Title of the promotional project (working title): The Scheduled Transformation - Structural Change Projects Between Time and Success Pressure (2023 - Now)

The concept of transformation is not uniformly defined due to its complexity and dependence on the chosen research perspective on a development process referred to as transformation. However, attempts at defining it share an openness or ambiguity regarding the timeframe in which transformation processes occur, as these are usually not precisely quantifiable. The structural change in the Lausitz region represents a kind of "scheduled transformation process," politically limited to the year 2038 by the "Structural Strengthening Law for Coal Regions." This entails not only increased time and success pressure on political and public actors but also an expectation that the deliberate scheduling of structural change will contribute to increased conflict in planning projects and more confrontational interest situations in the context of urban or urban development planning by municipalities. This situation is further exacerbated by external factors and challenges such as climate change, economic development, or general political disillusionment. Thus, the question arises of how planning projects will respond to this heightened conflict. Therefore, the promotional project aims to investigate whether and how various actors in the field of municipal development planning respond to this conflict as well as to the increased time and success pressure in the context of the regional transformation process.

Structural support in the Lausitz region: exploratory data analysis of the spatial distribution of EU aid (2020)

The exploratory data analysis examines the distribution of European Structural and Investment Funds (ESIF), specifically the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and the European Social Fund (ESF), in the Brandenburgian Lausitz region during the 2014-2020 funding period. Furthermore, it investigates whether the funding measures of both EU Structural Funds spatially align with the central place system of regional development in the Lausitz region.

Other Research Focus Areas:

Housing policy and housing supply in the context of integrated urban development planning Common-good-oriented urban and project development, co-production Experimental methods of urban mediation

Grünwald, Sebastian/Schulze, Laura/Voigt, Sebastian/Zlatic, Zlatic (2020): Strukturförderung in der Lausitz – Explorative Datenanalyse zur räumlichen Verteilung der EU-Hilfe, BTU Cottbus-Senftenberg