The lockdown and the reinvention of common space. Online and offline neighborhood relations in a social housing complex in Vienna
The article discusses neighborhood relations as contested "field of residential affairs" unfolding online and offline. It debates what happens when the physical closeness that characterizes offline neighborhood relations gets lost. The focus lies on the period of confinement during the COVID-19 pandemic. A new built housing estate in Vienna will be discussed as ethnographic example. The article underlines how the communication in online platforms enabled residents of the housing estate to reinvent a common neighborhood space marked by US-American pop-culture. It will be discussed how the "digital" enactment of community in times of confinement offered opportunities for specific residents, while it reinforced the exclusion of others.
Keywords: Housing, neighborhood relations, digital platforms, online and offline communities, imagined communities, Covid-19