In order to get an idea of the problems of their present, contemporaries in the late 20th century were drawn to concrete urban spaces again and again. They turned urban problem areas such as large peripheral settlements or barracks into experimental fields for observing and working on social changes. The study by Christiane Reinecke is about this fascination, which advocates a spatially situated, knowledge-based view of social inequality. She examines how the handling of urban problems in France and the Federal Republic of Germany changed in the light of urban modernization, decolonization and de-industrialization. She anchors the farewell to class society and the ethnic diversification of Western European societies since the 1950s in the vicinity of the city and thus creates a different, urban narrative of social inequality.