Methodologies in Metropolitan Research

The central challenge of inter- and transdisciplinary metropolitan research is the understanding of common research questions, concepts and methods that facilitate the productive cooperation across disciplines and departmental cultures. Aside from common spatial references (research on certain metropolitan spaces), social challenges that require cooperative research, such as climate protection and adaptation, demographic change, and migration, play a central role in our theoretical and methodological considerations.

Forschungsfragen

  • How can quantitative and qualitative research approaches be reasonably combined?
  • What are the possibilities and limits of the differing modeling processes of complex systems (inter alia agent-based modeling, genetic algorithms, stochastic optimization, cartographic visualization, verbal models, everyday models and mental maps) and to what degree are these models complimentary?
  • With which methods can one model/scale/make manageable urban complexity and at what cost?
  • How do differing approaches – both theoretical and practical – measure up and where are the boundaries?
  • How can inter- and transdisciplinary metropolitan research be organized by paradigmatic concepts (“complexity”)?

For further information or if you are interested in collaborating with the research field Methodologies in Metropolitan Research, please feel free to contact our coordination office: metropolenforschung_at_uaruhr.de