Reimagining rural downtowns - Zellerndorf provides a framework for architecture and spatial planning students to work together in teams to develop urban planning designs, concepts for public spaces and transformation strategies for rural centres. The project deals with the planning challenges of the Lower Austrian municipality of Zellerndorf in a practical way. The aim is to raise awareness of cross-thematic and cross-scale design and planning approaches.

In interdisciplinary teams, the students will develop urban planning designs for one of three selected locations (railway station, education campus, old building yard area) in the winter semester 2024/25, which respond to specific challenges and are embedded in the overarching Zellerndorf 2050 development strategy of ARGE Zellerndorf. Based on the analysis of the circumstances and defined objectives, development alternatives are prepared in such a way that changes become apparent and the assessment of the effects is simplified. The extent to which AI-supported visualisation methods are suitable for communicating urban development plans is also being tested. In terms of content, topics such as climate change, technological and demographic dynamics (influx, vacancies, mobility transition) and the quality of life in rural communities were highlighted, discussed and integrated into the concepts.

The newspaper publication is available Open Access, opens an external URL in a new window [de | pdf | 124 KB].

The study project is a cooperation between the research areas Local Planning, Transportation System Planning and simlab, opens an external URL in a new window.