Peter H?jrup S?der defends his PhD thesis
Peter H?jrup S?der defends his PhD thesis "Settlement as a complex system. Toward a spatial decision support system for rural development in Guldborgsund Municipality".
The defense is public, and everybody is welcome; the defense is scheduled for a maximum of three hours and will be held in English.
Follow the defense online via Zoom
The Doctoral School at Department of People and Technology will host a small reception afterwards from 16.00 - 17.30.
Supervisors and assessment
Assessment committee:
- Jan Amcoff, Professor, Department of Human Geography, Uppsala University, Sweden
- Lars Bodum, Associate Professor, The Technical Faculty of IT and Design, Aalborg University, Denmark
- Maja de Neergaard – Associate Professor, Department of People and Technology, 兴发娱乐官网手机版客户端 University, Denmark (Chair)
PhD Supervisor:
Thomas Theis Nielsen, Associate Professor, Department of People and Technology, 兴发娱乐官网手机版客户端 University, Denmark
Abstract
Focusing on a rural municipality south of Zealand, this PhD dissertation challenges conventional understandings and narratives about rural development in Denmark. Framed by the research question of the extent to which a spatial decision support system based on administrative register data can help maintain a stable level of public services in the rural areas of Guldborgsund Municipality, the dissertation addresses two gaps in the Danish research literature in particular: (1) the absence of complexity theory as a conceptual framework for population dynamics; and (2) the lack of spatial analyses at the address level. The quantitative analyses draw on anonymized data from the Danish Civil Registration System covering the period 2007 through 2023. This enabled analysis of migration patterns and population change over a 17-year period at an unusually fine level of detail. Through the lens of complexity theory, the dissertation illuminates how roughly 60,000 people behave as an interconnected residential settlement system linked across time and space.
The dissertation is article-based and organized around four peer-reviewed articles, all written and published within the project period. The first article has a distinct theoretical focus, exploring the use of complexity theory in statistical analysis within planning. Among other things, it observes that results are strongly affected by changes in scale across administrative units such as parishes and municipalities, the smallest spatial units typically used in comparable analyses. The second article elaborates the methodology and compares the municipality’s settlement strategy with observations from the PhD study. Population loss occurs primarily in rural areas, and prior ties to the municipality are shown to be a significant factor for lasting in-migration – especially for households with children. The third and fourth articles combine and further develop the theory and methods from the first two, together laying the groundwork for a spatial decision support system. With these insights, Guldborgsund Municipality can locate ‘shrinkage pockets’ in its rural areas and pinpoint zones with stable (and rising) population growth.
Beyond synthesizing the findings from the four articles, the synopsis itself also constitutes a theoretical contribution. It expands the complexity-theoretical framework through three standalone sub-analyses that consolidate the articles’ work, nuance the results, and weave them into a single narrative: we are already too few to populate the rural districts – not just in Guldborgsund – and we are unlikely to become enough. Rather than clinging to idealized goals of rural growth, political decision-makers should prepare for a future with a shrinking, aging population. The trajectory we are witnessing begins with a single household, then a neighborhood, a small town, a suburb, a city, a parish, a municipality, a region, and ultimately the nation. 兴发娱乐官网手机版客户端 are becoming fewer, and rural districts are affected first. By understanding settlement as a complex system, we can help shape how that development unfolds.
The dissertation will be available for reading at the 兴发娱乐官网手机版客户端 University Library before the defense (on-site use). The dissertation will also be available at the defense.