Speckgürtel or structurally weak area?

Scientists of the Brandenburg University of Technology Cottbus-Senftenberg publish an interdisciplinary and inter-university anthology on small town research.

It is a region marked by structural change: Brandenburg Lusatia. On the one hand, it is part of the Berlin-Brandenburg metropolitan region; on the other hand, rural communities and small towns dominate, often outside prosperous regions. The importance of such small towns for the supply of the surrounding area has not yet been comprehensively addressed scientifically. This research gap is filled by a contribution to the anthology Small Town Research: Interdisciplinary Perspectives. The team of authors Silke Weidner, Juliane Ribbeck-Lampel and Alexandra Heßmann examines 17 towns in structural change in the Brandenburg Lausitz. The focus is on the settlement and economic functions of the municipalities. "Structural change in the broadest sense, i.e. not only brought about by the lignite phase-out, but also by means of the mobility turnaround, energy and climate crises, social change with home offices, etc., is forcing differences between the small towns and their supply functions for the surrounding area," says Silke Weidner, head of the Institute for Urban Planning at the Brandenburg Technical University Cottbus-Senftenberg (BTU).

For a long time, small towns were neglected as an object of study in German- and English-language urban research. They are categorized as communities with 5,000 to less than 20,000 inhabitants. Today, almost 30 percent of Germany's inhabitants live in more than 2,000 small towns. Some of them are located in the suburbs of metropolitan regions, others in structurally weak or peripheral areas. And they differ from one another, especially in their relationships to the surrounding areas and to other cities. According to the authors of the anthology, they can be important "anchors" in rural areas or serve as places of residence or recreation for the nearest larger city.

"On the one hand, this anthology aims to present deeper insights into the very heterogeneous object of study of German small towns by means of different case studies as well as thematic and conceptual-methodological approaches," says Nina Gribat, professor of urban planning at BTU and co-editor of the publication. "On the other hand, it aims to encourage special attention to the diversity of the specific disciplines from which the authors* view small towns, and to show what potentials lie therein for interdisciplinary small town research."

In recent years, German small towns have received new attention not only in research, but also as places to live and work. This new publication traces the diversity of small towns and small town research while showing what different research perspectives, such as digitalization, mobility, and migration, can contribute to small town research.

Nina Gribat, Bariş Ülker, Silke Weidner, Bernhard Weyrauch, Juliane Ribbeck-Lampel (eds.): Small town research: interdisciplinary perspectives. - Bielefeld: transcript Verl., 2022. - 319 pp.

Specialist contact

Prof. Dr.-Ing. Silke Weidner
Stadtmanagement
T +49 (0) 355 69-3351
weidner(at)b-tu.de

Press contact

Wiebke Wehling
Stabsstelle Kommunikation und Marketing
T +49 (0) 355 69-3043
wiebke.wehling(at)b-tu.de