Volume 76 (2018): Edition 4 (August 2018)

This article deals with reasons and spatial distribution patterns of the choice of location of undergraduates and students and the connected spatial impacts on the regional development, especially in rural regions in Germany. First, the international state of research is presented for the choice of location of students on different points of time of their educational path. An analysis of regional statistical data linked to the finding that higher education institutions in rural regions are not able to create the same stock of students as urbanised areas, but rural regions have better chances for economic development in the presence of a higher education institution. The number of students in rural areas with higher education institutions increased even more than in sareas or metropolises. However, the brain drain of highly qualified manpower from rural regions will increase after their years of study. This is caused by a better fitting skill profile in more densely populated areas for highly skilled workforce as well as for the supply of these jobs. Whether these tendencies already start during the transition from the bachelor to master degree will be examined with data from the Justus-Liebig-University Gießen, a university in a rural region. With a view to the future development the hypothesis of the bologna drain is introduced. It implies that the transition from bachelor to master, which did not exist in Germany before the year 2000, locations to study vary a lot in their development and especially rural regions loose in the competition for brilliant minds.

The locations of supermarkets and their effects on existing local suppliers are a continuous source of controversial discussion. In the debate among experts how to measure the effects and what actually defines urban development deficits, an objective and comprehensible foundation is missing. Therefore as part of the program „Nachhaltiges Landmanagement“ („Sustainable land management“) of the Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (Federal Ministry of Research and Education (BMBF)) we developed an application-oriented, GIS-based gravity model, which is placed on the anticipated changes in turnover of existing businesses caused by a new supermarket. The appraisal of impacts is achieved with relatively readily available data, the model should, as a rule, work for Germany as a whole. The results can be used as additional assessment at a very early stage, and should give the discussion in the municipalities a better foundation. This paper outlines the difficulties in the judgement of new food markets. It explains the content and methodological background of the developed model, and finally takes a classification of the results.

In Switzerland, living space consumption per person has been increasing for years. Besides structural causes, the over-consumption of living space is one of the determinants. After theoretical considerations, we first use an empirical model to explain the subjective overconsumption of living space of households, and we include household-, dwelling- and residence-specific determinants in our model. The sample is based on the Swiss Household Panel. Our analyses show that nearly 10 % of the Swiss households live in a dwelling that they consider as too large. These households exhibit statistically significant differences with regard to most determinants of subjective overconsumption of living space in comparison to the rest of the sample. The logit estimations show that mainly older households and single-person households are characterised by the largest subjective overconsumption of living space. In a second step, we propose a method based on conditional probabilities to estimate the subjective overconsumption of living space on the neighbourhood level in a city in case there are no information available on the subjective overconsumption of living space. We use a dataset from the Federal Office of Statistics. Their analyses show that about 6 % of the households in Lucerne consider their dwelling as too large. Furthermore, the different neighbourhoods are characterised by a large heterogeneity. Accordingly, effective measures to address the subjective overconsumption should be implemented on a local level.

Like other urban regions in Europe, Vienna has experienced a pronounced population growth that exceeds any previous assumptions. The study at hand discusses a methodology for a monitoring of the urban region, which was generated to assess these developments in detail. It focuses on a few but crucial indicators, namely: population growth, birth and migration rates, migration flows and building land availability on a small scale. The results show that the strong population growth is predominantly caused by high net migration gains from other parts of Austria and foreign countries. These gains have been increasing recently and focused mainly on the core city. Hence, there is a growing tendency towards (re-)urbanisation. In contrast, the numbers of suburbanisation migration are stagnating, although at a high level. Therefore, different phases of urban development can be observed at the same time, though their impact is changing. In addition, a responsible handling of the remaining land reserves and a higher building density are necessary in the future to provide housing for further population growth in the urban region. Future monitoring projects could build upon the following recommendations: First, small-scale and register-based data should be increasingly used for the analysis of urban regions. Second, scenarios for the future development are an effective method to illustrate the results. Third, such findings should be embedded increasingly in an international context, both from a planning and a scientific perspective.

Mineral resources are used in virtually all branches of production. The extraction of resources is competing with other land uses and often meets little acceptance. Spatial planning plays an important role not only for precautionary land use for resource extraction, but also for long-term securing of resource potentials. The spatial planning involves a weighing against other land uses and functions in the sense of a sustainable regional development. This paper looks into the question how the statewide and regional planning meets this requirement with regard to non-energetic mineral resources. The results of polls and plan analyses show massive variations in the regulatory scope for securing resources in the statewide and regional plans. This serves as a basis on which solutions are highlighted for an adequate consideration of securing resources in spatial planning. These relate to the methodical challenges in the weighing process as well as the design of the spatial planning toolsets.