Borders and Planning Cultures (2019)

An additional seminar took place on the 12th and 13th September 2019 within the scope of the Interreg VA Greater Region UniGR-Center for Border Studies project. The seminar was organized by the members of the Working Group Spatial Planning of the UniGR-CBS and supported by the European Academy of Otzenhausen and the Protestant Academy Bad Boll. Scholars of the UniGR-CBS and the two academies gathered, as well as planning practitioners from the different parts of the Greater Region, to enhance dialogue between science and practice.

The seminar started with two lectures on cross-border spatial planning. It then introduced a simulation game called "Eco-Regio SaarLorLux+: five regions, a sustainable and ecological future", developed by the Working Group Spatial Planning. The spatial planners had to jointly create an eco-region in a former industrial wasteland split between the five sub-regions of the border region. During the different phases of the game, several groups worked on the elaboration of a common concept, displayed during the last conference.

The seminar's objective was, on the one hand, to produce a tangible experience of the cross-border cooperation regarding spatial planning, to learn from each other and to lessen the misunderstanding issues hindering cross-border spatial planning. On the other hand, the scholars have acquired knowledge which will serve as a basis for research on the importance of the different spatial planning cultures in cross-border regions. This knowledge will be analyzed in greater detail in the seminar's follow-up.

Contact: Dr-Ing. Beate Caesar, Technische Universität Kaiserslautern, beate.caesar@ru.uni-kl.de