FG Regionalplanung
Refine
Year of publication
Document Type
- Part of a book (chapter) (49)
- Scientific journal article peer-reviewed (36)
- Conference publication peer-reviewed (29)
- Scientific journal article not peer-reviewed (21)
- Report (15)
- Book (publisher) (8)
- Book (3)
- Conference Proceeding (2)
- Conference publication not peer-reviewed (2)
- Moving images (video) (2)
Way of publication
- Open Access (41)
Keywords
- Digitalisierung (5)
- Polen (5)
- Daseinsvorsorge (4)
- Energiewende (4)
- Euroregion (4)
- Governance (4)
- Grenze (4)
- Pandemie (4)
- Regionalentwicklung (4)
- Digitalisation (3)
Institute
The post-socialist transformation of Central and Eastern European (CEE) economies implied their (re)integration into global capitalism as “dependent market economies” that are dominated by foreign direct investment and have only a limited degree of economic sovereignty. This development was accompanied by internal polarisation and peripheralization, which were amplified by the steady erosion of the European social model linked to the financial crisis in 2008. Europe had entered the age of austerity, and the pain generated by these adjustments and the subsequent political upheaval imposed significant legitimacy challenges to the political elite and its crisis management strategy in Eastern and Western Europe alike. The rise of the radical right is connected to this political discontent of the inhabitants of peripheralized areas, and to sociocultural and material deprivation in internal peripheries characterised by economic stagnation and selective outmigration. In this session we look for contributions on alternative, bottom-up mobilising and it´s potential of channeling this discontent described above towards globally aligned local struggles for a socially and environmentally just transition. Thus, we call for research- and practice-based contributions related to the organising, upscaling and political struggle of social and solidarity economy initiatives in rural and regional development. We aim at diversifying the discourse on rural engagement in CEE, typically framed as “anti-modernist” and “non innovative”. Such narratives neglect the political abandonment of the inhabitants of peripheries and the silent sustainability practices, such as food self-provisioning still characteristic in both rural and urban areas in CEE. Western theories of civil society are unable to grasp the richness of community self-organising connected to livelihood in CEE, thus often portraying the civil society in CEE as “weak”. In the former Eastern Germany, instead, a new narrative focusing on rural social innovation via “spatial pioneers” has succeeded in turning the “anti-modern” image of rural areas into a positive and agile space of transformation. While bearing possibilities of popularising sustainable local transition, the focus on young and educated initiators from urban areas might further marginalise the silent and everyday engagement of the existing civil society and drive forth a new kind of rural gentrification. This session aims at enlightening these often tense and complex relations of the social and solidarity economy with its broader institutional and social contexts in rural areas. The question can be approached at least from threefold perspectives:
a) Success of social movements in relation to their resource-mobilisation strategies (including financial resources, the networks they are embedded in and their social base), the political opportunity structure they are embedded in and the cultural framing of their message to multiple, simultaneously local and multiscalar audiences.
b) Encounters between the globally connected civic environmental movements with the local residents, and in particular with the locally embedded, silent sustainability practices. Addressing joint practices, aims or campaigns but also tensions related to e.g. ethno-nationalist ideologies underlying the tradition of environmental protection.
c) Opportunities and challenges to social and solidarity economy initiatives to prioritise global ecological concerns and their local manifestations and respect for non-human beings in all areas of economic organising. We invite papers focusing on social and solidarity economy initiatives and their potential to mobilize the politically abandoned inhabitants of (rural) peripheries in CEE and beyond.
We live in an urban age. It is well-known that urbanization is changing landscapes, built environments, social infrastructures and everyday lives across the globe. But urbanization is also changing the ways we understand and practise politics. What implications does this have for democracy?
This incisive book argues that urbanization undermines established certainties of nation-state politics and calls for a profound rethinking of democracy as a project. Ross Beveridge and Philippe Koch provide a novel way of seeing democracy like a city, shifting scholarly and activist perspectives from institutions to practices, from jurisdictional scales to spaces of collective urban life, and from fixed communities to emergent political subjects. Through a discussion of examples from around the world, the book shows that distinctly urban forms of collective self-rule are already apparent. The authors reclaim the ‘city’ as a democratic idea in a context of urbanization, seeing it as instrumental to re-locate democracy in the everyday lives of urbanites.
Original and hopeful, How Cities Can Transform Democracy compels the reader to abandon conventional understandings of democracy and embrace new vocabularies and practices of democratic action in the struggles for our urban future
Change that lasts? Fostering social innovations in local livelihoods in rural North-Eastern Germany
(2022)
Local social innovations have been considered as seeds of a systemic transformation towards post-fossil economies. However, studies rarely discuss the possibilities of such transformation in peripheric rural areas, where alternative niches tend to remain scattered compared to urban centres, and where relative shrinkage of the existing economy and services is often considered as a more urgent threat than global environmental concerns. The concept of (social) innovation has also been criticised for not providing answers to the stability and continuity of the emergent livelihoods or services in these regions, while focusing on change as the value in itself. Furthermore, the positive image of participatory transformation tends to bypass the necessity of and conflicts related to exnovation, i.e. conscious downscaling or dismantling of unsustainable policies and industries. In the light of these debates, this presentation reflects the experiences of experimenting with and establishing socially innovative livelihoods and services in a rural region in Germany within the ongoing project “region4.0”. It is a collaboration between higher education organizations, economic development institutions and regional service providers in the region of North-Eastern Brandenburg, established in the end of 2019 and funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research. The individual livelihood experiments contribute to a joint regional strategy in order to generate a broader transformation towards collaborative regional
economy. The local experiments themselves as well as the regional strategy process have been supported by research in a form of an internal evaluation and an analysis of the external governance context. The presentation asks, how can the local innovative experiments on sustainable livelihoods be rooted into the regional economy on a long-term, and what are the limits of such a transformation? What kind of challenges are connected with bridging local experimentation and regional strategic coordination? Finally, based on these experiences, the presentation takes a critical look to the academic discussion on structural change via innovation
and asks, how do the mundane understandings and processes of innovation in the practical experiments inform and challenge the innovation theory.
This is a commentary to the Fennia lecture and article “What could geographers do for shrinking geographies?” by Josefina Syssner. In the piece I open up questions concerning shrinking from a global perspective and point to further discussions on global east, south, and spatial justice in post-fossil transition, which I encourage the Nordic research to engage with in the future.
This paper explores whether and how eco-social enterprises (ESEs) in rural areas are able to foster sustainability beyond growth in their daily practice. We approach sustainability beyond growth as a radical intertwining of social, ecological and economic concerns, where economy is understood as the secure and long-term fulfilling of basic needs within planetary limits. The study compares daily practices of five established ESEs in Brandenburg, Germany and Alentejo, Portugal. The ESEs represent the fields of agriculture and tourism and are diverse in their organisational forms and sizes. The data includes ethnography, interviews and document analysis. According to the results, ESEs support transition towards sustainability beyond growth and extractivism by facilitating slow, caring and respectful production practices that balance the needs of nature and human participants. While findings demonstrate such practices across all organisational forms and sizes, they were the most ambitious and heterogeneous in large co-operatives in less peripheral locations with more initial resources. Ethical negotiations on economic risk-sharing and decision-making were intertwined in and stabilised by market relations and hierarchical decision-making. Small and peripheral ESEs need to balance between the risk of exclusivity, precarity, complexity of diverse participation and limited resources for coordination.
Die smarte Region
(2022)
Viele ländliche Regionen Deutschlands sehen sich mit tiefgreifenden Transformationsprozessen konfrontiert. Angesichts demographischer, ökonomischer und sozio-kultureller Veränderungen stehen Politik und Planung vor großen Herausforderungen, Daseinsvorsorge und Wertschöpfung zusammen mit zivilgesellschaftlichen Akteuren zu gestalten und damit eine nachhaltige räumliche Entwicklung mit gleichwertigen Lebensverhältnisse in ländlichen und städtischen Regionen zu befördern.
Vor diesem Hintergrund werden der Digitalisierung große Potenziale zugeschrieben, ländliche Arbeits- und Lebensverhältnisse zu verbessern und dynamisch neu zu gestalten. Entsprechende Projekte werden von einer wachsenden Zahl „Digitaler Pionier*innen“ entwickelt, die als Einzelpersonen, Firmen oder Institutionen neuartige und erfolgsversprechende Vorhaben umsetzen. Dies lässt sich beispielsweise in den von uns fokussierten Handlungsfeldern des Co-Working, der Start Up-Ökonomie, der Gesundheitsversorgung und der Landwirtschaft beobachten. Inwieweit aber sind solche Digitalen Pionier*innen in lokale, regionale und überregionale Governance-Strukturen eingebunden? Dies könnte dafür entscheidend sein, dass ländliche Regionen von neuartigen digitalen Möglichkeiten profitieren, so unsere Grundannahme. Jedoch sind solche Governance-Arrangements voraussetzungsvoll. Sowohl die Digitalen Pionier*innen als auch die verantwortlichen Akteure aus Politik und Planung müssen einen Mehrwert der Zusammenarbeit erkennen.
Unser Paper rekonstruiert die Perspektive der Digitalen Pionier*innen in je einer strukturschwachen und strukturstarken ländlichen Region Deutschlands. Auf Basis teilstandardisierter Interviews mit Schlüsselpersonen zeigen wir, welches Wissen, welche Motivationen und Selbstverständnisse den digitalbasierten Vorhaben zugrunde liegen und welche Implikationen dies für regionale Governance-Arrangements hat. Wir erwarten Einsichten, inwiefern die Projektegenesen durch regionale Bedarfe, damit verbundene Nachhaltigkeitsaspekte und durch technische Fachdiskurse geprägt wurden. Ebenfalls wird analysiert, wie die Digitalen Pionier*innen ihre Bezüge in regionale Governance-Strukturen beschreiben und worin sie sinnvolle Unterstützung durch Politik und Planung sehen. Unsere ego-zentrierten Netzwerkanalysen ermöglichen, die Bedeutungen regionaler Kooperationen und weiträumiger Stadt-Land-Beziehungen systematisch darzustellen.
Der Beitrag basiert auf Ergebnissen der ersten Feldphase des Projekts „Digitale Pioniere in der ländlichen Regionalentwicklung“ und beleuchtet die Rolle dieser Akteure in Transformationsprozessen. Die teilstandardisierten Interviews und ego-zentrierten Netzwerkanalysen werden bis Sommer 2021 durchgeführt.
The appearance of New Materialism has brought about a rupture in the social sciences and opened new positions to analyze social entities like space. In our contribution, we claim that it also offers a starting point for theoretical considerations in reference to the relationship between discourse, space and materiality – especially regarding the perspective of materialization beyond a culture-nature-dichotomy. In our research on the German-Polish border area, we combined classical studies of newspapers with the study of discursive practices among local residents. Here, the questions that arose for us were: To what extent is material space important for our discourse analysis? And how can it be included as an element in our conceptualization of discourse on space?
What Triggers Protest? – Understanding Local Conflict Dynamics in Renewable Energy Development
(2022)
The expansion of renewable energy infrastructure comes with increasing conflicts at local level that significantly impede the expansion of renewable energy in Germany and impact the realization of national and international climate goals. In some conflicts, rural communities are torn apart and social relations strained beyond the energy conflict. Other projects are realized with no or only minor disruption. To researchers, project developers and local politicians alike, it seems unpredictable as to which way local energy conflicts evolve. Thus, the paper aims to shed light on conflict dynamics and identifies a number of aspects that influence local energy conflicts. The paper
applies a conflict theoretical perspective on local energy conflicts. Rather than identifying energy conflicts as a sign of dysfunctionality, conflicts are seen as an important element of a democratic society struggling to find the best way through the transformation towards decarbonization. Based on qualitative research on local energy conflicts in five German municipalities the paper analyzes aspects that encourage constructive conflicts and aspects that impede such developments. With reference to Dahrendorf’s conditions of conflict the categories of energy conflicts are systematized within an analytical framework according to conditions of organization, conflict and change. These categories and aspects are embedded in specific local conditions, making conflicts on the one hand typical and on the other very specific. They are also entry points for dealing constructively with the conflicts.
Our research on Digital Pioneers (DP) addresses the impact of private and public actors on rural development and digitalization processes in two German regions. Referring to leadership debates, we identified an epistemology to analyze the agency of key figures in regional governance, asking for the resources digital pioneers need for positively shaping rural spaces.
Adding hitherto neglected agency perspectives to rural digitalization research, our study design implied a multilevel process, a) the search for digital pioneers through regional stakeholders and web-based information, b) the identification of two rural-peripheral regions in Eastern and Western Germany with different hindering and aggravating socioeconomic conditions and c) the analysis of the pioneers’ agency, social networks and cooperation structures. Preliminary results indicate that DPs utilize their social networks to access various types of resources on different spatial levels.
In this way, network contacts specifically supplement the technical-digital, political-administrative, financial and scientific resources already available personally or in their own institution. Most DPs have biographical ties to their regions. Thus, they benefit from long-term personal relationships, which are also helpful for their projects. Pioneers who move in from outside or reach into the regions from an external location must firstly build up their local and regional networks, and deal with the local population’s skepticism.
Deductions from our empirical findings do not only address those resources DPs need from regional governance networks. They also focus resources DPs could bring in for driving digital transformation processes in rural-peripheral areas and thereby mitigating the challenges of spatial disparities.
Bereits die immer noch gerne diskutierte Frage, ob es denn tatsächlich an jeder Milchkanne Breitband brauche, impliziert, dass die Digitalisierung in ländlichen Regionen Potenzial und Herausforderung zugleich darstellt. Sowohl in der Daseinsvorsorge als auch mit Blick auf die ansässigen Unternehmen zeigen sich hinsichtlich der effektiven Nutzung digitaler Informations- und Kommunikationstechnologien sehr unterschiedliche Entwicklungsstufen. Dementsprechend rückt unser laufendes Forschungsprojekt die Vorreiterrolle „Digitaler Pionier*innen“ in den Vordergrund, die als Einzelpersonen, Akteursgruppen oder Institutionen wesentliche positive Einflüsse auf die ländliche Regionalentwicklung nehmen und zu deren sozialer, ökonomischer und ökologischer Nachhaltigkeit beitragen.
Vor diesem Hintergrund soll unser Vortrag die Fragen beleuchten, welche Ressourcen Digitale Pionier*innen benötigen, um ihre Projekte, Vorhaben und Initiativen wirksam zu realisieren, auf welchen Wegen diese Ressourcen zugänglich werden und welche räumlichen Bezüge die entsprechende Agency aufweist. Hierzu identifizierten wir (potenzielle) Pionier*innen in zwei sehr ländlichen aber sozio-ökonomisch höchst verschiedenen ländlichen Fallstudienregionen, im südöstlichen Mecklenburg-Vorpommern und im nordöstlichen Baden-Württemberg. Dort führten wir qualitative Interviews und darin intergierte egozentrierte Netzwerkanalysen mit Schlüsselpersonen aus ca. 40 besonders innovativen, ambitionierten und wirkungsvollen Vorhaben durch.
Unsere Ergebnisse zeigen, dass diese Akteure auf ein breites Spektrum an Ressourcen zurückgreifen, beispielsweise hinsichtlich technischen Wissens, regionaler Kenntnisse und politischer Unterstützung. Entsprechende Ressourcenzugänge werden teils durch die eigenen Biographien, insbesondere auch durch regionsexterne Erfahrungen ermöglicht. Komplementär werden gezielt neue Netzwerkbeziehungen geknüpft, um beispielsweise sehr spezifische und anderweitig weniger verfügbare Ressourcen zu erschließen. Effektive Kontaktnetzwerke sind vielfach gleichermaßen regional fokussiert und überregional ausdifferenziert: Ersteres ermöglicht es unter anderem, Bedarfe zu spezifizieren, niedrigschwellige Unterstützung von Unternehmen zu erhalten und politische Entscheidungsträger*innen zu erreichen. Überregionale Beziehungen, oftmals in größere Städte und Agglomerationen, tragen vor allem dazu bei, spezifische technische, organisatorische oder juristische Lösungen zu finden.
Die Ergebnisse unserer Fallstudien zeigen nicht nur, welche Ressourcen Digitale Pionier*innen bereits zugänglich sind oder ergänzend benötigt werden. Ebenso lässt sich ableiten, wie die von uns fokussierten Akteure und Institutionen ihrerseits wichtige Ressourcen in die partizipativen Prozesse ländliche Regionalentwicklung einbringen können.