Chairs at ISR

The Institute for Urban and Regional Planning (ISR) is divided into seven Subject Departments, which are together responsible for teaching, research and organisation.

• Building, Planning and Environmental Law
• Urban Renewal and Sustainable Development
• Heritage Conservation
• Urban and Regional Development – Local, Regional and Federal State Planning
• Planning Theory and Urban-Regional Policy Analysis
• Urban Design and Urban Development
• Urban and Regional Economics

Additional external chairs [1] from Faculty VI as well as additional professorships [2] are integrated in the educational offer of Bachelor’s and Master’s degree programmes in Urban and Regional Planning. The ISR is also associated with these chairs:

• Urban Development and Urban Mobility (extraordinary chair in cooperation with DLR)
• Urban Transformation in International Perspective (extraordinary chair in cooperation with IRS)

The subject matter in research and teaching is made up of the basics of public law, in particular construction, planning and environmental law. The secure handling of the normative frameworks and of the legal instruments is a basic requirement for working successfully as an urban and regional planner. Extensive knowledge of building and planning law is required for managing planning processes and for the development of several plans. The chair’s courses deal with building, planning and environmental law, local and supra-local planning law, legal instruments of urban regeneration and urban development, the legal frameworks of urban planning and of building regulations, sectoral planning law and planning law in international comparison.
Building, Planning and Environmental Law [4]

The department addresses local planning on a scale between urban design and regional overall planning. In the field of urban development and renewal of settlement units many different spatial layers and typologies are taken into account. It is about cities – differentiated by size (small-, medium-, and large sized towns), districts and quarters, villages and rural spaces, agglomerations and metropolitan regions. Key functions are controlling of processes of urban extension, urban renewal and conversion and the development of planning concepts. The spatial field of activity is set in context with the basic conditions influencing space like demographic or climate change.
Urban Renewal and Sustainable Development [6]

Heritage conservation represents the cultural component within the engineering-oriented degree programmes in Urban and Regional Planning. Sustainable protection of cultural and historical resources requires historical awareness, without which orientation for the present is just as unviable as guiding principles for the future. Heritage conservation tasks involve the survey and assessment of heritage, the integration of values of heritage protection into planning processes, the development and negotiation of exemplary concepts for the appropriate conservation and development of heritage at the urban and regional level. The chair is based on an extensive understanding of ‘heritage’, which includes heritage sites alongside individual buildings and historic cultural landscapes.
Heritage Conservation [8]

The chair of Local, Regional and Federal State Planning deals with formal and informal instruments of integrated spatial planning from the local level to the European level. Their relationships to sectoral planning are considered, as well. The formal instruments include the binding intersectoral plans (local: zoning plans; supra-local: regional plans and federal state development plans or programmes) as well as the principles of Federal Government’s spatial planning, which form the guidance for the Federal Government’s policies and which are to be further specified in federal state and regional plans. Informal tools available include e.g. planning and spatial planning principles as well as regional conferences, urban networks, as well as spatial planning and project-based regional development pilot schemes. On a sectoral planning level the following issues are handled among others: waste disposal, mining, soil conservation, heritage conservation, energy, forestry, emission control, agriculture, nature conservation, transport, defence and water management.
Urban and Regional Development – Local, Regional and Federal State Planning [10]

Planning theory is a critical-reflective perspective on urban and regional planning as social-political domain of agency. Planning theory thus conceived relies on a broad, trans-disciplinary understanding of what ‘urban and regional planning’ is. It deals not only with measures related to defined ‘bounded’ spaces – ‘spatial planning’ in the narrow sense – but also with practices, discourses and social relations which contribute to the social construction and social meaning of ‘space’. An important aspect of this understanding is a policy approach, according to which scientific understanding and normative orientation are not primarily pursued through the analysis of formal structures and procedures, but through critical-interpretive inquiry into concrete practices, interactions and processes.

According to this understanding, planning theory can take a mediating position in both topical and epistemological perspective between specific areas of knowledge related to spatial development. Its goal is promoting a transdisciplinary reflection on socio-spatial processes and their political dimension.

Research and teaching at the chair focus on the following topics: planning, governance and emerging socio-spatial configurations; new governance arenas and social interaction processes; urban development and planning and social conflict; innovation in urban democracy practices; transformations in territoriality in trans-scalar perspective; trans-nationalisation, Europeanisation and post-nationality in spatial policy.
Planning Theory and Urban-Regional Policy Analysis [12]

The Department of Urbanism and Habitat deals with the interface between architecture, city and regional planning on one hand, and the the physical shape of the city on the other. In light of the far reaching changes transformations of cities and regions brought about by climate change, socio-cultural and demographic changes and new technological developments, spatial and processual knowledge should be combined in a sustainable, livable city development. Urban design is taught as an „act of shaping“ as well as a process of negotiation between the diverse requirements and visions of the diferent actors. Besides conceptual design skills, communicative and analytical competency and tools for representation will also be taught.
Urban Design and Urban Development [14]

The chair of Urban and Regional Economics is responsible for the economic part of education in the degree programmes in Urban and Regional Planning at TU Berlin. At the centre of its´ science is an application-oriented, spatially-focussed basic education in economics. Along with the introduction to micro- and macroeconomics, regional economics and location factors, housing economy, planning calculation, financial planning and public budgeting are topics of courses regularly offered by the chair. The research focus of the chair lies in the subject fields of real estate economics, structural changes in the economy, and time geography research.
Urban and Regional Economics [16]

Urban spaces are global laboratories for changes in mobility. Many new trends in mobility are developing. In the inner-city neighbourhoods of European cities, public transport and bicycle transport are experiencing high growth rates, the cycling infrastructure is being expanded, and new options such as car and bike sharing are being developed. Elsewhere, such as in the huge metropolises of South America or Asia, innovative transport concepts are being implemented, such as efficient express bus lines, the expansion of bicycle path networks or urban cable cars. Conversely, the character of urban spaces significantly influences the urban traffic situation. Areas of urban sprawl with lower densities favour motorised private transport. Mixed and compact urban structures, on the other hand, encourage pedestrians and cyclists. The courses offered by the chair of Urban Development and Urban Mobility focus on the connections between mobility needs, the availability of urban mobility, and urban spatial structures. Theoretical explanatory approaches are combined with empirical knowledge about current developments in cities worldwide.
Urban Development and Urban Mobility [18]

Research at the chair of Urban Transformation in International Perspective focusses on the topics of migration and urban development. In cooperation between IRS Erkner and TU Berlin the chair will develop a research specialisation in the fields of ‘urban planning and development dynamics of cities undergoing structural change’, ‘planning tools and policies as well as governing processes dealing with spatial transformation processes’, and ‘socio-spatial differentiation processes in city neighbourhoods, cities and city regions’ with particular attention to issues surrounding urban regeneration in an international context. A focus here will be on the interplay of structural changes, socio-spatial polarisation and peripheralisation as well as changed representations of urban spaces.
Urban Transformation in International Perspective [20]