Cross-border regional economic development

The research project deals with regional development in the non-formally constituted, predominantly rural "Region der Mitte", which is located in the border region between Hesse, Lower Saxony and North Rhine-Westphalia. The project focusses on the questions of how regional development is understood in the border region, what challenges arise for regional development due to the federal state borders and how these challenges can be overcome.

Rural regions between several urban centres in different federal states are confronted with particular challenges in regional development. As rural areas, these regions have to deal with the challenges of socio-economic structural change that is increasingly focused on urban centres. As areas that cross federal state borders, these regions are influenced by different regulations in the various federal states with regard to regional planning and funding programmes and therefore face particular coordination challenges.

Part of the research project is the recording of regional development through a combination of social network analysis and other (qualitative and quantitative) data.