RU5903 Sustainable Rurbanity: Resources, Society, and Regulatory Systems - 2025 to 2029

RU5903 Sustainable Rurbanity: Resources, Society, and Regulatory Systems

Human societies constitute complex forms of social organisation as reflected in the diverse settlement patterns that they have produced worldwide over time. City limits draw arbitrary boundaries between an (urban) interior under strong human control and a (rural) exterior more subject to biophysical processes. In reality, both spaces have always been closely linked, and with intensifying use of natural resources, rural-urban transformation processes increasingly become their characteristic determinants. In the Anthropocene, urbanisation and its associated social and ecological changes have reached global dimensions. ‘The rural’ and ‘the urban’ enter into multiple relationships at different scales, becoming an often self-organising entity of great scientific, social, and political significance. The Research Unit 5903 Sustainable Rurbanity addresses this phenomenon, and analyses it as a state of being and becoming constantly re-inventing and restructuring itself. Guided by three overarching hypotheses, 9 projects of the Natural and Social Sciences use rurban areas in India, West Africa, and Morocco to investigate mechanisms of transformation, consequences, and governance processes of rurbanity.

Objectives of sub-project C01 RurbanGeography: Towards a global geography of rurbanity – Developing a set of indicators to map and monitor rurban spaces at University of Göttingen
Working across and beyond the partner countries, project C01 aims at developing a set of indicators to map and evaluate rurbanity qualitatively and quantitatively using geoinformation on the built environment derived from earth observation, modelling and auxiliary sources of open and free geodata. C01 will combine census- and earth observation data with findings from other FOR5903 projects to derive these indicators and create a rurbanity index. Case studies will demonstrate that the new concept is able to reflect interlinkages between urban and rural areas and that the developed methodology can better describe rurban development than methods using neighbourhood relationships between binary, urban and rural, pixels. The seamless scalability of the index from regional to global will be investigated, with the aim that a generalised form of this method can be employed to upscale the approach to continental or global level. C01 will integrate findings from Clusters A and B in a GIS-based synthesis. Moroccan partners with expertise in remote sensing and access to ground observations and regional data sets will be involved in developing the mapping framework, applying the methodology to obtain more detailed regional rurbanity datasets and validating the large scale rurbanity data set.

Persons in charge:
PhD student - NN
Malte Weller
Prof. Dr. Stefan Siebert

Project duration:
1st October 2025 to 30th of September 2029

Funding:
DFG (project number: 548312187)

Website:
RU5903 - Project website

Partners in project C01:
Prof. Dr. Thomas Esch, German Aerospace Center (DLR), Oberpfaffenhofen, D-82234 Weßling
Dr. Safia Loulad, Department of Geology, University of Casablanca, Morocco und DITSL, Witzenhausen
Prof. Dr. Christoph Gornott, Agroecosystem Analysis and Modelling, University of Kassel
Prof. Dr. Hassan Rhinane, Department of Geology, University of Casablanca, Morocco

Partners in the Research Unit
Leibniz University Hannover
University of Vechta
University of Leipzig
FU Berlin
German Aerospace Center (DLR), Weßling
Deutsches Institut für tropische und subtropische Landwirtschaft GmbH, Witzenhausen
14 partner institutions in India, Ghana and Morocco