The Other Side of the Table

Abstract

This thesis has two main subject areas: 1) Peripheries/rural areas, more specifically those that have been in decline for a long time. Their problems have recently gained another level of urgency with the territorially-bound emergence of populism in European democracies. The specific expression this typology takes within the region state of Brandenburg, Germany forms the background in front of which the main project of this work unfolds. 2) The food system, and particularly agriculture. Under the current paradigm, it is regarded as fundamentally unsustainable. The main goal of the thesis is to understand how to transform this system, regionally and locally to begin with, into something that strongly reduces its negative externalities on all scale levels, while also providing means of re-development for the aforementioned rural peripheries. The thesis is based on the idea that a regionalised food system, built on an ecologically responsible agriculture, can provide such a project. Given the scale of Brandenburg and the scope of a MSc thesis, it cannot aim to provide a design for the region. Rather, its main goal is to develop a working method for the development of such a system, thought from the side of Brandenburg: a) in a spatial manner from local to regional level; b) related to governance, by exploring necessary changes to higher level policy and co-creation possibilities on local to regional level.