Understanding Urban Change, Shaping Urban Change

ILS researcher Thomas Klinger, together with other colleagues (Jutta Deffner, Martin Lanzendorf, Katharina Manderscheid, Henrike Rau, Lisa Ruhrort), published an article in the GAIA – Ecological Perspectives for Science and Society. Since 2017, the German Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space (then BMBF, since 2025 BMFTR) has been supporting transformative transdisciplinary research with its Sustainable Urban Mobility research agenda. The agenda aims to advance systemic mobility research for the social-ecological transformation of the mobility system. This article systematically reviews projects funded between 2017 and 2025. The results show that the agenda has successfully supported many new projects that meet the goals of the research agenda. However, some research areas remain that have not yet been adequately addressed, while new challenges have also emerged over the past ten years. Opportunities to transfer new practices to other locations and institutions, and to scale them up, have yet to be realized. 👉 https://doi.org/10.14512/gaia.35.S1.12. Further current selected papers can be found here.

ILS researcher Stefano Cozzolino, together with Christian Lamker from the University of Groningen and Fabio Bayro Kaiser from the RWTH Aachen University, published a special issue of ‘Transactions’. Time is a crucial yet often underexplored dimension of spatial planning. This special issue followed up a 2024 conference in Aachen, organised by the AESOP Thematic Group ‘Planning and Complexity’, and brings together perspectives that connect time and complexity as fundamental dimensions of urban change and planning. Its central contribution is to show how engaging explicitly with temporal dynamics can enrich complexity-informed planning, particularly under conditions of uncertainty and non-linearity. The issue explore this topic through three interconnected dimensions: sensing, planning, and designing. https://doi.org/10.24306/TrAESOP.2026.02.002. Further current selected papers can be found here.

ILS researchers Angelika Münter and Peter Stroms-van der Vlugt, together with colleagues from TU Dortmund University, have published an article in the Journal of Environmental Policy & Planning. Drawing on the case of the Bonn/Rhein-Sieg/Ahrweiler region, it examines how shared narratives shape the design of inter-municipal policy instruments for sustainable land-use management. Building on theories of collaborative governance, the paper shows that collaboratively designed soft policy instruments, such as a regional density concept, establish a shared knowledge base and enable more evidence-informed discussion of planning conflicts. They create opportunities to coordinate responses to the tension between housing provision and reducing land take across the region. However, inter-municipal competition, a lack of binding commitments and reliance on project-based funding constrain implementation, which remains dependent on voluntary local ratification. Without institutionalized regional capacities and mechanisms for sharing costs and benefits, jointly developed knowledge does not automatically translate into collective action. https://doi.org/10.1080/1523908X.2026.2740012. Further current selected papers can be found here.