History, Structure and Perspectives of a Quarter

A Case-Study of the "Schwetzingerstadt" in Mannheim, South West Germany*)

W.-Ruth Albrecht

Former works of mine discussed some problems of regional development and regional planning in its various forms, aspects and at different levels:

1. a survey of problems of regional un-equalities, development. and policy-making (regional, spacial) in Western Europe [inter-state-approach](1),
2. a systematic and critical approach to problems of evaluation nation-wide regional policy in West Germany, discussing above all aspects of the development of jobs established (or not) by public money(2),
3. a case-study of the very problems of a specific region, situated in the South-West of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), the Westpfalz, and its functions caused by effective intra-state underdevelopment and its mechanisms(3),
4. an analysis of local traffic and communications problems in an industrial town of FRG,  Mannheim, and  its very center (4).

This small report approaches another - fifth - level of regional analysis and planning: the historical development and the spacial and social structure of an individual part of an industrial city situated at the Rhine in the South-West of Germany - the Schwetzingerstadt within Mannheim in the Rhine-Neckar-Region. its very problems and prospective perspectives of  development.

Undertaking such ´small' research-work in the sphere of regional micro-structure as given by an individual quarter within a town could be worked out on at least three levels of surveying such a miniature of a ´´concrete totality´´:

1.  a critical survey and discussion of relevant literature on settlement and town in general and on settlement  in  towns especially(5);

2.  a historical approach presenting the specific development of this quarter, above all in and since the middle-ages(6);

3. an empirical analysis of the basic structure of the Schwetzingerstadt (which leads to a well-substantiated proposal to improve real-life-conditions of the inhabitants by sketching a plan for creating a people's park in the heart of his quarter(7); when analyzing the official data produced and published by local authorities, I have sketched an own approach according to the concept of  'social indicators' when nearing the micro-structure of the quarter by some unconventional  methods getting own  data(8). 

Surveying the relevant concepts describing and interpreting the process of human settlement a critical analysis has, above all, to work out the various pattern and images which influence special planning methods, e. g. at municipal level, systematically. Moreover, such an analysis of the ,state of the art' of course touches the more basic or ,theoretic' concepts and doctrines according to the general relations between space and society itself.

In so far  a critical survey as resumed as follows works out, too, the ideological presupposition dominating some concepts and influencing planning business within town and quarter.

Analyzing step by step that complex field of planning-concepts at micro-structural level there do exist three basic positions which influence debates on planning methods at municipal level generally and at sub-municipal level (e. g. at level of an individual quarter) especially(9):

1.  the approach mainly determined by a standpoint of social culture plainly takes up  'town' as a paradigm for 'society' at all. The concepts of town-planning run by this framework used by social scientist and their orientation towards community, neighbourhood  and the public sphere aim to influence the spacial structure to constituate society itself.. Students to town planning (as well as planners} working with this approach us£ to preserve and/or renew the social relations given in the social structure in its micro-structural appearance a well trying to prevent its further segmentation and/or its breaking up.

Theoretically this point of view is characterized by an idealistic philosophy and Weltanschauung. Practically the measures having been developed and applied by a socio-cultural approach lead to some more superficial planning practice such as, e.g., the preservation of the traditional juste milieu, and its customs, the creating of specific images as well as to contemporary and/or partial improvements in the fields of, for example, the traffic, the surroundings, the preservation of some buildings etc.;

2.  the approach mainly determined by a viewpoint of socio-ecology studies, above all. the spacial organization of society. Social scientists favouring this specific concept and  framework use to describe and explain (more or less in a manner of using arguments which appear it least plausible) above all social and spacial events, processes,  and appearances within the town and its community. Moreover, a critic of the socio-ecological approach cannot ignore that it is widely determined by a pure biologist understanding of society which images 'society' in quite an obscure way as a sort of sum of the individual members belonging to it(10):

The narrow socio-ecological approach leads to some pragmatic methods, of course, as well known in the advanced capitalist societies of the Western World. However, this approach seems able to get hold of some process-produced data in the field of municipal and micro-structural spacial development. In so far it systematized some data and discusses some aspects of the social process of reproduction.

The methods itself applied by using  this approach do, however, not follow to derive a specific concept of spacial planning. And perhaps there may be some success in rendering identification of potential municipal trends of a more general development and the role of individual deviation in it. In this connection planning measures based on this approach and run mainly by local authorities can be practiced to reduce and/or reinforce some trends.

3.  the approach of social scientists and planners due to an elaborated version of the framework of historical materialism emphasizes, when describing and explaining social and spacial processes, the leading role of the sphere of material production. One of the basic statements of this concept points out that every human being (as part of mankind) constituates himself especially and mankind in general through the exchange-process between men and nature which is mediated by human work(11).  According to the historic-materialistic viewpoint concepts of town-planning are closely linked with the central planning in the field of material production, its effects and given (as well as changeable) relations according to derived micro-structures of production and reproduction. In such societies which have not yet developed central planning conditions and which are still dominated by principles of  social anarchy and individual profit gained by the owner of capital_, the acceptance and application of the materialistic-historical approach use to lead to a concept of planning to improve the social und spacial conditions of reproduction of the labour force itself. This specific concept widens the viewpoint of planning itself because it implies a social understanding of space which is defined in socio-economic terms. Moreover_,  it is able to figure the reality of social dominated by private ownership of production instruments by stressing its own, interior contradictions and the moving forces of society and its dynamics.

  Nevertheless there do exist some serious difficulties when transforming this approach into an operative, empirical, and valid framework. Above all a spacial concept which works out both the historical and structural analysis is required.  Another difficulty lays in the social fact that there are only data available which have been produced for other purposes and which might lead (whenever uncritically accepted in an analysis guided by an historical-materialistic approach and its empirical framework) to some specific 'bias'(12).

According to the specific aspects and forms of the historical formation and development of the quarter Schwetzingerstadt  itself a detailed overview(13) demonstrates not only the different forms of settlement at the territory of the today Schwetzingerstadt including the specific variations and change of the quarter's character since the rniddle ages but illustrates and underlines my basic theses - that it is the social mode of production itself which dominates (however mediated, but, as Frederick Engels has pointed out_, 'in the last instance) the way of settlement of groups and individuals even at the level of the microstructure of a quarter.

Whereas this well-known thesis has been until now discussed either in the field of macro-spacial settlement and its development in one state or in more states and territories or in some micro-structural approaches according to the development of towns, especially of the cities, my analysis has to stress the very specifity of the spacial field of a suburban quarter (here demonstrated in the historical case-study of the Schwetzingerstadt): those suburban quarters as analysed by the type of the Schwetzingerstadt as part of the highly industrialized region of Mannheim and Rhein-Neckar used to constituate a spacial concentration ('seam-place') which features the typical structures of different historical and social formations and periods. Empirically in its real appearance these different types of settlement as created by different modes of production do exist side by side on the same small territory and mediate each other.

Regarding the middle-ages the feudal castle (Zollburg) expresses the political rule both through the forms of settlement within the feudal agrarian society (in which the peasants have to tribute to their mastery) and the very control of trade from afar by the regent. Given this relation of ruling and expropriating the peasant's farm in the middle ages (Fronhof} itself constituates the micro-structural pendant of the social relationship being the dominant type of society, its economic and ecologic structure, for a long time.

Whereas this mode of production at given stationary level, reproducing its autarkic status, exists for centuries - it inwardly develops a division of labour which leads to surplus products drawn from the agrarian economic sphere andmoreover, creates pre-conditions for the enlargement of the division of labour in the sector of mechanic artisanship and craftsmanship which conduces to the foundation, existence and development of towns.

But even after the foundation of towns(14) the pre-municipal territory does not loose its significance. On the contrary, it gains its importance as a place of some early capitalist business (which the absolutistic mastery promotes) in establishing an economic counterpart according to the early bourgeoisie in the towns which were breaking up the ties of the ancient régime and its mastery. Pre-municipal trade and business develops in this contradictory economic and social field and impulses the economic formation in-town itself, especially producing the effects of differentiation due to craftsmanship and commerce. This very process,  however, is a necessary condition for the formation of such sorts of industries which later developed from craftsmanship business.

Whenever and wherever industry has established its specialized mass-production and the multitude of its trade relations require transport, traffic, and communication. Its measures will be more and more important: river, habour, railroad, and finally the Autobahn determine places of production and settlement structures - even those within quarters of the towns.

Regarding the Schwetzingerstadt in eighteenth century's economic development the quarter has been stamped by traditional communications with the near Heidelberg and Schwetzingen - whereas the situation had changed in the first half of the nineteenth century: now above all the existence and situation of a near-by railroad-station deeply influences the inner structure of the Schwetzingerstadt, her places of industrial production, circulation, and reproduction. Moreover, especially in the boies of the last Century the bulk of industrial enterprises was founded after having established a transport and communication system including the Schwetzingerstadt.

Discussing this dynamic process in the basic economic sphere of material production one has to emphasize that_, contrasting this development and its results, the places of reproduction in general and of housing especially cannot develop slowlier than places of production. This time-lag produces some immobility within the spacial change at all. Moreover, this effect depends on, as demonstrated in the case of the Schwetzingerstadt, the fact that there does exist some wide-spread ownership of areas a well as on the continuity of social structures and communicative relations of the inhabitants living in a quarter.

Moreover, the individual historical development of  Schwetzingerstadt within Mannheim shows that some relevant spacial structures within the sphere of reproduction (like formation of streets, buildings, cultivation, public places, etc.) which do still exist have been established in the end of the last century and the beginning of this one.

Taking a ´´concrete  totality^´´ like an individual quarter of a town seriously, one has to undertake a detailed survey and analysis of the present micro-spacial structure and above all the patterns of settlement in its social meaning. For this must be, for example, the basis for all serious proposals and measures (even if its not run by local authorities, the municipal bureaucracy, etc. normally) - especially when planners claim the improvement of the living conditions for the population(15).

The main result of the micro-structural analysis demonstrates that the Schwetzingerstadt is involved in a process of social change which actually has been introduced and, probably, will lead to some segregation processes due to the changing social character of this city-near suburban quarter. Here the more and more use of parts of the Schwetzingerstadt as places for the tertiary  economic sector (e. g. insurance companies, industrial administration, public utility enterprises) plays a prominent role(16).

The eastern half of the quarter, situated directly at the Autobahn (the exit and entrance of Mannheim city) lays extremely favourable for usage by enterprises running their business in the tertiary sector. Here still exist areas without any building which attract especially public utility enterprises and administration departments of expanding big business.

The western half of the quarter has got various lacks and deficiencies in its outfits at all,.  e.g.,  not enough lodgings, rooms,  and flats, partly miserable housing conditions, bad air-conditions within the micro-climate,  only few areas of  natural 'green', but heavy burdens such as high traffic rates, traffic noise, and exhaust gas and emission from cars and industry situated near-by - all worrying the inhabitants.

According to this empirically stated situation it is, of course, hardly happenstance that more and more families and their children living in the Schwetzingerstadt left and moved outside the quarter. Given the fact that mainly those who can afford (or think they can) move away, the elder inhabitants will rest as well as those earning averagely or below the average. Moreover. more and more immigrants and their children will move in.

On the other hand some lodgings will be modernized and then offered (and sold) as private flats under private ownership of the persons living in it. They will have to buy those Eigentumswohnungen - either newly built or modernized old ones. Moreover, the usage of it by well-skilled labourers or privileged  professionals working in the city of Mannheim with respectable incomes above the average will, of course, infiltrate and penetrate the quarter and destroy its traditional structures.

Regarding this possible development one can sum up that both processes of change suggest a future development within the Schwetzingerstadt  which will, in the last instance, lead to some profund changes of the character of the quarter itself which surely will, in the foreseeable future, not only restructure the quarter Schwetzingerstadt within Mannheim but also basically capitalize it and in so far destroy the still existing spacial and social structures which have developed until now.

Although it is not the task of this brief research report and overview sketching possible measures which might stop this process of change and capitalization I will not close this piece without emphasizing that probably measures  -  in spite of its general limited character as pointed out above - which will create and widen  the public sphere and its places (e. g. a people's park) might, of course, not brake down the initiated and ongoing process radically but might soften its (or at least some of  its) very effects.

Be it as it may -: for those who are  (especially as professional planners, politicians, etc.)  involved in this process an old question Robert S. Lynd has put, some decades ago,  is still as relevant as actual: they have lo proof on which side they are and for whom and what their knowledge and competency will by applied(17). 

For situations  like the described one even at the smallest level of a quarter's microstructure do not allow one specific behaviour: resting like the well-known Buridans donkey between the antipodes, unable to make up one's mind to decide for the one or the other side. This_, of course, would rnean in the very result neither fish nor flesh for the people living in the particular quarter for generations but, at least, a good red herring for those expelling them from their traditional living-places.

*) this short essay is the online-version of the small scholarly report the author has published under the  same title in: Sociologia Internationalis, vol. 27 (1989) 2, pp. 237-243.-  Dr. rer. soc. Wilma-Ruth Albrecht (Mrs.) was, until 1982, a post-graduate student of regional science/regional planning at TH Karlsruhe, and, until 1989, an independent town/regional planner in West Germany. The author is a member of the chamber of architects in Northrhine-Westphalia, and its town-planner section. She lives in Bad Muenstereifel where she was elected as a member of the municipal council, 1989-1999; mailto: dr.w.ruth.albrecht@web.de

references

¹ cf. Wilma Albrecht, Paul Faber et. al.: Raumordnungs- und Regionalpolitik im Rahmen des westeuropäischen Integrationsprozesses. Karlsruhe 1982: Materialien, vol 18, 266 p.

²cf. Wilma Albrecht: Zum Investitionsmechanismus staatsmonopolistischer Regionalpolitik in der BRD, Marxistische Studien, vol. 3, 1980, pp. 219-238.

³ cf. Wilma Albrecht:  ... und die Westpfalz zum Beispiel. Regional-strukturelle Analyse einer defizitären Region (...), Regionale Krisen und Arbeitnehmerinteressen, ed. Hermann Bömer, Jochen Hanisch et al.., Cologne 1981: Pahl-Rugenstein, pp.101-126.

⁴ cf. Wilma Albrecht; Paul Faber et al.: Verkehrsberuhigung in einem innerstädtischen Wohngebiet [...], Karlsruhe 1981: Materialien, vol. 12, 212 and VIII p._; Wilma Albrecht. Paul Faber: Wohnen und Verkehr, öko päd., vol. 1, 1982, 2, pp. 36-25.

⁵ cf. Wilma Albrecht: Stadt oder Siedlung? Anmerkungen zum Raumbegriff sozialwissenschaftlicher Studien über städtische Siedlungseinheiten und zu seiner Planungsrelevanz, Österreichische Zeitschrift für Soziologie, vol. 8, 1983, 3, pp. 57-87.

⁶ cf. Wilma Albrecht: Von der Zollburg zum Cityrand: ein Kapitel Stadtgeschichte am Beispiel der Mannheimer Schwetzingerstadt, Die Alte Stadt, vol. 11, 1984, 1,  pp. 17-40.

⁷ cf. Wilma Albrecht: Eine Stadtteilstrukturanalyse - dargestellt am Beispiel des Mannheimer Stadtteils Schwetzingerstadt, Landschaft und Stadt, vol. 15, 1983, 3, pp. 111-125.

⁸ cf. Wilma Albrecht: Soziale Wirklichkeit und sozialwissenschaftliche Forschung, Blätter für deutsche und internationale Politik, vol. 26, 1981, 2, pp. 234-244.

⁹ Those three mainstream-concepts as found out here usually occur, of course, in reality of planning and planning policy mingle with each other; in so far I underlay Max Weber's concept of Idealtypus as pointed out in his verstehende Soziologie; cf. Max Weber: Soziologische Grundbegriffe. Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft. Grundriß der verstehenden Soziologie, ed. Johannes Winckelmann, Cologne - Berlin 1964: Kiepenheuer & Witsch (4^th edition), pp. 3-41.

¹⁰ When discussing such as poor as naive images of the constitution of society and its moving forces, which, of course, still basically influence some doctrines of society, planning etc.,  Carl Marx has clearly worked out: „Society does not consist of individuals, but expresses the sum of relations, circumstances, in which the individuals stand towards each other" (cf. Carl Marx: Ökonomische Manuskripte (I857/58)_, Marx-Engels-Gesamtausgabe (MEGA), Berlin 1976: Dietz, vol. II,  part 1.1, quoted p. 188).

¹¹ cf.. Carl Marx: Das Kapital.. Kritik der politischen Ökonomie. Berlin 1962; Dietz, vol. I, p. 192.

¹² For details see Albrecht, Stadt oder Siedlung ?, op. cit.

¹³ cf. for a detailed analysis including both iconographical and statistical material Albrecht: Von der Zollburg zum Cityrand, op. cit.

¹⁴ Mannheim itself was founded, compared with other towns in the German South-West, relatively late as a residential place of the mastery in the eighteenth Century.

¹⁵ According to the limitations of the planning-measures even in an advanced capitalist society run by progressive planners, too,  I need not emphasize that the restrictions given by the basic sphere of production in the capitalist mode and its effects not only on the field of production itself but also on that one of reproduction including housing, streets, traffic, the public places etc. might lead to some radical pragmatism or practical radicalism - at best. Neither the basic mechanisms of realizing capital (and profit) nor its effects on the spacial and social structure of a town or quarter can be broken by measures of town-planning. Denying this basic fact typically leads to specific ideologies of planners itself which might be compared with the 'mystification' Carl Marx has brilliantly described in his first chapter of ´´Das Kapital´´, op. cit., pp. 85-98; cf. Wilma Albrecht: Planung und Perspektivität. Planungswissenschaften zwischen Objekt- und Subjektwelt, Fortschrittliche Wissenschaft, vol. 7, 1984, 12, pp. 104-118,

¹⁶ For détails  cf. Albrecht: Stadtteilstrukturanalyse, op. cit.

 ¹⁷ See Robert F. Lynd: Knowledge for What ? The Place of the Social Science in American Culture; Princeton/N.J.: Princeton University Press, 5th edition, 1946