“Change Is the New Normal” – The Spatial Impact of Digitalization

Spring Meeting of the LAG Baden-Württemberg, April 11–12, 2019, Mannheim

The impacts of digitalization on cities, regions, and regional planning are still very difficult to predict—especially when it comes to public services and essential infrastructure.

For this reason, the question of the spatial effects of digitalization was the central theme of the spring meeting of the LAG Baden-Württemberg. The event was designed as a workshop by the ad hoc working group “Spatial Impact of Digitalization” led by Prof. Dirk Engelke (HS Rapperswil, Switzerland).

In addition to presentations on digitalization strategies and governance approaches in municipalities and regions, key challenges of how planning can address digitalization were discussed in depth in a World Café format.

Drivers or Driven? Planning Actors and Digitalization

Christian Specht, First Mayor of the City of Mannheim, opened the workshop with an overview of the digital requirements for urban planning and highlighted the challenges related to data access and data sovereignty.

Franz-Reinhard Habbel, spokesperson of the German Association of Towns and Municipalities, built on this and strongly emphasized the social dimensions and challenges of digitalization. One of the key future tasks for spatial planning and development will be to harness the enormous potential of digitalization for public services and to strategically develop locations—for example, as multifunctional spaces that can evolve into vibrant neighborhoods.

This challenge was a central point of discussion throughout the workshop, as perspectives on the digital competence of spatial planning actors vary significantly. Marco Brunzel, Head of the Department of Digitalization and E-Government at Metropolregion Rhein-Neckar GmbH, presented the “Digital Model Region Rhein-Neckar” as a promising regional approach to supporting infrastructure development in a digitally coordinated way across diverse stakeholders. 

Prof. Annette Spellerberg (TU Kaiserslautern) and Ms. Hangebruch (TU Dortmund) contributed impulses from similar working groups of the LAGs in Hesse/Rhineland-Palatinate/Saarland and North Rhine-Westphalia. Afterwards, the results of an online survey on the spatial impacts of digitalization were discussed in a World Café format.

The participants discussed these issues at three round tables, focusing on the themes of “Governance through Planning,” “Data Availability in Planning Processes,” and “Public Services and Digitalization.”