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The article "Rethinking Public Services in Rural Areas?" discusses the topic of public and private services and infrastructure in rural areas in Germany and other European countries. It discusses changes and challenges regarding the availability, quality, and accessibility of these services and facilities. The Territorial Agenda of the European Union emphasizes the need for measures to maintain public services in rural areas. Various approaches and strategies are discussed to achieve improvements in this area and learn from good examples and practices in other European countries. The text describes various approaches to ensure public services in rural areas. It is shown that state interventions and European funding policies are testing new approaches and launching pilot projects. However, many of these projects fail due to difficulties in implementation and the sustainable establishment of new solutions. The research project InDaLE examined 18 practical projects in different countries and developed theses for the permanent safeguarding of innovative solutions in public services. The main focus of the text presents the state of research on innovative approaches to public services in rural areas and addresses topics such as local supply, social logistics, and the energy transition. Various projects and their experiences are presented to develop new approaches. The article examines the institutional change in the field of fire prevention education and the importance of new cooperations and actor alliances. Based on case studies from Austria and Germany, five essential steps for the long-term establishment of innovative public service projects are identified. Another contribution compares good practices and success factors in after-school education in rural regions of Scotland and Sweden. It shows how rural communities can create attractive offers with limited resources. A third contribution argues that the labor market policy importance of fundamentally economic systems should be considered in the debate on public services. It emphasizes that strengthening these systems requires impulses from municipalities and higher authorities. The article contains a list of scientific publications on the topic of public services in rural areas. The publications address various aspects such as access to healthcare services, local supply, renewable energy, and infrastructure in rural areas. It also compares various countries and their strategies for ensuring public services. The publications provide insights into the challenges and solutions for the provision of services in rural areas. [Extracted from the article]

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Compared to the well-established concept "vulnerability", there has been less research on "social vulnerability", particularly with respect to highly developed welfare states. Conducting an in-depth study on the consequences of the 2002 Elbe flood in three German communities, the paper tests the applicability of the concept of social vulnerability in a European context. The research was based on the assumption that it is an expression of social inequality. Yet, socially vulnerable groups were not clearly distinguishable. This does not suggest, however, that social vulnerability is not relevant in the European context. Rather, it is the outcome of a complex web of drivers that are of both social and contextual origin. Three implications are outlined for future studies: the need to integrate top-down and bottom-up oriented approaches to assess social vulnerability, to embed our understanding of social vulnerability better in overall societal transformation processes, and to consider existing governance and management systems and their interrelations as well as their consequences for social vulnerability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Compared to the well-established concept "vulnerability", there has been less research on "social vulnerability", particularly with respect to highly developed welfare states. Conducting an in-depth study on the consequences of the 2002 Elbe flood in three German communities, the paper tests the applicability of the concept of social vulnerability in a European context. The research was based on the assumption that it is an expression of social inequality. Yet, socially vulnerable groups were not clearly distinguishable. This does not suggest, however, that social vulnerability is not relevant in the European context. Rather, it is the outcome of a complex web of drivers that are of both social and contextual origin. Three implications are outlined for future studies: the need to integrate top-down and bottom-up oriented approaches to assess social vulnerability, to embed our understanding of social vulnerability better in overall societal transformation processes, and to consider existing governance and management systems and their inter-relations as well as their consequences for social vulnerability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]