Green for Everyone? Just transition to resilient urban neighborhoods

Cities face the challenge of becoming climate-resilient while simultaneously solving social problems such as housing shortages and rising living costs. Resilient urban neighborhoods therefore require a just transformation that combines ecological change with social justice. Hoewever, urban transformation processes are increasingly encountering resistance that highlights fundamental social conflicts. Those conflicts are also erupting in connection with the expansion of green infrastructure. At the same time, transformation processes toward climate-resilient neighborhoods also hold the potential to strengthen justice and cohesion in the neighborhood. 

The aim of the junior research group is to systematically identify conditions and barriers for success in transformation processes using the case study of green infrastructure and to develop practice-oriented approaches for just urban development. The research team combines a cross-city analysis with work in two real-world laboratories in Augsburg and Berlin. In these real-world laboratories, which serve as experimental spaces, local practical knowledge from muncipal and civil partners is integrated into the research process. In addition, the researchers develop new approaches for negotiation, participation, and implementation processes and test them in cooperation with these partners. 

The IÖW contributes to the junior research group in two ways:

First, in their qualification work, the researchers examine the places, formats, and conditions that currently enable disadvantaged groups to participate effectively in urban development processes. To this end, they analyze the contributions of civil society actors to equitable urban development based on surveys and interviews. In addition, they examine the potential of artistic participation formats for constructive and inclusive participation processes in real-life experiments. Second, they use discourse analysis to investigate how the negotiation processes in the participation procedures are structured and which underlying conflicts and structures shape the transformation processes. These findings and other new approaches to equitable participation derived from democratic theories will be tested in the real-world laboratories.