VorAB

The project "Acting Preventively – Avant-Garde Bridging Approaches for Sustainable Regional Development" identifies justice, democracy and evaluation problems in urban-rural relations. It researches blockades as well as precautionary action practices and designs structural innovations for fair and resilient land and resource use in the Lübeck region. Together with avant-garde actors, transformative and regional economic practices for the region as well as networks and cooperations beyond the region are developed. VorAB works with inter- and transdisciplinary methods such as constellation analysis or qualitative interviews.

The region is characterised by growth trends in Lübeck and the western and southern districts as well as shrinking trends in the eastern district. The project identifies structural obstacles to intermunicipal cooperation and explores the potential of avant-garde approaches to sustainable regional development. The sub-project-specific goal of the Wuppertal Institute (joint project management) is to make tensions such as those between persistence and transformation or between political control and regional self-organisation visible and thus accessible for political processing. Problems of justice, democracy and valuation are also examined in the research process and modified based on the results.

Expected results of the joint project are

• status quo analysis of blockades and potentials for regional transformation processes in the fields of energy, agriculture and forestry (structures, actors, interactions, understanding of nature, power constellations) (potential analysis)
• indicators and innovations for fair and resilient urban-rural conditions in the region (innovation concept)
• strategic approaches and concrete measures for the further development of the region (regional action plan) and adjacent areas (transfer concept)