Final report of the excursion “Ordinary Cities: City(s) in Southern Germany” (Summer Semester 2021)

With the term Ordinary Cities, geographer Jennifer Robinson challenges us to rethink cities, no matter which ones, in their ordinariness. Among other things, this means first taking an interest in ordinariness, i.e. not always looking for the extreme contrasts of a city, the special event, etc., but rather focusing on unquestioned urban normalities and things that are taken for granted. During the seminar, we decided together to visit the cities of Bamberg, Heilbronn, Heidelberg, Freiburg and Offenbach and to take a critical look at what is commonplace in these cities. This means, among other things, taking a critical, feminist and postcolonial perspective to look behind the narratives of the World Heritage City of Bamberg, questioning philanthropic and sustainable urban development in Heilbronn, examining cycling and climate policy decisions by citizens in Heidelberg, discussing housing issues with representatives of Sinti and Roma and members of the Mietshäusersyndikat in Freiburg, among others, and getting to the bottom of the positioning of Offenbach am Main as an arrival city. In all of the cities, we were able to see how powerful, complex and interwoven the ordinary turns out to be on closer inspection, investigation, questioning and experience. Urban normality does not exist, it is constructed and the result of political, economic, societal, historical, social, gendered and racialized local and global conditions.
Ordinariness as a supposedly boring perspective on the city has thus developed into an exciting approach to critical urban research in the course of the seminar and the excursion. With this City Guide, we now want to make it possible for you to follow us on ordinary tracks through the Ordinary Cities of Bamberg, Heilbronn, Freiburg, Heidelberg and Offenbach.