Peripheries – Dynamics for the Green Deal

This article calls for a territorial dimension of the Green Deal for cities, towns, villages, and regions. Dynamics of Peripheries are argued as promising accelerator for an effective and just transition of large parts of European territories – fragmented, diverse, and facing dynamic transformation processes. Place-oriented strategies towards Reserves of Resilience are discussed as important contribution to overall transformation to sustainability. The need to foster Territorial Creativity for a new Habitat Vision is put forward to innovate concepts and tools of urbanism and to strengthen action-oriented research: able to empower communities for shared visions and processes of transformation.

Starting from the challenge how to realise the European Green Deal, to target climate change, and how to decide for the Next Generation of public policies in and after the Covid-19 pandemic, we should face the multiplicity of spaces beyond metropolis. Taking into account cities, towns, villages, and regions, the challenge will not only be to achieve a transition towards a carbon-free life, but to direct forces and strategies towards a sustainable future of living spaces. The aim of a Just Transition will have to consider a territorial notion of the Green Deal, to facilitate chances of sustainable development locally—that then contribute to larger networks and constellations as well as foster initiatives of spatial-social innovation. A territorial notion of transition applies not only to material and economic flows and ecological issues, but also to social inclusion, possibilities, and to culture, to the inspiration, knowledge, and abilities to envision Future Habitats: in the sense of liveable places, vivid and inspired communities, caring for and working with nature. A new force of civil engagement, entrepreneurship, and research will be central to link with politics and public actors in these challenges. Thus, the success of the Green Deal will need to be based on our ability to create new pathways to imagine, evolve and steer Territorial Innovation.

Accelerators for Sustainable Change

The rediscovery of dynamic spaces and phenomena outside of metropolitan cores—not at least through the Corona crisis—puts a wide range of topics on the agenda: peripheries can be understood as arena of social, economic, cultural and ecological innovation and as laboratory for future living spaces (Schröder, Carta, Ferretti, Lino 2018). This potential calls for linking three approaches: (1) the concept of Reserves of Resilience between increased autonomy and flexible networks that combine mitigation and adaption to climate change, expanding the concept of resilience from systemic to spatial-social and dynamic dimensions that realise the core factors adaptivity and redundancy. (2) A Habitat Vision that addresses the potential of peripheries as attractive places for staying, returning, or settling: as spaces of possibilities for new living and working models, for multi-place modes and temporary citizenship, for new communities. (3) Territorial Creativity that can trigger social, cultural, spatial, and natural assets, preserve and develop them (Scaffidi 2018), by enabling local actors and communities and by creating new linkages between metropolitan cores and peripheries: towards strategies for metropolitan, urban, and rural networks with a perspective not on urban margins, but on new centres for community.

A Shift towards Action Research

The relevance to address places beyond metropolis is based on the fact that 60% of Europeans live in settlements with less than 50,000 inhabitants, notwithstanding if they are part of in themselves highly differentiated metropolitan contexts (in Germany 63% of inhabitants), in functional or organisational sense, or outside of them (37%) (see Fig. 1). Larger constellations influence the conditions of places significantly—and are underlying constant and deep transformation processes. An increase of social and territorial polarisation and their political effects are discussed (Rodríguez-Pose 2017; McNeil-Willson et.al. 2019; ESPON 2017a), concerning different scales from quarters to regions—a fragmentation that probably will be enhanced further by effects caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. Already longer running trends of concentration, of growth, and shrinkage in national and in regional scales as well as in near vicinity seem to become reinforced (ESPON 2017b; Gans, Siedentop 2017). Thus, the arena to implement the Green Deal can be described not only as highly fragmented and diverse but as underlying dynamic transformation processes.

Explanatory approaches of a deep spatial change with increased globalisation since the 1990ies, such as the articulation and synthesis of urban diffusion (Indovina 1990) even beyond former notions of metropolis (Soja 2000) and in a new interpretation of territory (Gausa, Guallart, Muller 2003) now give way to a clear shift towards more operative approaches in urbanism. They regard paradigms, concepts, and tools of research defined as in action: e. g. Open(ing) (Gausa 2019), Mosaic Territorial City (Llop 2017), Horizontal Metropolis (Viganò, Cavalieri 2018), and Augmented City (Carta 2017). With this, urbanistic approaches are being enhanced towards transdisciplinary research and advice to public and policies. Multiple spatial contexts and different transformation processes are being taken into focus, extending the view on the status quo not only to an evolutive understanding of past transformations (Corboz 2001) but towards pathways to the future, to the limitations and to potentials based on spatial-processual logics and spatial-social constellations. At the same time—linking to concepts such as Open City (Sennett 2013) and Rebel City (Harvey 2012)—the demand of citizens to being actively involved in shaping spatial futures, contributing to from narratives, and increasing awareness of spatial, social, cultural, economic, and ecological aspects of sustainable development are important perspectives for the territorial dimension of the Green Deal.

A Focus on Peripheries

From this background, a comprehensive view of formerly separated phenomena seems promising—not only in research, but also in public and cultural debates, as started already in many European countries (e. g. Guilluy 2015). The concept of Dynamics of Periphery (Schröder, Carta, Ferretti, Lino 2018) proposes a focus on emerging and creative contributions for territorial futures—of spaces formerly separated by attributions, that are now are seen oscillating, transforming, and in multiple ways interconnected: medium and small cities and towns, villages, rural areas, suburbanised areas undergoing deep changes in the trend of accelerated metropolisation; mountain, coast, or inland settlements becoming increasingly remote or set into new contexts. Areas labelled as in need of economic restructuring cover now about 1/3 of German regions (BMWi 2019), comprehending shrinking or stagnating areas, former coal-mining areas, frontier areas, and including all categories of places. At the same time, pressure phenomena cause deep frictions in growing metropolitan agglomerations and areas outside of metropolitan cores have maintained or initiated economic and social wealth, e. g. connected with clustering of SME, new technologies, or touristic positioning. Since Peripheries can offer—until now often hidden—potentials for overall sustainability and for alternative pathways of development, a renewed focus should address three aspects:

(1) to set up a necessary co-production of knowledge about dynamic processes of transition;
(2) to enhance co-creation of concepts and practices of urban and regional transformation;
(3) to link with new forms of social movements, private-public actions, social innovation, and civil engagement.

Examples for Innovation

Two areas in Germany, in the shadow of a mediatic, cultural, and political mainstream, can illustrate the emerging phenomena outside of metropolitan agglomerations. Some indications from these two examples can open pathways for further research: In the first case (Fig. 2), in between Munich, Stuttgart, and Zurich, three spaces of regional cooperation, in some parts overlapping, show challenges and also frictions1 of an overall economically and demographically growing area. In the Allgäu area,2 a model for territorial cooperation based on the development of a shared branding as tourism destination and positioning for SME has been established; in both parts linked to sustainability objectives: in creating a brand that embodies values, and in recycling already built-up zones as well as in forming intercommunal initiatives to provide space for industrial zones. The extension of the branding operation into further policy fields can be seen as evolving regional strategy-building (RURBANCE:3 Schröder 2015). Recent projects regard promoting new living and working models and community spaces in a recycling of empty spaces in town and village centres, or in setting up a regional process for a housing strategy. Initiatives from bottom-up foster the cooperation scenario, e.g. in strengthening regional building culture or in creating innovative shared housing models. In the Lake Constance area, a cooperation model between the different regions around the lake—parts of Germany, Austria, and Switzerland—is targeting the positioning in research, innovation and productivity as well as mobility networks, liveable places, natural capital, and spatial development.4 A particular focus of the towns and cities around the lake can be noted on the recycling of buildings and spaces in urban centres, for strengthening their attractivity and preventing further settlement expansion—e. g., in Lindau, the project of a new urban quarter on the city island (Fig. 3), but also in Bregenz, Konstanz, and Friedrichshafen.

In the second—much smaller—case (Fig. 5), in between Berlin, Hamburg, and Hannover, the region Wendland.Elbe started several regional innovation processes in the framework of a regional climate strategy.5 They are building on strengths of community empowerment and of linkages to metropolis, in cultural and productive dimensions, but also in cooperation with universities. In particular, the yearly Landpartie Festival attracts yearly 60,000 visitors for 600 manifestations set up in a model of bottom-up organisation, linking 71 creative places all over the region, focused on creative culture and design. The area has a long tradition of bio-agriculture, renewable energy production, and forestry. Facing a general process and increasing threat of regional marginalisation and gentrification, and dealing with demographic changes and overall shrinkage of population (up to 1% from 2010 to 2018), innovation processes target regional attractivity. They established facilitating frameworks for staying/returning/new settlers—answering to demands of existing light industry SME and craft enterprises, but also opening up new horizons for creative industries and crucial for the evolvement of communities. These initiatives are linked with questions how to organise new mobility in rural areas and how to set up a housing strategy that faces touristic occupation. Research towards a new spatial strategy already focused on the re-use of post-agricultural building stock and the strengthening of the multifaceted micro-polycentric networks in the area towards a creative approach for circular economy (Schröder, Scaffidi 2019).

A Design Paradigm

Facing the increasingly diverse contextual challenges and the demand for more strategic, more adaptive, and more integrative processes for transition, that are also able to bundle, sustain, and guide social innovation and entrepreneurial initiatives, innovation in urbanistic tools will need to be accelerated. Approaches such as integrative process-design, pro-active context-building, and conceptual narratives (Schröder, Carta, Ferretti, Lino 2018) combine bottom-up and participatory approaches, the active use of territorial capital, and the qualities of liveable spaces into processual and strategic innovations that connect across scales and link to other disciplines. The aim of a new and dynamic interaction between energies of people, of places, of nature, and of ideas calls for revision of tools. E. g., the construction of scenarios can support shared visions and a specific notion of branding in territorial scale (REGIOBRANDING:6 Schröder, Ferretti 2018); collaborative urbanism targeting advanced networks and models of co-creation and social innovative initiatives can support expressions of Local Resilience (Lino 2018). Design Thinking—deployed to shape ideas to become a practical and attractive part of life—as creative methodology of the interaction between creativity and community feedback can enhance processes of territorial innovation (Schröder 2020): by opening up new modes to read potentials, to envision transformation pathways, to reconnect communities with flows and constellations, to draw shared strategies and processes for transition towards sustainability.