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Transdisciplinary (TD) approaches have increasingly been promoted in the field of land-use research. However, the theoretical discourse about transdisciplinarity is far more advanced than its implementation in practice. In particular, empirical studies about the effects of concrete TD projects on the participants are rare. We evaluated joint knowledge generation among researchers and non-academics in a TD research programme on urban and landscape development. For the assessment we used standardised questionnaires, our own observations, and a simplified implementation of the 'most significant change' method. The evaluation revealed that the participants gained considerable TD knowledge through encountering different thought-styles and problem owners. They together developed a feeling of companionship, broadened their views on the issue and, consequently, attributed increased legitimacy to it. The following aspects of TD research were found to be successful as the programme: offered opportunities for enthusiasm; used a form of communication that promotes mutual trust; and provided boundary objects. Similar to other studies, we observed the creation of hybrid spaces and communities of research and practice where the participants could build up mutual trust, interact with other thought-styles, and jointly develop their TD knowledge.

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An important aspect of understanding the urban fringe is to know the political preferences of its inhabitants, since geographically bound political patterns have consequences for both local policymaking and the national political sphere. Combining urban geography approaches that explain the interaction between spaces and society with political science theory on (geographical) cleavages, this article explains differences in electoral preferences between core city and suburban voters. The analyses show how voters behave differently due to structural factors that are related to the place of residence, resulting in a clear suburban preference for conservative parties. Common explanations for these urban-suburban differences in electoral preferences mainly refer to socio-economic segregation. However, the article shows that divergences are also substantially based on diverging patterns of daily use of spaces, as well as on different lifestyles of the middle class. The propositions are tested with a series of multinomial logistic regression models using Swiss, German, Dutch and French data.

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