"Der Park als Problemraum" : Regieren städtischer Drogenkulturen am Beispiel des Görlitzer Parks

Abstract

The governing of urban drug use and its economies represents a central aspect of urban governmentality and has played an important role in the production and control of public space in numerous cities of the Global North since the 1970s. Urban drug cultures are often the subject of moral panics and urban policing. At the same time, geographical engagement with the spatial dimensions and effects of governing urban drug cultures is surprisingly rare. Using the example of Görlitzer Park in Berlin's Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg district, this paper examines the spatializing discourses and practices of urban drug policies and shows how looking at the governing of illicit drugs provides a productive lens for analysing forms of urban exclusion, marginalization, and normalization. From a geographical perspective, it is particularly interesting to examine how this form of urban governance mobilizes spatial approaches and representations of space, i.e., how urban drug cultures are spatialized in multiple ways.