The joint research project “ReGerecht” funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research aims at developing and implementing solutions for a fair balance of interests between city, suburbs, and rural areas. It seeks to answer two core questions: How do regional land use conflicts arise? And: How can just solutions for these land use conflicts be found?

As part of a project consortium of seven scientific and practice partners, the BTU focuses on problems of regional infrastructures, mainly looking at the energy-infrastructure nexus and urban-rural relationships. It analyses spatial and socio-technical constellations with respect to informal institutions and questions of spatial justice and infrastructural criticality. The work package positions itself in international theoretical debates on “energy justice”, “spatial justice” and “infrastructural justice”. The joint research project is coordinated by the Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF) in Müncheberg.

Within the framework of the joint project MoVeToLausitz, the aim of our department is to investigate the transformation requirements of climate change and the ‘Verkehrswende’ in the regional context of tourist mobility. This is done on the one hand by analysing the political and social framework of existing transport and tourism concepts and their interconnections with other sectors in the context of sustainable regional development. On the other hand, these contextualizations will be linked with participative and collaborative methods of qualitative social research. In expert interviews with stakeholders, residents and tourists, local mobility needs will be qualitatively assessed and future scenarios and recommendations for action for sustainable tourism mobility in Lusatia will be developed in focus groups in a collaborative way.

The research project MoVeToLausitz is funded by the innovation initiative mFUND of the BMDV. The overall objective is to demonstrate sustainable perspectives and potentials of digital transport technologies in the field of leisure and tourism mobility in connection with everyday mobility in rural areas. The focus will be to look at the aspects of attractiveness, sustainability and economic viability of tourism in the Lusatian region in combination and, in this context, examine the potential of intelligent, intermodal, cross-border and demand-driven mobility solutions. The overall aim in this is to reduce motorized individual transport in the region.

"Transferraum" is one of the two steering projects of the transfer alliance “Alterperimentale”. The transfer alliance aims to meet the challenges of the demographic structural changes in the fields of public services and care work - thereby enhancing the conditions for ageing well in rural regions. At the core of the transfer approach, decentralized practice-research centers act as local knowledge transfer spaces. They coordinate the cooperation and mutual learning processes between research and practice, ensure participation and identify research questions regarding the transfer alliance's research topics. "Transferraum" spans across the administrative districts Oder-Spree, Spree-Neiße and Görlitz. The civil initiative, Practice-research-center Heinersdorf serves as a provider of ideas as well as a template for the yet to be established research centers in Cottbus and Görlitz in cooperation with BTU Cottbus-Senftenberg and Hochschule Zittau/Görlitz.

The project "Transferraum" of the Chair of Regional Planning organises the greater strategy development and the evaluation of the "Alterperimentale". Furthermore, it is responsible for the operational  management, the scientific communication and the institutionalization of the transfer approach. The overarching goal of the project is to establish the "T!Raum Alterperimentale" and its transfer activities in the region. The exchange of knowledge and the cooperation with the partners and within the entire network are organised in close collaboration with the second steering project which takes care of developing already existing and new transfer formats. On a theoretical and empirical level, "Transferraum" contributes to the socio-ecological transformation of regional welfare structures and to the acceptance of regional transformation processes. In addition, it advances the development and application of spatial theories in these fields.