Good luck! What comes after coal?

There are few regions in Germany that have been shaped by such fundamental landscape transformations as Lausitz, where large-scale landscapes have been used for more than a hundred years to extract lignite. Former coal mining areas have transformed into artificial lake landscapes, recreational areas for tourist use, as well as wind farms and other facilities for generating renewable energy. The energy and landscape change is accompanied by an enormous structural transformation, linked to significant population migration and an aging demographic.

Since the announcement of Germany's planned coal phase-out by 2038, Lausitz is facing another upheaval, triggering an intense discussion about the region's transformation and development possibilities. How can landscape transformation be socially and ecologically sustainable? What can be learned from previous processes of renaturation or recultivation? How can landscapes be preserved as places of home and identification while allowing for experimentation?

Given the apparent fatigue of politics and civil society regarding the impending change, visionary planning concepts can provide important impulses to draw attention to unused potentials and highlight positive development perspectives. The contribution reflects on the results and the interdisciplinary planning process of students in spatial planning and architecture at the TU Wien. They have developed diverse future ideas for Lausitz in the year 2100, responding to questions of landscape, climate, energy, and structural change.