A “Motor” for the Neighbourhood? Urban Planning and the Challenges of Relocating Cultural Infrastructures

In the past 40 years, alternative cultural institutions have been established in many Western welfare states to respond locally social and urban crises that arisen post-war era. Community centres workshops for local history youth offer new opportunities participation complement offerings at more traditional infrastructures such as art museums, theatres, opera houses. Initially borne of grassroots movements struggled political recognition necessary resources protracted disputes with municipal authorities, these facilities now play important roles landscape cities. response calls a “democratisation culture” development programmes targeting geographical inequalities, provide accessible persistent spaces socialisation, empowerment, negotiating community concerns. These are often located on brownfields material manifestations socioeconomic change regeneration. Using relocation an socio-cultural centre neighbourhood city Heidelberg, Germany, example, we seek understand evolving ways relations formed, negotiated, challenged through infrastructures. By analysing newspaper coverage, policy documents, interviews stakeholders from planning, administration, work, resident populations, map evaluate shifting planning discourses forms embeddedness processes de- re-localisation. We end by reflecting open nuanced understandings could generate multiple diverse outcomes interacting possibly outbalancing each other.