ABSTRACT

To contribute to a critical discussion on the various scenes, it seemed appropriate to write a book that also considers the voices of the protagonists of those years. Each chapter will be associated with a conversation with a designer, collective member, politician, local administrator, activist or scholar. The last conversation is with Robert Knippschild. He is the head of the Interdisciplinary Centre for Transformative Urban Regeneration in Görlitz. This is a joint research facility of Leibniz Institute of Ecological Urban and Regional Development and Technische Universität Dresden, where Robert Knippschild is a university professor. He is an educated spatial planner and in particular interested in transformation processes within the existing urban and regional fabric. He and his team deal with the question of what and how revitalised small and medium-sized towns and peripheralised regions can contribute to transformation towards sustainability. They follow an interdisciplinary and experimental approach where non-academic stakeholders are involved in the research process, which also comprises the invention and testing of novel approaches and solutions in practice.