SPP 1233:  Megacities - Megachallenge: Informal Dynamics of Global Change

• Subject Area: Geosciences
• Term: from 2006 to 2016
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 18161872

Megacities are results of globalisation processes and subject to global ecological, socio-economic, and political change. Reciprocally, they also influence these changes due to their development dynamics. New are not only the up to now unknown dimensions of the quantitative enlargement, the high population concentration, infrastructure, economic power, capital, and decisions, as well as the excessive and partially self-energising acceleration of all the development processes, but above all also the simultaneousness and overlapping of the different processes with mutual feedback. Increasingly, in megacities worldwide more and more processes take place unregulated and informally, which is hardly understood and researched with respect to form, function, and interaction.
Against this background, the Priority Programme of the DFG is aiming at an understanding of the connexion between the informal megaurban processes and the form and effect of global change upon the spatial, social, and institutional relationships in megacities. The processes and interactions of four issues with high development dynamics and social relevance form the main focus of the programme: new governance forms and self-organisation, differentiation of urban economies, dynamics of matter and resource flows, informal settlement development. The two mega-urban areas of Pearl River Delta, China, and Dhaka, Bangladesh, were selected.

• DFG Programme: Priority Programmes
• International Connection: Australia, Bangladesh, China

Projects

• Analysis of Informal Dynamics in Mega Urban Areas - Based on Spatial Structure and Steering Mechanisms Focused on Water in the Pearl River Delta (Applicants Azzam, Rafig ;  Wehrhahn, Rainer )
• Coordination of the Priority Programme (Applicant Kraas, Frauke )
• Differentiated governance in the Pearl River Delta: Fragmentation and flexibility (PRD 1) (Applicants Breitung, Werner ;  Tomba, Luigi )
• Governability, Borders and urban Citizenship: Investigating practices and impacts of spatial differentiation on the governance of mega-urban development in the PRD (Applicants Altrock, Uwe ;  Breitung, Werner ;  Tomba, Luigi )
• Governance in Time: Spatial Differentiation and Temporal Change of Urban Development and Redevelopment in a Context of Multiple Transitions and Informal Growth in the PRD (Applicant Waibel, Michael )
• Informal Dynamics of Agile Firm Organisation in the Greater Pearl River Delta (Applicants Kraas, Frauke ;  Revilla Diez, Javier ;  Soltwedel, Rüdiger )
• Informal settlements, economic and environmental change, and public health - Strategies to improve the quality of life in Dhaka (INNOVATE III) (Applicants Endlicher, Wilfried ;  Hostert, Patrick ;  Krämer, Alexander ;  Kulke, Elmar )
• Multiple Modernities in the Megacity? Economic and Spatial Restructuring of Food Markets in Dhaka / Bangladesh (Applicants von Hauff, Michael ;  Keck, Markus )
• Natural hazards and climate change in Dhaka: future trends, social adaptation and informal dynamics (DhakaHazard) (Applicants Braun, Boris ;  Simmer, Clemens )
• Patterns of migrant community formation in China's megaurban Pearl River Delta (PRD) - linking informal dynamics, governability and global change (Applicants Gransow, Bettina ;  Kraas, Frauke )
• Regional agility in the wake of crisis: Towards a new growth model in the Greater Pearl River Delta? (Applicants Dohse, Dirk ;  Kraas, Frauke ;  Liefner, Ingo ;  Revilla Diez, Javier )
• Satellite-based aerosol mapping over megacities: Development of methodology and application in health and climate related studies (Applicants Ansmann, Albert ;  Krämer, Alexander ;  Wendisch, Manfred )
• Spatial transformation and informal urban governance in Dhaka, Bangladesh (Applicant Baumgart, Sabine )
• The dynamics of peri-urbanization in the Pearl River Delta: Emerging land use patterns, urban villages and their linkages to global mechanisms (Applicants Herrle, Peter ;  Ipsen, Detlev )
• The dynamics of peri-urbanization in the Pearl River Delta: Emerging land use patterns, urban villages and their linkages to global mechanisms (Applicants Herrle, Peter ;  Ipsen, Detlev )
• The Governance of Spatial and Economic Restructuring: Informal Dynamics of the Maturing Mega-City (Applicants Altrock, Uwe ;  Waibel, Michael )
• The mega urban food system of Dhaka/Bangladesh (Applicants Bohle, Hans-Georg ;  Zingel, Wolfgang-Peter )

• Spokesperson: Professorin Dr. Frauke Kraas