Locations and spatial patterns of urban expansion in a city-regional context

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After a phase of restrained urban growth, the expansion and development of urban settlement areas is now back on the agenda of urban development policy and planning debates and activities. The interest of this sub-project (TP4) of the joint project "Urban Expansion in Times of Reurbanisation" is directed at the spatial structures that are emerging in the course of recent urban expansion processes in urban agglomerations in Germany. The proposed project aims at recording, systematising and assessing these spatial structures in detail. The research examines the location of suburban development projects in their respective urban-regional context and asks how these projects change the existing settlement structure and what functional and socio-spatial patterns and qualities they produce. On this basis, it assesses whether, i. e., to what extent, the urban expansion processes of the recent past actually meet the planning objectives and guiding principles, and in particular the principles and objectives of regional planning, to which they are committed, and if they are able to fulfil the housing policy expectations associated with them. The research begins with nationwide, spatialle explicit inventory of recent urban expansion processes. The findings are then examined in greater depth using the five case study regions (transects) of the joint project. For this purpose, on the one hand, an analysis will be carried out on how the newly created settlement areas and locations of public services are related to existing settlement areas and open spaces in terms of spatial structure and transport infrastructure. On the other hand, the research will examine to what extent the recent urban expansion projects meet the existing demand on the housing market. Finally, the research will explore opportunities of planning and designing residential urban development in a city-regional context, as cross-municipal urban development policies are seen as a prerequisite for the sustainable development of urban agglomerations. The focus here is on the interests and conflicts of the various local authorities as well as on the approaches and instruments proposed for dealing with existing conflicts of interest. Methodologically, the project is based, on the one hand, on GIS analyses supplemented, if necessary, by on-site observations and, on the other hand, on various methods of the empirical social sciences (document analysis, press analysis, expert interviews, secondary analysis of statistical data). The latter are used to determine socio-spatial structures (which cannot be visually recorded) and to reconstruct the perspectives of representatives of spatial planning, but also of the public, on recent urban expansion events.