Reconfiguring Private and Public: State, Capital and New Housing Developments in Berlin and Budapest

This article explores how new planned housing developments have contributed to the restructuring of public and private space in contemporary Berlin and Budapest, two cities whose globalisation was complicated by major political and economic transformation during the past two decades. It draws on and extends research on gated communities to develop a relational approach that more adequately captures international variations of this housing form and the interplay of public and private space, actors and strategies, a new configuration of which defines the latest wave of these developments. Through this perspective, it is demonstrated how and why planned housing developments in Berlin and Budapest are different from the cases most frequently discussed in the gated community literature, and also from each other. The comparative case study highlights how housing offers an excellent research site to grasp the reconfiguration of the state and the complexity of private and public at the local level.