Der Anteil des Räumlichen an sozialer Ungleichheit und sozialer Integration: Infrastrukturen und Daseinsvorsorge

For several years now, a new orientation in regional policy has been apparent. The "classic regional compensational policy" is increasingly being replaced by a spatially differentiated one. It has been set up in this way in order, primarily, to strengthen the economic and innovation potential of metropolitan regions. As a result, the previous concept of "equality of living conditions", understood as a similarity in conditions, has been abandoned. This has been made apparent, in particular, by the reduced infrastructure and services of public interest in peripheral rural areas. The idea of broadly equal living conditions was founded on basic assumptions of modernization theory that, in turn, is predicated on the "temporalization of societal differences". If - in contrast to this theory - different societal developments were regarded as having equal rights, it would be possible to contextualize "equal living conditions" beyond equivalency and this would be a base for a new conceptualization of infrastructure and services of public interest in peripheral rural areas.