Bianka Plüschke-Altof
Biographic Data
| ID | 6210336 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Bianka Plüschke-Altof |
| GIVEN NAMES | Bianka |
| FAMILY NAME | Plüschke-Altof |
| SIGNATURE | PLÜSCHKE-ALTOF B |
| AFFILIATIONS | Tallinn University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-4153-1540 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 12 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 16 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 12 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2019 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Smart rurality and regional inequalities
Smart development has emerged as a prominent strategy for promoting sustainability, economic growth, and improved quality of life through the integration of digital technologies into everyday life. However, dominant understandings of smart development remain strongly rooted in smart city discourse and urban-centered models of progress. This raises questions about the applicability and implications of smart development in rural, peripheral, and so…
“What is a smart solution supposed to mean anyway?” Quiet smartness and the recognition of rural smart development as a question of knowledge production
Starting from the critique of a lacking conceptualization of smart rurality and urban-rural hierarchies in smart development debates, the paper examines how dominant understandings of smartness are translated, interrogated, and reworked in rural contexts. Drawing on the concept of hierarchical knowledge production, the paper argues that the underlying challenge of rural smartness is less about technology itself than about who defines problems, se…
Exploring co-creation in municipal planning practice
This paper examines how collaborative experimental approaches can strengthen urban resilience by actively involving communities in the implementation of Nature-based Solutions (NbS) within the framework of local governance. Using Versailles as a case study, it examines how a co-creative initiative supported the development of an NbS intervention aimed at fostering social cohesion and community ownership. This process was shaped by the Seedbed Int…
Where the Grass Is Greener
Digital change—most notably advances in digital tools, infrastructure, and the widespread adoption of remote work—has increasingly shaped residential mobility decisions. Alongside shifting attitudes toward remote work and the expansion of e‐services, these developments have reduced the importance of workplace proximity in residential choice. This changing context has opened new decentralised residential pathways from urban cores to suburban, peri…
Co-Creating Change
The ongoing urbanisation and densification at the intersection with increasing environmental and health crises demand a holistic, equitable, and inclusive approach to urban planning, which has also been highlighted in the EU Green Deal’s inclusive approach to sustainable urban planning aligned with the UN SDGs’ “Leave No One Behind.” This article introduces the seedbed intervention as a novel, community-driven, co-creative approach to Nature-base…
Digital transformation through the lens of peripheralisation
The digital transformation has reached a stage where digital solutions are an integral part of daily life. Yet little attention has been paid to which social groups and locations benefit from this transformation and which are left behind. This article examines digital transformation by focusing on peripheral rural areas, with a focus on older populations. The study draws on expert interviews with key actors working and communicating with older re…
The environmental health citizen interview tool
Background: Nature-based Solutions (NbS) are vital for addressing climate change and biodiversity loss, yet their benefits are often unequally distributed. This study introduces the Environmental Health Citizen Interview Tool, aiming to inclusively capture diverse perspectives on environmental wellbeing using qualitative research methods. The principles of epistemic justice and planetary health are central to its development. Methods: The Environ…
Balancing participatory planning and planning for resilience in nature-based solutions. A case of transformative agency
Participatory planning and planning for resilience figure as major trends in striving towards urban sustainability. Yet, recent studies problematize citizen participation in planning for resilience, indicating the need for closer research on surrounding processes and the limits planners face in leading participants to sustainable outcomes. Providing a basis for cross-case learning, the paper examines five urban planning projects in Northern Europ…
I walk, I see, I do”
This article tells the story of how Tallinn urban gardener Anton turned from community gardening to guerrilla gardening. While both gardening types have recently been critically studied focusing on the tension between cooperation with or a rebellious act against neoliberal urban governance regimes, this paper investigates the topic from a more-than-human theory perspective. Building on Anton's practitioner memoirs and in-depth interviews with cit…
Speaking of a ‘climate crisis’
The paper explores how the Fridays for Future movement (FfF) attempts to reframe climate change as a climate crisis. Adding to the research on the role of climate change communication for inducing behavioural change, we analyse the way in which this reframing is conducted and locally negotiated by FfF groups in Germany and Estonia. The paper thus focuses on the question of how FfF’s global blueprint for a climate strike, which builds on the notio…
Socio-spatial polarisation and policy response
Based on a relational understanding of socio-spatial polarisation as a nested, multidimensional and multi-scalar process, the paper applies a comparative perspective on current trends of socio-spatial development in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Comparing current scholarship and data on demographic and economic processes of centralisation and peripheralisation, we also examine political debates around issues of polarisation in different scholarl…
Fighting against or hiding behind an image of peripherality? Response strategies to discursive peripheralization in rural Estonia
Recently, regional development research and policies have paid ever-increasing attention to the importance of regional images. Following the breakthrough of the neoliberal regional policy paradigm that embraces place marketing as its central development strategy, rural areas have also turned to measures of image-making in order to boost their development and fight peripheralization. In the case of two controversies over the ‘right’ kind of respon…
Socio-spatial polarisation and policy response
Based on a relational understanding of socio-spatial polarisation as a nested, multidimensional and multi-scalar process, the paper applies a comparative perspective on current trends of socio-spatial development in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Comparing current scholarship and data on demographic and economic processes of centralisation and peripheralisation, we also examine political debates around issues of polarisation in different scholarl…
Fighting against or hiding behind an image of peripherality? Response strategies to discursive peripheralization in rural Estonia
Recently, regional development research and policies have paid ever-increasing attention to the importance of regional images. Following the breakthrough of the neoliberal regional policy paradigm that embraces place marketing as its central development strategy, rural areas have also turned to measures of image-making in order to boost their development and fight peripheralization. In the case of two controversies over the ‘right’ kind of respon…
I walk, I see, I do”
This article tells the story of how Tallinn urban gardener Anton turned from community gardening to guerrilla gardening. While both gardening types have recently been critically studied focusing on the tension between cooperation with or a rebellious act against neoliberal urban governance regimes, this paper investigates the topic from a more-than-human theory perspective. Building on Anton's practitioner memoirs and in-depth interviews with cit…
Balancing participatory planning and planning for resilience in nature-based solutions. A case of transformative agency
Participatory planning and planning for resilience figure as major trends in striving towards urban sustainability. Yet, recent studies problematize citizen participation in planning for resilience, indicating the need for closer research on surrounding processes and the limits planners face in leading participants to sustainable outcomes. Providing a basis for cross-case learning, the paper examines five urban planning projects in Northern Europ…
Fighting against or hiding behind an image of peripherality? Response strategies to discursive peripheralization in rural Estonia
Recently, regional development research and policies have paid ever-increasing attention to the importance of regional images. Following the breakthrough of the neoliberal regional policy paradigm that embraces place marketing as its central development strategy, rural areas have also turned to measures of image-making in order to boost their development and fight peripheralization. In the case of two controversies over the ‘right’ kind of respon…
Socio-spatial polarisation and policy response
Based on a relational understanding of socio-spatial polarisation as a nested, multidimensional and multi-scalar process, the paper applies a comparative perspective on current trends of socio-spatial development in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Comparing current scholarship and data on demographic and economic processes of centralisation and peripheralisation, we also examine political debates around issues of polarisation in different scholarl…
Speaking of a ‘climate crisis’
The paper explores how the Fridays for Future movement (FfF) attempts to reframe climate change as a climate crisis. Adding to the research on the role of climate change communication for inducing behavioural change, we analyse the way in which this reframing is conducted and locally negotiated by FfF groups in Germany and Estonia. The paper thus focuses on the question of how FfF’s global blueprint for a climate strike, which builds on the notio…
Balancing participatory planning and planning for resilience in nature-based solutions. A case of transformative agency
Participatory planning and planning for resilience figure as major trends in striving towards urban sustainability. Yet, recent studies problematize citizen participation in planning for resilience, indicating the need for closer research on surrounding processes and the limits planners face in leading participants to sustainable outcomes. Providing a basis for cross-case learning, the paper examines five urban planning projects in Northern Europ…
I walk, I see, I do”
This article tells the story of how Tallinn urban gardener Anton turned from community gardening to guerrilla gardening. While both gardening types have recently been critically studied focusing on the tension between cooperation with or a rebellious act against neoliberal urban governance regimes, this paper investigates the topic from a more-than-human theory perspective. Building on Anton's practitioner memoirs and in-depth interviews with cit…
The environmental health citizen interview tool
Background: Nature-based Solutions (NbS) are vital for addressing climate change and biodiversity loss, yet their benefits are often unequally distributed. This study introduces the Environmental Health Citizen Interview Tool, aiming to inclusively capture diverse perspectives on environmental wellbeing using qualitative research methods. The principles of epistemic justice and planetary health are central to its development. Methods: The Environ…
Co-Creating Change
The ongoing urbanisation and densification at the intersection with increasing environmental and health crises demand a holistic, equitable, and inclusive approach to urban planning, which has also been highlighted in the EU Green Deal’s inclusive approach to sustainable urban planning aligned with the UN SDGs’ “Leave No One Behind.” This article introduces the seedbed intervention as a novel, community-driven, co-creative approach to Nature-base…
Digital transformation through the lens of peripheralisation
The digital transformation has reached a stage where digital solutions are an integral part of daily life. Yet little attention has been paid to which social groups and locations benefit from this transformation and which are left behind. This article examines digital transformation by focusing on peripheral rural areas, with a focus on older populations. The study draws on expert interviews with key actors working and communicating with older re…
Smart rurality and regional inequalities
Smart development has emerged as a prominent strategy for promoting sustainability, economic growth, and improved quality of life through the integration of digital technologies into everyday life. However, dominant understandings of smart development remain strongly rooted in smart city discourse and urban-centered models of progress. This raises questions about the applicability and implications of smart development in rural, peripheral, and so…
“What is a smart solution supposed to mean anyway?” Quiet smartness and the recognition of rural smart development as a question of knowledge production
Starting from the critique of a lacking conceptualization of smart rurality and urban-rural hierarchies in smart development debates, the paper examines how dominant understandings of smartness are translated, interrogated, and reworked in rural contexts. Drawing on the concept of hierarchical knowledge production, the paper argues that the underlying challenge of rural smartness is less about technology itself than about who defines problems, se…
Exploring co-creation in municipal planning practice
This paper examines how collaborative experimental approaches can strengthen urban resilience by actively involving communities in the implementation of Nature-based Solutions (NbS) within the framework of local governance. Using Versailles as a case study, it examines how a co-creative initiative supported the development of an NbS intervention aimed at fostering social cohesion and community ownership. This process was shaped by the Seedbed Int…
Where the Grass Is Greener
Digital change—most notably advances in digital tools, infrastructure, and the widespread adoption of remote work—has increasingly shaped residential mobility decisions. Alongside shifting attitudes toward remote work and the expansion of e‐services, these developments have reduced the importance of workplace proximity in residential choice. This changing context has opened new decentralised residential pathways from urban cores to suburban, peri…
Political science (5 works) · Sociology (5 works) · Law (4 works) · Law (4 works) · Citizen journalism (3 works) · Economics (3 works) · Innovative Approaches in Technology and Social Development (3 works) · Psychology (3 works) · Sustainability and Climate Change Governance (3 works) · Context (archaeology (2 works)