In the contribution the author will report from a running research project about urban pioniers in neighbourhoods of the inner suburbs Berlin-Moabit and Hamburg-Wilhelmsburg. It will be asked how far urban pioneers with their socio-cultural projects play a role in cultivating social integration, how they are trying to organize change together with other actors, but partly also against others.

The neighbourhoods Berlin-Moabit and Hamburg-Wilhelmsburg are characterised by manifold social problems. They are considered structurally weak and accommodate high shares of immigrants and socially disadvantaged. In these quarters social exclusion among other things becomes apparent in open conflicts between Germans and immigrants, in gang fights and in ‘no-go-areas’. Most often, these phenomena are negatively evaluated in society and negatively depicted in the local media. Thus, the residents still are confronted with another form of social exclusion: an exclusion by public discourses thematising the suburbs and their residents negatively, stigmatising them, and in this way constructing negative images. Negative images cement and aggravate the social problems insofar as they suppress other ways of thinking about the neighbourhoods and ignore positive developments which nevertheless are emerging in these quarters. If neighbourhoods constantly are labelled as ‚unattractive’ or ‚evil’, this means insofar a social vulnerability, as processes of an identification with the neighbourhood as well as citizens’ involvement are weakened and potentials of a positive suburban development are thwarted.

This does not hide the fact that, nevertheless, there exist potentials of building social resilience and of suburban development. In this context we consider urban pioneers with their socio-cultural projects and their social networks as an important factor. Even if these actors cannot solve the various social problems in the short or in the medium term, they foster, however, with their activities and projects (for example with the foundation of a German-Turkish Club, the organisation of a multicultural street festival, the establishment of a looked after bicycle workshop for juveniles in order to keep them away from hanging around at the street corners, or with the opening of a tea shop) processes of social integration and a socially shared neighbourhood identity. In the best case – supposed that with their activities they find entrance into public discourses – they even can impinge on the negative images, can act contrary to the publicly ascribed stigmatisations and to the processes of social exclusion.

The term “urban pioneer” has not yet been finally defined in our project. However, it is one crucial feature of urban pioneers that by way of their initiatives they introduce something new to the neighbourhood. Typically, in respect of their own perception and that of others they use and imagine space in a new way, they communicate about it, make others communicate about it and thus influence on space-related reality interpretations by others. They promote social, organizational or infrastructural ‘innovations’ in the community, and with doing this simultaneously offer solutions for socio-spatial problems. Frequently, urban pioneers are associated with civil society actors. We would like to expand the notion by including (social) entrepreneurs (e.g. persons who undertake projects that aim at withdrawing juveniles from unemployment), self-employed workers (e.g. owner of a tea shop), freelancer (e.g. journalists of neighbourhood magazines) and representatives of social organisations (e.g. street workers).