Type and Duration
FFF-Förderprojekt, March 2022 until August 2022 (finished)Coordinator
ArchitectureMain Research
Sustainable Planning and ConstructionDescription
This research project comprises the core of the empirical part of the researchers cumulative PhD project which is designed as an embedded case-study. The goal of the whole PhD project is to investigate how a growth-oriented discourse of sustainable spatial development (the “sustainability fix”) effects the governanceof the material change of the Alpine Rhine Valley through urban densification. The specificity of the Alpine Rhine Valley in the governance of spatial planning is its territorial fragmentation through small but morphologically and functionally highly interconnected municipalities with high executive competencies in spatial planning. In contrast, other actors such as investors and project developers are highly mobile. Hence, when looking at how urban densification as a process is governed and implemented it is necessary to look
at the territorial embeddedness and the resources of the actors involved in urban densification projects.
Therefore, this embedded case study looks at three densification projects within three different municipalities that are implemented by the same project development office. Through that, different forms of cooperation between the project developer and the municipalities can be observed to comparatively analyse what makes “densification regimes” emerge and how they stabilize to implement those densification projects. Within this research project the theoretical and methodological considerations that have been developed within the preliminary study are going to be filled with empirical material. This will lay the foundation for two scientific papers, that are necessary to complete the cumulative PhD project.
keywords:Densification, sustainable spatial development, Alpine Rhine Valley, urban growth machine