Our paper addresses the complex role of Business Improvement Districts (BIDs) in current processes of inner-city restructuring and the function of BIDs in the implementation of new forms of social control in downtown areas. Our thesis is that, in the context of recent urban renaissance initiatives, BIDs are expanding their ‘clean and safe’ profile to be a much more comprehensive programme. Their goal is not only to produce safety and cleanliness in the urban environment but to influence the symbolic dimension of what the city is and for whom it is made. This implies indirect forms of governing the way in which the city is used, which go unnoticed if BIDs are identified solely as a tool to create ‘clean and safe’ public space. We will substantiate this claim with a case study on the current restructuring of downtown Los Angeles (L.A.). Since 1999, downtown L.A. has been profoundly ‘revitalized’ as a living and entertainment district for affluent residents. The nine BIDs covering the main parts of the downtown play an important role in making this gentrification happen by providing the appropriate context for restructuring. Beyond overt measures such as security forces or CCTV, the BIDs also have an important impact on the ‘geographical imagination’ (Harvey, 1973) of the city. The examples elucidate the anticipation of a broadening field of activity for BIDs, not only in securing an ‘urban renaissance’ but also in framing the way it is performed symbolically.

This paper focuses on the controversy over nationwide homeless statistics in Germany and uses the conflict as a window through which to explore the spatial and historical ontology of political numbers. Since the 1980s, the German national government's refusal to collect statistical data on homelessness has pushed homeless advocates to fight for quantitative assessments of homelessness as a crucial form of recognition. The conflict has produced a series of studies concerned with the practicability of homeless statistics. These studies offer an insight into the critical relations between space and calculation and the governmental problematizations of calculable territory and populations. Problematizations of space in feasibility studies reflect how the phenomenon of homelessness is not only a social issue ignored by governmental knowledge production, but a real obstacle to conventional ways of data collection on the population. To analyse the controversy and the difficulties of establishing homeless statistics, the paper combines theoretical reflections on the relations between numbers and politics and on spaces of calculation with more recent attempts to highlight the political nature of ignorance. The paper argues that the difficulties to count homeless people represent a case of ‘ontological ignorance’ connected to modern sedentariness.

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The histomorphologic effects and extent of neuronal damage observed for our AMI array are similar to those of other neural implants currently and safely used in humans. The minimal tissue damage surrounding the implanted array is encouraging with regard to the safety of the array for human use.

Inner-city living is a hot topic in Germany. Policy-makers long for new middle- and upper-class residents; evidence of urban in-flight has been documented by scholars, and debates on reurbanisation are in full swing. This trend has also led to the emergence of a new housing product in German metropolises: high-priced, centrally located and newly built apartment and townhouse developments. In this paper, these luxury developments are analysed as part of a general process of urban restructuring and a focus is on the contradictions inherent to the idea of urbanity taking shape here. Guided by Foucault’s governmentality approach, new luxury developments are understood as a powerful reworking of how the city, its uses and users are imagined and governed. In doing so, the paper aims to show that the concept of governmentality enables a critique of current processes of urban restructuring that may enrich the on-going debates on gentrification.