Urban Regeneration and Planning Theory

The department has three main areas of research and teaching:

Urban Regeneration

We understand urban regeneration as a field of action that carefully deals with the physical fabric and the building stock of cities and towns in their entirety, aiming at sustainable upgrading and taking the need of the local population into consideration in particular. For this purpose, a number of strategies with a variety of arenas, intensities of intervention, actors and stakeholders, and tools and instruments may be applied.

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Planning Theory

reflects upon the importance, self-conception and general orientations of spatial planning embedded in a wider societal context. The department looks at changing paradigms and theories and understandings of planning and urban development seen as a policy field, and analyzes the variety of urban governance in the national and international contexts.

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Planning History

looks at the formation and the changes of urban and regional development as a profession and as a policy field especially starting in the mid-19th century. We direct a special attention to the relationship between planning, urban and climate development and to the role of urban planning in different political systems.

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The department was founded in the 1970s and headed by Prof. Christian Kopetzki until 2005. The focus on planning history was built up in the 1990s. In 2018, the additional focus on planning theory led to renaming it into “Urban Planning and Planning Theory” (formerly Urban Restructuring and Regeneration).