Against decline and for revival: dual struggle in the green transition of Berlin–Brandenburg's automotive region

This article examines how industrial regions dependent on fossil-based industries navigate the green transition, using the Berlin-Brandenburg automotive region as a case study. While the region faces structural vulnerabilities, it has recently attracted major investments in electromobility, creating simultaneous pressures of decline and renewal. Drawing on semi-structured interviews and secondary data, the study analyses how regional actors seek to repurpose existing capabilities to pursue new regional ambitions. It further explores how new firms interact with established economic structures. It finds that investments in future-oriented industries can stimulate regional economic activity but also create new tensions and conflicts and generate asymmetries between incumbent actors and dominant newcomers. The analysis shows that access to resources, decision-making power and economic benefits is unevenly distributed and often contested. At the same time, structural constraints and limited time horizons restrict the scope for coordinated regional adaptation. As a result, emerging industries risk becoming weakly embedded, operating alongside rather than within existing regional structures. The findings suggest that without stronger integration, the green transition may reproduce existing vulnerabilities under new technological conditions.