Urban diversity has become de rigueur as a discursive line in contemporary contributions to urban development. However, the fact that this interplay of identities also influences social space has so far been overlooked. `As one calls into the forest, so it will resound' – this familiar German saying proves to be an unreliable maxim: that which townsfolk might call into `their' neighborhood only echoes back off its façades in a fragmentary fashion, as a wish, idealization or hope. Andreas Thiesen sketches out concepts of reflexive urban development, reveals errors in planning and renegotiates the `problem of participation', which even today is yet to be resolved.
