Industrial cities: Crisis, perception of crises and alternatives in urban development in the second half of the 20th century

对工业城市的历史研究主要集中在工业化和成长的过程中，包括社会主义城市。然而，下降和下降的时代并没有得到太多的关注。尤其是城市的增长、萎缩和转型的相互依存关系还没有得到系统的研究。此外，缺乏对中等城市的研究和比较研究。最后，对工业城市的历史研究忽视了建立一个适当的分析理论框架来解释和联系实证结果。理论模型--例如路径依赖的概念--在很大程度上被忽视了。以路径依赖的解释潜力为核心，计划中的项目打算要求这种框架的潜力，以此作为其经验密集结果的基础。该项目首先侧重于对危机的看法和影响，其次侧重于在工业城市克服这些危机所采取的战略。四个深入的案例研究围绕工业中心的危机经历和应对措施展开。这些案例研究有意涵盖不同类型的工业部门：作为汽车城市的吕塞尔斯海姆和沃尔夫斯堡，作为钢铁城市的沃尔克林根，作为港口城市的威廉港。对于这些工业中心，拟议的项目比较检查了网络、参与者的联盟及其行动范围。此外，比较还分析了全球经济日益增长的相互依存度以及上述四个城市之间的竞争。从而有助于更好地理解20世纪下半叶德国城市去工业化的概念和表现形式。总而言之，该项目旨在通过比较不同类型的城市并开发一个模型来解释这些变化，从而证明去工业化和转型这两个进程的社会相关性。

Historical research on industrial cities has mainly focused on processes of industrialization and growth, including the "socialist city". Times of decrease and decline, however, have not gained much attention. Particularly the interdependency and relationship of growth, shrinking, and the transformation of cities have not been systematical studied. Moreover, research on middle-sized cities and comparative studies are lacking. Finally, historical research on industrial cities has neglected to develop a proper theoretical framework of analysis to explain and contextualize empirical results. Theoretical models - such as the concept of path dependency - have been largely ignored. With the explanatory potential of path dependency at its heart, the planned project intends to ask for the potential of such a framework within which to base its empirically dense results. The project concentrates, firstly, on the perceptions and effects of crisis and, secondly, on the strategies employed in overcoming these crises in industrial cities. Four in-depth case studies revolve around the experience of and the reactions to crisis in industrial centers. These case studies deliberately cover different types of industrial sectors: Rüsselsheim and Wolfsburg as automobile cities, Völklingen as steel town, and Wilhelmshaven as port city. For these industrial centers, the proposed project comparatively examines the networks, the coalitions of actors and their scope of action. The comparison additionally analyses the increasing global economic interdependency and the competition between the four cities in question. It thus contributes to a better understanding of the concept and manifestations of deindustrialization in German cities in the second half of the 20th century. In all, the project intends to demonstrate the societal relevance of the twin processes of deindustrialization and transformation by both comparing different types of cities and developing a model to explain these changes.