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Short abstract

How do regions respond to failed promises? Magdeburg's €9B Intel factory (announced 2022, cancelled 2025) lingers in liminal suspension. This post-industrial GDR city's (failed) transformation to semiconductor hub reveals how peripheral regions navigate between memory and futuremaking.

Long abstract

How does a regional innovation culture respond to failed promises? How is innovation policy politicized when missions do not deliver? Magdeburg's anticipated, but failed, but not completely abandoned, transformation from post-industrial periphery to high-tech semiconductor hub provides the case for testing these questions. The capital of Saxony-Anhalt in Germany, once a center of heavy machinery production in the GDR, has struggled with deindustrialization and population decline since the fall of the wall. A megaproject was supposed to provide a new vision for the city. Intel's flagship chip factory was announced in 2022 as a cornerstone of European digital sovereignty. Supported by subsidies amounting to over 9 billion Euros the factory was supposed to be build in the infrastructured midst of a field of potatoes at the cities edge. After multiple announcements of delays, it became apparent in 2025 that the project will never start.

On the one hand the promise never died. Politicians, investors and the university continue with the idea. On the other hand many citizens did never really expect anything from the distant, high-tech imaginary presented to them. This liminal state, articulated between memory and futuremaking, portrays the edge, I propose to scrutinize. Thereby, my contribution is modest and mainly seeks for support to develop my burgeoning research interest.