Christian Berndt

Approaching struggles for political representation through a perspective of ‘methodological transterritorialism’, we seek to make sense of recent developments evolving around a territorialised urban neighbourhood. Werderau, a garden suburb founded by a mechanical engineering company at the beginning of the 20th century, enjoyed relative protection from globalising frictions and struggles until the ‘world-in-motion’ suddenly penetrated the community a few years ago. We begin by charting the production of the bounded settlement as a site of alternate social ordering at a time of hyper-industrialisation and its imaginary role as a territorial heterotopia, symbolising order in a seemingly chaotic urban world. Turning to the owner's decision to sell the neighbourhood in 1998, we then argue that long-term inhabitants discursively frame the events following the decision as ‘transterritorial pollution’ of their bounded community, reflected in the commodification of their neighbourhood and in an ‘invasion’ of non-German home-owners. After discussing how longer term residents attempt to restabilise their identities by taking up a xenophobic discourse, we conclude by criticising policymakers for responding solely in a territorial logic and for one-sidedly taking up the discourse advanced by long-term residents. Instead, we advance a utopian vision of the city as a worldly site where people live under conditions of ‘transcultural Gleich-Gültigkeit’ in the double meaning of the German term: understood as being ‘indifferent’ towards the proximate other as well as referring to equality and equal rights.

The issue of ‘equity gaps’ has loomed large in recent discussions of enterprise formation and development, both in the United Kingdom and in Germany. One particularly intriguing, but highly elusive, aspect of this issue is the question of whether equity gaps have a regional dimension: are certain regions at a systematic disadvantage with respect to the provision of equity capital? In this paper, we explore this question in the context of the UK and German venture capital industries, drawing both on unpublished industry data and on information obtained from original surveys of venture capital firms in the two countries. We report clear evidence that the venture industries in both countries are spatially constituted. Despite important national differences, venture capital firms tend to be concentrated in identifiable clusters and their investment outcomes show clear evidence of spatial proximity effects; investment is disproportionately concentrated in those regions that also contain the major clusters of venture capital firms. However, how far this spatial form produces regional equity gaps is hard to determine. Venture capitalists themselves argue that they do not intentionally discriminate between regions in their decisionmaking, and many acknowledge the existence of funding and deal-size gaps but not regional gaps per se. But their perception of project risk is, nevertheless, regionally sensitive. We argue that the notion of a simple supply gap overlooks the way in which the localised form of the industry is based on a dynamic learning process in which demand and supply processes combine with their embeddedness in social networks and individual perceptions in a mutually reinforcing way. Less-favoured regions, with low investment rates, few local venture capital firms, and a dearth of experienced specialist intermediaries, may thus be trapped in a situation of both depressed demand for and supply of venture capital investment.