Privately organized collective housing is currently included in agendas for sustainable urban development in a range of European cities as a resource-efficient form of housing that prevents isolation and contributes to social cohesion within urban communities. However, research has shown that the recent surge of different forms of private-collective housing in Berlin could be a driver of gentrification and segregation. This article aims to uncover potential causes of the discrepancies between the ideological, and at times utopian, motivations underpinning self-build housing projects in the former East Berlin district Prenzlauer Berg, and their actual outcomes. I do so by analysing the literary (counter) discourse on self-build groups developed in Anke Stelling’s novels Bodentiefe Fenster [Floor-Length Windows] (2015) and Schäfchen im Trockenen (2018, published in English translation as Higher Ground in 2021). I show that the realization of socially progressive, or even utopian, plans for urban private-collective housing prove difficult, and sometimes impossible, for the characters in the novels, due to the influence of other societal structures such as gender and class inequalities, urban segregation and gentrification, discrimination and the neoliberal logic of individual competition and consumption.

中文翻译：

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“社区是唯一真正的资本”：安克·斯特林柏林小说中的城市自建群体意识形态

私人组织的集体住房目前已被纳入一系列欧洲城市的可持续城市发展议程，作为一种资源节约型住房形式，可以防止孤立并有助于城市社区内的社会凝聚力。然而，研究表明，最近柏林不同形式的私人集体住房的激增可能是高档化和隔离的驱动因素。本文旨在揭示支持前东柏林普伦茨劳贝格区自建住房项目的意识形态（有时是乌托邦）动机与其实际结果之间存在差异的潜在原因。为此，我分析了 Anke Stelling 的小说 Bodentiefe Fenster [Floor-Length Windows] (2015) 和 Schäfchen im Trockenen（2018 年，2021 年以英文译本 Higher Ground 的形式出版）中关于自建团体的文学（反）话语。我表明，由于性别和阶级不平等等其他社会结构的影响，城市私人集体住房的社会进步甚至乌托邦计划的实现被证明是困难的，有时甚至是不可能的。隔离和中产阶级化、歧视以及个人竞争和消费的新自由主义逻辑。