Socio-spatial Transformation Research

"The next 10 years, to 2030, must see the most profound transformation the world has ever known. This is our mission. This is the countdown." (Johan Rockström 2020)

Not only climate change and its impacts alone are considered one of the greatest challenges of the 21st century; humanity will also grapple with a series of ecological and social problems that will significantly shape our lifestyles in the future. On the path to a sustainable way of life, the spatial perspective has a special role - the sustainable transformation of our cities and regions, energy and mobility systems, land use, or the increasing digitization in all areas of life. The explicitly socio-spatial perspective on transformation processes towards sustainability considers that these processes take place in our living spaces, change them, and simultaneously become local-specific conditions for future changes.

The contribution of spatial and environmental planning, and thus the working group, addresses both spatial aspects of the built and unbuilt environment in physical-material as well as socially-constructed dimensions, such as uses, symbolic-cultural peculiarities, historical path dependencies, or regulatory requirements. Thus, we perceive societal transformations as long-term processes that can be initiated, supported, and shaped through planning approaches and tools. We understand the socio-spatial exploration of transformation processes in different dimensions of knowledge, in the form of analytical system knowledge such as spatial analyses, normative goal knowledge such as visions or shared visions, and transformation knowledge such as procedural control options. In our research, the central question is always how transformation processes can be shaped, supported, and co-developed by society, thereby producing socially relevant knowledge. A characteristic feature is a transdisciplinary research approach, which not only involves local people early in the research process but also anticipates cooperation with practitioners in the research conception. This is manifested in our research approaches, the questions we pose, the methods we use, and the communication of our results.