INTEGRAL

Urban-Rural-Plus Joint project:

Integrated concept for mineral waste and land management for the sustainable development of urban-rural land use relations 

The research project "INTEGRAL - focuses on a selected material flow of the circular economy as well as its influence on the design of a sustainable land management in order to develop urban-rural synergies within disparate developments. The example region in the project is the city of Dresden and the district of Meißen.

In accordance with the demographic and structural development for rural areas, more mineral waste will be generated in the future due to regional conversion measures. These will only be processed to a small extent, since there are only a few possible applications as RC building materials in rural areas. The opposite trend is emerging in growing urban areas - especially in large cities. These trends are to be used synergetically: the research idea is to use high-quality processed recycled building materials from rural regions as building materials in urban areas in order to keep land use as low as possible - a joint system innovation for mutual benefit.

Waste and recycling management as part of the provision of public services focuses not only on saving resources but also on preserving natural soil functions. As an example, mineral waste fractions (as part of the anthropogenic stockpile) will be dealt with within the joint project in order to demonstrate their potential for the sustainable design of city-land-use relationships.

Based on this, the conceptual aim is to sustainably protect primary resources by substituting them with recycled construction materials (RC construction materials) and to use existing sealed areas in the sense of unused industrial areas or brownfield sites for decentralized and mobile processing technology for construction waste.

To this end, the collaborative project brings together four research institutions, two actors from the municipal and regional level, and one company from the field of construction waste recycling in order to combine diversified competencies and interdisciplinary approaches in the fields of circular economy and land management. The interdependencies between the district of Meißen and the state capital Dresden, which were evaluated in a site analysis, are used as an example for the development of information- and knowledge-based decision-making principles in the form of a decision support tool. Against the background of transferability, a tool is developed for urban and rural actors to manage mineral waste fractions in the cycle in a resource-saving and efficient way in the future and to avoid land interventions. The solution approaches to be developed and the decision support tool will be transferred into practice in the subsequent implementation and stabilization phase and further developed into an accepted procedure.

The joint project will run for three years. It is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF).

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