The ILS – Research Institute for Regional and Urban Development is a non-university urban research institute which explores the dynamics and diversity of urban change in international comparison. The aim of the application-oriented basic research is a better understanding of recent urbanisation processes, in order to gain inter- and transdisciplinary insights into the socially, ecologically and economically sustainable transformation and design of urban spaces at different spatial scales. This happens in active dialogue with practitioners, policy-makers and societal stakeholders.
ILS is a founding member of the Johannes-Rau-Forschungsgemeinschaft. We actively participate in the 5R Network of the Spatial Research Institutes of the Leibniz Association as well as in other regional, national and international cooperations and networks, and consider us an important node in spatial scientific research in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, and Europe.
The main focus of the ILS in the RURALIZATION project is the identification, analysis and evaluation of trends for rural areas as well as the empirical investigation of the target group of younger people and their future expectations in Work Package 4. The ILS team will also carry out research in the German context on success stories of young farmers and newcomers to agriculture and the agricultural land market.
ILS staff working on RURALIZATION is Kati Volgmamm and Florian Ahlmeyer.
Kati Volgmamm is a researcher of the ILS – Research Institute for Regional and Urban Development at the research group ‚mobilities and space‘. She has graduated in spatial planning (2007) and received her PhD at the Faculty of Spatial Planning (2013) at TU Dortmund University. She teaches in Bachelor and Master Degree. The main fields of her research interests are trends in spatial development, e.g. metropolisation, regionalisation, polycentrality and urban-rural relations e.g. drivers of people and firms moving from town to country and vice versa. She participated in several research projects, e.g. the focus project ‚trends and drivers of urban spatial development‘.
Florian Ahlmeyer is also an ILS-researcher at the research group ‚mobilities and space‘. He has graduated in Geography (2013) at Philipps University of Marburg. Since 2015 he works at the ILS. At the beginning he worked for the externally funded project “Accessibility in rural areas”, afterwards he was a PhD scholarship holder and since June 2019 he works for the EU-Project “RURALIZATION”. The main fields of his research are Accessibilities, Services of general interest (SIG) and rural areas in Germany and Europe. Beside the work in the project he is writing his cumulative dissertation about “Modelling accessibility in rural spaces”.
