Acknowledgements -- Preface / Jamie Peck -- Introduction / Mark Davidson and Kevin Ward -- Austerity and the spectacle: urban triage and post-political development in Detroit / L Owen Kirkpatrick and Chalem Bolton -- Austerity as the new normal : the fiscal politics of retrenchment in San Jose,...

Despite the existence of strict budgetary frameworks and fiscal equalisation systems, municipal budget crisis has been a phenomenon in Germany for decades. As an institutional response, most German states implemented bailouts to restore local public finances. This chapter gives a brief...