Übung: Social-Ecological Systems 7b - Details

Übung: Social-Ecological Systems 7b - Details

Allgemeine Informationen

Veranstaltungsname Übung: Social-Ecological Systems 7b
Untertitel Brownfields as Resources for Urban and Regional Resilience
Veranstaltungsnummer GEO.08554
Semester WiSe 2026/27
Aktuelle Anzahl der Teilnehmenden 4
erwartete Teilnehmendenzahl 10
Heimateinrichtung Nachhaltige Landschaftsentwicklung
Veranstaltungstyp Übung in der Kategorie Offizielle Lehrveranstaltungen
Nächster Termin Montag, 12.10.26, 09:00 - 12:00 Uhr SR 4 3.21 [VSP 4](Geowiss.)
Teilnehmende Masterstudierende
Lehrsprache(n) Englisch
Studiengänge (für) Msc IAS-GCG
SWS 4
ECTS-Punkte 5

Kommentar/Beschreibung

This research-oriented master’s seminar invites students to explore brownfield sites as a distinctive and often overlooked form of urban and peri-urban open space. Rather than viewing brownfields simply as abandoned or underused land, we will investigate their potential to support social and physical resilience at both urban and regional scales. This includes questions of climate adaptation, ecological regeneration, public accessibility, land-use pressures, institutional barriers and future transformation pathways.

The main empirical focus will be the Mitteldeutsches Braunkohlerevier, a region undergoing profound post-industrial transformation. Brownfield sites are particularly important here: they embody the consequences of economic restructuring but can also become resources for responding to environmental, social and spatial challenges. The seminar will examine how these sites might contribute to a more resilient regional future in a period marked by overlapping crises and continuing structural change. Comparative insights from Ostrava and the wider Moravian-Silesian Region in Czechia will broaden the discussion and help students recognise both shared challenges and context-specific approaches in European transformation regions.

The seminar combines regular in-person meetings with supervised research undertaken by students between sessions. Working in small groups, students will select and characterise brownfield case studies, review relevant research from Germany and elsewhere in Europe, and identify the governance actors connected to their sites. They will then use social network analysis and the Net-Map approach to investigate relationships among actors and consider how these relationships influence resilient transformation.

Building on this analysis, students will help design a survey addressing key challenges and opportunities associated with the selected brownfields. They will work with both closed- and open-ended questions, learn how to code and analyse qualitative responses in MAXQDA, and present their findings using text and diagrams. In the final phase, the groups will translate their evidence into practical policy and spatial-planning recommendations. An introduction to visual thinking will support the preparation of a concise, engaging policy brief, which will be discussed with peers and presented at the end of the seminar.

The course offers an opportunity to gain hands-on experience with research design, governance analysis, qualitative methods and science–policy communication while contributing ideas to a highly relevant regional transformation debate.