The countryside of North-Eastern Germany is characterized by declining population size, and this 'shrinking' has severe impacts upon the regional quality of life, land use and infrastructure planning. However, population decrease in these regions is just one symptom of an overall process of peripherization, which needs to be addressed not only in terms of demographic change, but in the context of restructuring global relations and societal change. While debates on coping strategies still focus on technical innovations and the redefinition of planning standards, we suggest the creation of more flexible planning frameworks that leave space for placeadequate, adaptive and participatory solutions.

In the past two decades, the Berlin district of Neukölln has received considerable attention from politicians, planners, urban scholars and the media. This article discusses the role that the academic concepts of 'social mixing' and 'gentrification' play in the over lapping and partly contradictory narratives that have been employed to interpret trans formations in one particular part of the district, NordNeukölln. While the area is still char acterized as a place of poverty and decline, it has more recently come to be known as a 'hip place to be' among young (creative) urbanites, students and artists. Various urban play ers such as politicians, planners, urban sociologists, activists, interest groups and the media participate in the construction of these narratives and, in the process, adopt the con cepts of social mixing and gentrification according to their respective rationales and pref er ences. Both concepts play a pivotal role in justifying contradictory claims and inter ven tions. As a consequence, 'social mixing' and 'gentrification' are more than just analyt i cal concepts for interpreting urban transformations; they have themselves become part of these transfor mations and have an impact on local developments. We conclude that urban scholarship must reflect more on its own role and positioning in the arena of urban transformation.

Despite profound transformations of spatial development patterns, the "modern infrastructure ideal" of universal and standardized supply with infrastructure services continues to play an important role in discussions on the future of rural infrastructures in shrinking regions of East Germany. Regional planners have reacted to current demographic, socio-economic and environmental transformations by scrutinizing infrastructure standards, but have only begun to reflect upon enhancing the flexibility of infrastructure systems themselves. Until recently, infrastructure planning was treated as a more or less technical and economic problem, without taking into proper account regional specificities and local non-expert knowledge. This paper suggests that flexible, regionally specific and participatory approaches may offer opportunities for innovative and sustainable planning solutions also applicable beyond the infrastructure sector. Referring to the difficult case of the transformation of water supply and waste water disposal systems of Brandenburg in north-eastern Germany, the paper discusses (1) the mismatch between established infrastructure-related planning rationales and current planning problems and (2) potential guidelines that may be constitutive for sustainable water infrastructure planning in the future. These guidelines lead to more general reflections on how infrastructure planning may be conceptualized in view of transforming demographic, environmental and socio-economic conditions.

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