The role of medium-sized towns as stabilizers of peripheral rural areas

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Gabi Troeger-Weiß
• Subject Area: City Planning, Spatial Planning, Transportation and Infrastructure Planning, Landscape Planning
• Term: from 2014 to 2019
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 252944451

The development perspectives of medium-sized towns play a key role for answering the question whether it is possible to permanently secure equivalent living conditions in peripheral rural areas, according to current and future requirements. The aim of the research project is to study the stabilizing role of medium-sized towns in and for peripheral rural areas as well as to find out how to maintain it given the impact of socio-economic change.From a spatial science and planning point of view, medium-sized towns are considered to be stabilizers of regional supply and of the development of peripheral rural areas due to their functions as regional centres of living, labour market and supply. Their development perspectives, given the ongoing processes of socio-economic change, play a central role in ensuring equivalent living conditions which is the guiding vision of spatial planning in Germany.Medium-sized towns in peripheral rural areas are actually situated in an environment which is particularly affected by processes of demographic and economic change. Against the background of intensifying local and regional competition in the course of globalization, this environment frequently features pronounced tendencies of shrinking and dissociation. The importance of medium-sized towns as regional stabilizers grows with these changes. At the same time, they are comparatively strongly affected by the processes and have fallen into a downward spiral due to the common combination of limited accessibility, the demographic trend towards an ageing population, the pressure to adapt in terms of infrastructure and the structural weaknesses in the economy. Their stabilizing role concerning their surroundings is therefore questionable. This, in perspective, entails the risk of increasing small-spatial inequalities.The planned research project will be based on the study of the initial situation and the tendencies of developments of medium-sized towns in peripheral rural areas. Building on this foundation, an empirical case study will be carried out, focusing on the question in which domains and in how far we can speak about a stabilizing role of medium-sized towns for peripheral rural areas. Furthermore the current and future impacts of socioeconomic processes on this stabilizing function will be analyzed. On this basis, operative requirements for the communal, intercommunal and regional levels concerning the adaptation to changed basic conditions and the maintenance of the stabilizing function of medium-sized towns in peripheral rural areas will be formulated.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants