Disenclosed time regimes and spatial concentrations of economics. The creative sector in Hamburg's Schanzenviertel from a time-geographical perspective

Abstract

Disenclosed time regimes and spatial concentrations of economies. The creative sector in Hamburg’s Schanzenviertel from a time-geographical perspective. In recent years the spatial and temporal organization of everyday life has been transformed by the flexibilisation of economic relations and a growing variety of the ways how individuals coordinate their professional and private spheres and activities. Central elements of this transformation are (1) disenclosures of fixed socio-structural, temporal and spatial boundaries, (2) technical, social and cultural accelerations and (3) a growing subject-orientation within work and life conditions. Cities offer places where these transformations are well observable. These places provide both diverse infrastructures and images as material and symbolic frames for local socioeconomic processes: multiple encounters, mutual learning processes and work-life-combinations. The analysis of Hamburg’s Schanzenviertel shows the explanatory power of a broadened time geographical concept in elucidating those new socioeconomic spaces. We add the concept of coupling opportunities to the traditional constraints-approach in order to show why “the urban” under the label of the creative city should be understood as a specific form of organizing the everyday as well as the work life. Interrelations of subjective and structural conditions clarify the subject-orientation within spatial economies as both system-related constraints and chances for individual self-determination. This analysis opens up a critical perspective on the selectivity and spatial inequalities within the creative city debate.