The Schwabencenter is a residential and business complex in a prominent location in the city of Augsburg. The three characteristic towers with a continuous shopping mall are located directly on the Friedberger Straße between the two districts Spickel and Herrenbach. Opened in 1971 and then celebrated as a state-of-the-art shopping center with a residential function, the Schwabencenter has since undergone a profound change of image: the more it became the "unloved child" of the Augsburgers, the more its inhabitants value it. Today, almost half a century later, new concepts of living and retailing are being developed for the Schwabencenter.

The Department of Human Geography and Transformation Research has been conceptually involved in this project from the beginning. The cooperative project will be carried out together with Augsburg architects, Local Agenda 21, the Transition Town association and the ‚Wohnzimmer (living room) in the Schwabencenter‘. Up to now, interesting results for an image improvement have been worked out together with the students in the bachelor (field work) and master study programs (application and practice modules).

The creative project Schwabencenter has a strong visionary character and is designed for the coming years. The vision for the Schwabencenter is to develop a future-oriented example of living, urban green and retail/shopping through its sustainable structural and energetic transformation and to lead it to new attractiveness. The Schwabencenter is a living space that connects. The experiences with the project should be understood as a plea for a courageous and experimental geographic urban research, which faces new challenges of increasingly confusing mixed situations in urban development and seeks solutions with its own creative approaches as well as inter- and transdisciplinary impulses.