Helena Cermeño Mediavilla
Max Langner
Mobility and communication infrastructures are central to how regions live through structural transformation. In Lusatia, Germany’s most lignite-dependent region, the end of coal brings not only economic and social challenges but also urgent questions about how transport and digital infrastructures can support new forms of regional life. Without sufficient infrastructures, risks such as mobility poverty and digital divides may deepen, while successful reconfiguration can open pathways for economic diversification, social cohesion, and sustainable futures. This case invites participants to think through Lusatia as a pilot site of post-coal transformation — and to do so from the Ruhr Valley, another region marked by coal’s legacy and its infrastructures. Although Lusatia’s dispersed, small-town structure differs markedly from the Ruhr’s dense metropolitan polycentricity, the Ruhr still offers experience-based lessons from decades of hard coal decline. These include the risks of fragmented transport planning across municipalities, the uneven rollout of digital infrastructures, and the challenge and potential of re-branding infrastructures as future-oriented.
By studying these experiences, Lusatia can anticipate similar governance and perception issues, even if the spatial and demographic conditions differ. Together, we will ask: (1) What conditions and disparities in mobility and digital infrastructures shape everyday life in Lusatia? (2) What kinds of infrastructural changes (conversion, expansion, dismantling) are needed in coal-exit-driven transformation? (3) What challenges and opportunities emerge for planners, municipalities, and regional actors and how can policy agendas support them? Our common goal: In a one-day collaborative analysis, participants will work across STS and practice to identify what mobility and digital infrastructures do in transformation processes, how to conceptualize their role in just and sustainable transitions, and what lessons can travel between Lusatia, the Ruhr, and other (post-)coal regions. A possible outcome is the co-production of a short set of guiding questions and principles that can support municipalities and policymakers in addressing mobility and digital infrastructures during structural transformation. The aim is to leave participants with concrete questions, tools, and connections they can build on in their own work.