Urban Climate Future Lab

Introduction

The ARL – Academy for Territorial Development in the Leibniz Association is part of the interdisciplinary research network Urban Climate Future Lab (UCFL), which is conducting a six-year study on the interactions between urban development and climate change. Alongside the ARL team, researchers from the Technical University of Braunschweig, Leibniz University Hannover, Leuphana University Lüneburg, and the GERICS Climate Service Centre Germany collaborate within the UCFL to develop robust and innovative approaches to the sustainable transformation of urban spaces. While the empirical focus of the research lies in Lower Saxony, the project seeks to generate insights that are transferable to other urban and regional contexts. The UCFL is one of five Climate Future Labs in Lower Saxony and is funded by the zukunft.niedersachsen funding programme of the Lower Saxony Ministry of Science and Culture (Niedersächsisches Ministerium für Wissenschaft und Kultur MWK) and the Volkswagen Foundation.

Integrative Governance for Resilient and Climate Just Spatial Transformation

The sub-project ‘Integrative Governance for Resilient and Climate Just Spatial Transformation (GOV)’, conducted at the ARL, examines urban governance practices that support climate-adapted and socially just spatial development. The project team—comprising Dr Katharina Kapitza (project lead), Dr Barbara Warner (project lead), and Nele Buchholz (doctoral candidate)—investigates how urban governance can be designed to foster inclusive and transformative planning processes while enabling socio-ecological and just climate adaptation.

The project focuses on how different groups of actors—from citizens and civil society initiatives to public administration, political institutions and the private sector—interact, make decisions and negotiate power relations. Alongside an analysis of governance practices in Lower Saxony, it engages with academic debates on equitable climate adaptation and connects these to empirical case studies in Salzgitter, Oldenburg and the district of Vechta.

Methodologically, the GOV sub-project combines qualitative social research methods, including semi-structured interviews, participant observation, and document analysis, with a systematic literature review. Building on these findings, the project team collaborates with partners from academia and professional planning-practice to develop scenarios and co-creative workshop formats aimed at testing and refining integrative governance approaches for climate-adapted and socially just urban development.The ARL's close links with professional practice and research also enable knowledge transfer in planning and administrative practice – the project thus contributes to sustainable urban governance structures in times of climate change.