290112 PSE Seminar in Applied Geography, Spatial Research and Spatial Planning (2024W)

“Yesterday an industrial site, today vacant and tomorrow…? “On the role of brownfield revitalization and the transfer of policies and practices”

This project seminar approaches brownfields from a case-based and methodological perspective. This project seminar serves as a concrete case study of a smaller brownfield site near Gmünd/Waldviertel (Lower Austria), whose revitalization is intended to be an example for the transformation of former industrial sites in Austria.

This project seminar takes place in cooperation with the Federal Ministry for Climate Protection, Environment, Energy, Mobility, Innovation and Technology, the Federal Environment Agency, the Brownfields Dialogue (see: https://www.brachflaechen-dialog.at/), the municipality of Hirschbach and the Office for Architecture and building culture education (see: https://www.barbarareiberger.at/kontakt/). The cooperation partners involved offer the students of this project seminar a platform for knowledge exchange and networking.

Industrial brownfields play an important role in sustainable urban and regional development. The transformation process of former industrial areas is complex, requiring collaboration between different actors, including not only local and national authorities and private investors. Rather, the public, environmental organizations, the media landscape, etc. are also explicitly and implicitly involved when it comes to identity, change and participation. In this respect, the question of gaining knowledge and transferring case-based recommendations for action for similar revitalization projects in the sense of a policy transfer is often also in the interest of political-planning actors. Knowledge of contextual conditions is particularly important here in order to be able to formulate transferable recommendations for action.

The aim of the project seminar is therefore, in addition to a theoretical and conceptual positioning of the topic in human geography, and above all to achieve an expansion of methodological skills. In addition to a case study analysis, newer concepts and methods from spatial sciences are applied, reflected on and used for the transfer of knowledge into (planning) practice. Students are given the opportunity to independently develop questions, methodological approaches and prepare results in individual and group work. The course leaders accompany the students as input providers and moderators.

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