Berlin is witnessing a massive tourism boom, and parts of it can be described as 'new urban tourism', which shows a preference for off the beaten track areas and 'authentic' experiences of the city. This form of tourism seems especially salient in Kreuzberg. It is here that an openly articulated critique of tourism attracted national attention in 2011 and has not ceased to do so since. This article aims to better understand the conflictive potential of (new urban) tourism in Kreuzberg. We argue that the readily expressed negative attitudes against tourists and the easily accepted link between tourism and gentrification have to be explained against the backdrop of certain housing-market dynamics. Rising rents and a diminution in the number of flats available for rent are fuelling fears of gentrification in Kreuzberg, while the interest shown in new urban tourism and the comparatively low-priced real-estate market in Berlin result in a growing number of holiday flats. Although adding only slightly to the tightening of the housing market, holiday flats render complex processes of neighborhood change visible and further sustain an already prevalent tourism critique.

This paper contributes to the debates on policy mobilities by examining Business Improvement Districts (BIDs) in Germany as examples of contested, failed and unfinished travelling policies. Recent debates on policy mobilities opened a fruitful discussion on how policies are transferred from one place to another and the complex processes that rework places and policies in heterogeneous ways. While we are sympathetic to this literature, there are theoretical and empirical gaps to be addressed. It is frequently stated that processes around the transfer and grounding of policies are complex, and that outcomes are far from secure. However, the empirical focus in most cases is on transfers that are more or less "successful", or at least portrayed as being successful by their advocates. In contrast to this "success bias" in research and public discourse, we argue that it is helpful to focus more closely on failures, resistances and contradictions. Judging from work on the transfer of BIDs -an almost classical example of successfully mobilized urban policies -we argue that it is helpful to reflect on unfinished policy mobilities, that is, the failure of mobilized urban policies.

Business Improvement Districts (BIDs) are an increasing global phenomenon. In diverse places, they are established and sought of as helpful means to improve urban places. BIDs are frequently seen as a showcase for new forms of globalizing urban policies. This paper contrasts and broadens the frequent examples from the United States and the United Kingdom with experiences from Germany. We argue that this presents not just another example of BIDs as a mode of global neoliberal urban governance in yet another country. Instead, our case study highlights the elasticity and resilience of said concept and the impact of local trajectories on the mobilization of modes of urban governance. Compared with other places, BIDs in Germany remain relatively weak in terms of financial power. Nonetheless, the case of Hamburg shows how they are made suitable for discourses and practices of a neoliberalized “European City.”

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