M. Sc. Josefine Petrenz

Investigation and recommendations for dealing with the desertification of settlements in shrinking areas

¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯

The topic of shrinkage is an everyday issue in municipal and regional spatial planning and development. But shrinkage until there is no more? - Until now, it has remained a taboo subject, and it is only in recent years that it has increasingly been taken up by academics and discussed in public.

The abandonment of settlements because at some point the last inhabitant leaves their building is a difficult topic in Germany. The reason for this lies in the historical development of shrinkage and growth in Germany. Since high industrialization, the focus of development has increasingly been on cities, which were subsequently almost exclusively characterized by growth (BBSR 2015). The resulting spatial disparities and the strong shrinkage processes in rural areas were ignored for a long time. As a result, settlements in which no one lives anymore and the remaining building fabric is decaying without any use have simply not been taken into account, or only insufficiently so. However, in the coming years and decades, this challenge will increasingly have to occupy representatives of politics, planning, administration and society. Against this background, the question arises as to how unused land and buildings should be dealt with and whether, in a densely populated country like Germany, where there is enormous competition for land and a high level of new land take, the imminent desertification of land and the built fabric of a place should be planned.

Land management examines the challenges, conflicts and potentials associated with the use of land and land consumption (Leibniz Center for Agricultural Landscape Research 2013). The latter in particular is taken up and explored in greater depth by the research work. In a densely populated country like Germany, where on average just over 60 hectares of new land is taken up every day, potentially fallow land represents an enormous opportunity to reduce land consumption. This study is not about relocating villages. Rather, the question is whether it makes sense to draw up plans or concepts in the run-up to the desertification of a place that include a strategy for the use of vacant land in the near future. The research work deals with the assessment of how to deal with potential desertification in various case studies. In addition to the necessary differentiation between shrinkage and desertification, it is necessary to identify settlements that have recently become deserted or where it can be assumed that they could be confronted with this situation in the foreseeable future. In addition, the perception of this extreme form of shrinkage should also be questioned.