts, fashion). However, they all rely on the embeddedness of local economies in urban spaces as an enabling environment in the productive city. To fully realize these local embeddings, the productive city calls for alternative understandings of production, investment, and legal/planning frameworks entangled in zoning overlays or (informal) mixed‐use developments, orchestrated by means of digital technologies in a sustainable way (by circular economies, through environmental benefits). Simultaneously, the current (largely anecdotal) corpus of conceptual and qualitative case studies leaves unresolved the question whether the proposed ideas, visions, and guidelines for locally productive urban quarters are in fact achievable or merely reflect the wishful thinking of political agendas. More studies and improved methodological approaches are needed to operationalize the local significance and multipliers in order to objectively and statistically capture the genuine impacts of these sectors.

The current ecological challenges with an urgent necessity to reduce consumption of energy and resources call for a reconsideration of many aspects of current (western) lifestyles. Since housing is one major source of energy and resource consumption, the development of a sustainable housing provision is of upmost importance. Unfortunately, the public debate is constricted to efficiency and consistency measures, based on technical improvements, which do not question norms and values leading to necessary lifestyle changes. Such a one-sided approach will fall short for various reasons - the most important being the ever-increasing per capita housing space that cancels out efficiency gains. Instead, discussions on an environmentally sound housing provision should consider the concept of sufficiency, leading to a reduction of the physical building stock due to a decrease in per capita consumption. Despite acknowledging the necessity of a reduced per capita living space, the academic debate remains quite limited without offering appropriate systematic strategies. Thus, this paper takes up the instrument of home swapping to discuss its holistic value, adding to the debate on sufficiency strategies in the field of housing. It is shown that home swapping has enormous potential to reduce per capita housing space by better allocating living space.

The current global trend of increasing per capita living space in combination with more and smaller households will intensify resource and energy consumptions in the housing sector. Scientific scholars, thus, unanimously plead for a reduction of per capita living consumption. Since the demographic trend of aging will further contribute to a high increase of single households and cause further under-occupation of living space, the potential to spatially downsize is particularly high among those older age cohorts. However, the often-limited housing choices for seniors do not allow for a large-scale downsizing development. Beyond that, the discourse on housing downsizing lacks a discussion of distinct strategies of how to effectively offer options for older people to do so. Hence, the paper at hand presents the distinct instrument of home swapping which has lately been introduced by several German municipalities to more adequately allocate the existing housing space. Since a profound scientific debate of this approach is still pending, this contribution discusses home swapping as a suitable strategy to incentivize older households to downsize on their living space. In order to do so, the home swapping schemes of four German cities have been analyzed to add scientific evidence on the potentials and challenges of the instrument to downsize housing consumption.

In this research, we analyzed the delivery service areas of restaurants, customer satisfaction, and restaurant sales of urban restaurants during the COVID-19 pandemic. We obtained the datasets on food ordering options and restaurant rankings based on Google Maps, Open Street Map, and widely known online food order applications in Iran. Based on this analysis we further modeled suitable areas for future extension of restaurants. We analyzed the online food order data of restaurants' sales and food delivery reports for 1050 restaurants in the city of Tabriz. We collected and analyzed data on the restaurant locations, the number of food orders for each restaurant, and the number of customers and their locations. Our results revealed that the spatial dimension of the newly emerging food delivery areas is of utmost importance for the success of restaurants. This indicates that an optimal location is not longer only dependent on factors like population density and competitors in the direct vicinity but on the services density even from more distant competitors. The results indicate that an optimized spatial distribution of the restaurants together with efficient quality in services can contribute to optimistic urban development.

This contribution critically reflects upon the recent debate on housing for degrowth. The construction of housing is responsible for a huge share of global energy and resource consumption, and its overall contribution is only likely to increase due to the intensifying pace of urbanization. Recent arguments about housing for degrowth focus primarily on the advantages of community-based and grassroots housing provision, but overlook the systemic role of public and private sector actors in producing and exchanging housing under a degrowth scenario. This contribution to the debate about housing for degrowth makes the case for integrating research on home swapping, which means a permanent exchange of housing units between two households without house-hunting. Home swapping addresses many of the ecological, economic, and social goals inherent to the debate and at the same time stimulates a more systemic research agenda by going beyond stand-alone micro-scale projects.

Die Hauptexkursion verfolgte das ubergeordnete Ziel, neben physiologischen, okologischen, kulturellen und sozialen insbesondere raumwirtschaftliche Muster und Strukturen Ugandas und Ruandas (dabei insbesondere sowohl der Hauptstadtregionen bzw. der Hauptstadtagglomerationen rund um Kampala (Uganda) und Kigali (Ruanda) als auch der Peripherien abseits dieser Orte) auf zahlreichen Masstabsebenen aufzuzeigen, zu beschreiben, zu erklaren und im besten Falle bewerten zu konnen.

Despite being the third largest industrial agglomeration in the world before World War II, Berlin was faced with an economic void after the partition and reunification of the city with many abandoned and alienated commercial and industrial spaces in a compact urban fabric. What has happened with this commercial and industrial heritage over the last 30 years? The main rationale behind this article is to show how Berlin planned and developed some of these spaces through the Zukunftsorte strategy by preserving its historical sites and modernizing its commercial and industrial base. As part of this undertaking, the article combines insights from urban planning and regional innovation studies. Methodologically, a two-step approach is applied: First, the article conducts an analysis of fundamental planning frameworks and technology/innovation policy trajectories with regard to commercial and industrial spaces; second, a multiple-case study analysis of selected Zukunftsorte (Adlershof, Marzahn, Schöneberg, Siemensstadt) is carried out to test whether and to what extent those spaces are supported by planning frameworks and exhibit components of what we coined territorial ecosystem models. The data compiled stems from 15 years of work engaging in various planning and policy steering committees, individual or joint research projects, personal interviews with relevant stakeholders, and regular field observations. The findings suggest that Berlin’s strategies towards commercial and industrial spaces need to integrate highly contextual approaches since size, progress, operation, means, and timelines of Zukunftsorte vary substantially. Whereas Adlershof is a well-functioning network of business, academia, planners, and policymakers with preliminary attempts to embed those stakeholders in residential neighborhoods and the European Energy Forum in Schöneberg—which can be described as a miniature living lab of Adlershof—the other investigated Zukunftsorte do not yet deserve to carry this name.

Cities are increasingly affected by migration which raises new questions for urban development and planning. In the paper at hand, this issue is addressed from two perspectives: First, we stress the high social, representative as well as economic potential of ethnic economies and the emerging neighborhoods, showing that they serve migrant communities as well as urban development. Second, we bring in perspectives from the ‘planning for diversity’ and ‘multicultural planning’ discourses into the German debate. This paper takes the planning conflict on the development of the Dong Xuan Center (DXC), Germany's largest Vietnamese-run trade center, into an Asiatown as empirical basis. It examines legal implications for the German context and therewith contributes to the ‘planning for diversity’ discourse from a non-multicultural setting.

Housing privatization in Germany was heavily pursued after the unification until the mid-2000s. Berlin, which once was the stronghold of state-owned housing in the early 1990s, became the center of housing privatization due to decisions of national and local policymakers. Compared to other European countries, the German (and Berlin) approach was characterized by en-bloc sales of huge portfolios and entire companies to yield-oriented Anglo-American investors. Until the mid-2000s, the critical discussion of the housing privatization highlighted a massive displacement of tenants with a low social status (hereafter referred to as low-income households) from the privatized stocks causing social segregation processes, associated with ownership. However, letting strategies of the new investors were aimed at the allocation of low-income households instead of displacing them. This development as well as a transformation of the remaining state-owned housing companies led to a change of the allocation of especially low-income tenants. In the light of these developments, the presented study examines the correlation of social and ownership structure in Berlin's neighborhoods and, thus, contributes to the ongoing debate of private and state-owned housing owners' influence on the tenant allocation in Berlin's neighborhoods. Unlike previous research, focusing on qualitative case studies, this study applies a statistical approach to reveal the increased relevance of low-income households in financial investors' housing stocks.

Obwohl bereits 1237 gegrundet, beginnt die politische Bedeutung Berlins uber die lokale Ebene hinaus erst wesentlich spater. War die Stadt lange eine eher provinziell anmutende Handels- und Residenzstadt begann Berlins Aufstieg zur fuhrenden politischen und wirtschaftlichen Metropole erst im 19. Jahrhundert und war eng mit dem Aufschwung der Preusischen Monarchie verknupft. Den entscheidenden Entwicklungsimpuls erhielt Berlin dabei 1871, als die Stadt zur Hauptstadt des neugegrundeten Deutschen Kaiserreichs wurde. Somit erlangte Berlin neben der lokalen und uberregionalen (Hauptstadt Preusens) auch nationale und internationale Bedeutung. In atemberaubender Geschwindigkeit vollzog sich die Umgestaltung Berlins zum neuen deutschen Zentrum politischer Macht. Die politische Bedeutung Berlins wurde wahrend des Kaiserreiches und der Weimarer Republik stetig ausgebaut. Durch den Zentralismus der Nationalsozialisten wurde die Stadt zum politischen Primat des Deutschen Reiches. Wahrend der Teilung der Stadt, verlor Berlin an politischer Relevanz fur die BRD, wenngleich Bonn lange Zeit nur als Provisorium angesehen wurde. Auch die Bedeutung Ost-Berlins erstreckte sich grostenteils auf die Hauptstadtfunktion innerhalb der DDR. Daruber hinaus wurde der Stadt jedoch eine hohe politische Symbolik auf internationaler Ebene zugeschrieben. Durch die politische Teilung wurde Berlin zu einem der Hauptschauplatze des Kalten Krieges. Die unmittelbare Nahe von Ost und West brachte die Stadt mehrmals an den Rand internationaler politischer Eskalationen. Nach der Wiedervereinigung erhielt Berlin nach uber vier Jahrzehnten den Status als Hauptstadt sowie Parlaments- und Regierungssitz des vereinten Deutschlands wieder.