In times of growing migration and mobility and in the face of increasing digital possibilities to overcome distance and to further (global) networking, neighbourhoods on the one hand seem to increasingly lose their importance as spaces for (inter)action for individuals and stakeholders. On the other hand, and at the same time, neighbourhoods play an important - albeit very different - role in the everyday routines and practices of many people and social groups. Here, the diverse social groups negotiate whether and how they live together – in juxtaposition, coexistence or opposition - in their everyday practices. Local networks, and the places where they develop and consolidate, play a crucial role for social belonging, coexistence and democratic negotiation processes - but also for processes of social closure and exclusion. For these reasons, in recent years, neighbourhoods have increasingly moved into the focus of politics, planning, science and business - as places of social innovation and as laboratories for collaborative learning processes in dealing, for example, with diversity, inclusion and exclusion, local economy or urban energy transition.

Against this background, we look forward to inspiring contributions on the following (or other) topics:

• What role do neighbourhoods play in the formation and stabilization of multilocal and translocal identities and practices?

• What role do infrastructures and public spaces ("third places", "micropublics" etc.) play for social interactions?

• How do neighbourhoods change in the face of upgrading and gentrification processes?

• What role do district funds or other formats of participatory planning play in neighbourhood development?

• How do affiliations, interactions and networks change in the digital age? What role do digital tools such as neighbourhood platforms play?

• What influence do institutional routines (e.g. of housing companies, educational institutions) have on social dynamics in the neighbourhood?

• Which innovative methods can be used to investigate social encounters, interactions, networks, routines and narratives?

• What significance do formats of collaborative transdisciplinary cooperation at neighbourhood level (e.g. “laboratories of social innovation”) have for urban and neighbourhood development?

Do science, politics, planning and civil society actors overestimate the importance of the neighbourhood in all the above-mentioned points and questions?

Chair: Susanne Frank, Sabine Weck