Transdisciplinarity Field Research Training (TRFT) Final Report: Sustainable Resilient Communities: The Case of Langau, Austria

There is ample availability of research and studies that focus on sustainability in cities and urban policies that is also directed by UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, number 11 aiming at sustainable cities and communities. This report shifts this dominant focus by attempting to add to the body of research that highlights the need and strategies for sustainability in small towns and rural areas. This research applies a condensed version of the Transdisciplinarity Field Research Training to the case of Langau, a town of 700 people situated on the border of Austria to Czech Republic. The research is aligned to seek orientations to the guiding question: “How can the community actors of Langau improve the adaptive capacity of its social infrastructure for the next 20 years?” The project was conducted in 6 phases: comprehending theory, development of guiding question and system model, contacting stakeholders, preparation, stakeholder conference and analysis and reporting. A transdisciplinarity process was applied for the first five phases of this process while the SVIDT method involving only the facilitators was used for analysis and evaluations. The result of these applications and processes led the team with the 128 scenarios of which the facilitators chose three as most plausible: health crisis, societal breakdown and economic downturn. It was deduced that Langau is most vulnerable to an economic downturn (19%) and least vulnerable to a health crisis (6%) while it has the highest adaptive capacity to deal with a societal breakdown and the least adaptive capacity against the health crisis scenario. Following this, the facilitators outlined seven interventions for Langau to build its capacity to adapt to various threats over the next 20 years: i) Increased investment in community nurse projects to attract further nurses ii) Building a small healthcare facility through regional initiatives to serve Langau and neighbouring towns iii) Improving infrastructure to attract more remote workers. iv) Improving infrastructure to attract more tourists. v) Incentives for new businesses starting in Langau. vi) Grassroot level community initiatives on environmental regeneration. vii) Training and investment into resilience measures against climate change