Urban regeneration as a collaborative effort – strategic responses to decline in East Germany

Based on the research undertaken so far, early responses to urban decline usually involved pragmatic physical redevelopments of some exposed inner-city brownfields and derelict infrastructures. Different impacts on socio-economic and political restructuration, on the one hand, highlighted origins and advancements of the phenomenon of urban decline as highly context and location specific. Furthermore, often associated with combating the trend in decline were diverse interests and preferences of a number of actors. As K. Emerson et al. pointed out, the principle of collaborative, cross-boundary governance has the potential not only to “generate impacts and adaptations across the systems”, but also “to carry out a public purpose that could not otherwise be accomplished”. In contrast to other western countries where the state traditionally played a less important role in urban planning, since the early 2000s, the German Federal government has actively dealt with the problem of extreme population loss and urban decline in accordance with the specifics of its planning system.