Sustainability Scenarios and Sustainable Urban Development

How can cities reduce their resource consumption and greenhouse gas emissions by factor 10 in the next four decades? And: Who can do something in order to reach that goal?
Since spring 2010 the PhD Collegium "Sustainability scenarios and sustainable urban development" has been established to pursue these two core questions. Several junior scientists research for this purpose. Their dissertation projects will cope with questions of sustainable urban development, urban transport and urban energy supply.

The central issue of the PhD Collegium is the hypothesis that the involving requirements of climate change (mitigation and adaptation) and an increasing shortage of fossil energy sources are going to lead to structural changes of dimensions which are hardly imaginable today. Quite a lot of it plays a role in the context of urban development.

E.g. until 2050 Germany has to cut down its carbon-dioxide-emissions by at least 80-95 per cent in comparison to the base-level in 1990. In addition it can be assumed that the peak of the world-wide oil production could be reached in the next five to ten years - perhaps it may have reached already. Similar tendencies of shortage are also given with other resources. The increasing use of resources puts the environment under an increasing pressure and leads to global rejections.

Because of climate protection requirements and a shortage of resources it is necessary to remodel social developments from a fossil-central towards a solar-decentralized development path. Key words for this task are "course change" and "transition process".

Up to now, there is only little knowledge about the importance of such a transition for the citizens. Also there is hardly any research on the question of how several stakeholders in cities can contribute to such a fundamental transition of cities. The central question is: Who can do something for it?

So far, there are hardly any analyses and holistic concepts in urban development to manage this challenge. The PhD Collegium starts from this point. Following dissertation projects are located within this framework:

• System conditions of technical infrastructure in change: Transition Scenarios until 2050 with Wuppertal-Vohwinkel as an example; researcher: Marie Gröne, geographer; funded by Vera and Georg Spahn-Foundation
• Citizens ticket - a new approach of public transport marketing with Wuppertal as an example; researcher: Gregor Waluga, geographer; funded by Vera and Georg Spahn-Foundation
• Promotion of Pedelecs and electric bicycles as CO2 emission-free urban public transport with Wuppertal as an example; researcher: Frederic Rudolph, planner; funded by Vera and Georg Spahn-Foundation
• Activating the roof landscape as contribution towards a sustainable urban development with Wuppertal-Vohwinkel as an example; researcher: Stefan Wernersbach, planner; funded by Vera and Georg Spahn-Foundation
• Urban Mining Governance - buildings and infrastructure as secondary resources with Wuppertal as an example; researcher: Rainer Lucas, economist; funded by Association of the Friends of the Wuppertal Institute

These five dissertation projects are part of an interdisciplinary and integrative approach with the example of the urban region Wuppertal in the PhD Collegium. Thereby the general questions of the PhD Collegium are picked up and processed specifically for particular subjects.

Additionally there are further dissertation projects dealing with different spaces of reference:

• Options for action, implementation and conditions for success of local policies for an expansion of renewable energies: Good-practice-examples a comparison; researcher: Philipp Schönberger, political scientist; funded by the German Environment Foundation (Deutsche Bundesstiftung Umwelt)
• Political Ecology of urban infrastructures in the field of waste management; researcher: Henning Wilts, economist; in cooperation with the PhD Collegium "Political Ecology of urban infrastructures : A comparing research of supply and disposal systems in the urban regions of Frankfurt, Berlin and Ruhr" of Darmstadt University of Technology; funded by Hans Böckler Foundation

The PhD Collegium "Sustainability scenarios and sustainable urban development" is part of the PhD Programme of the Wuppertal Institute.
The PhD Collegium is funded by the Vera and Georg Spahn Foundation and runs in cooperation with Bergische University Wuppertal. It is managed by Prof. Dr.-Ing. Oscar Reutter.