Population decline and the new nature: Towards experimental “refactoring” in landscape development of post-industrial regions

From an everyday perspective, a consequence of population decline and de-industrialization is the growth of natural areas: less industry and less people means more nature in the future. In the real word, the situation is more complicated. Using the development of a new lake district as a successor of brown coal industry and strip mining in the southern parts of the city of Leipzig (Germany) as a touchstone, this paper will explore some of the challenges and future opportunities for the design of ‘new nature’ in post-industrial landscapes. To discuss how fields such as ecology and engineering can fulfill their role as innovative players in times of population decline, two seemingly contrasting strategies for making decisions under conditions of depopulation in landscape development—called here scientific non-knowledge—are introduced: refactoring and public experiments.