Speakers
Description
The federal program “Sustainable inner cities and centers” supports measures in 218 municipalities across Germany in large cities, medium-sized and small towns and rural communities. The aim of the program is to support cities and municipalities in overcoming acute and structural problems (“desertification”) in city centers, town centers and district centers by (further) developing them into multifunctional, resilient and cooperative places as places of identification for the municipality. The range of topics that the municipalities focus on with their projects is accordingly very diverse. It ranges from work, housing, education, leisure and social issues to urban development, open spaces and green areas, and digitalization. In addition, many municipalities are involved in strategy development, participation formats and cooperation in the form of establishing and strengthening (new) stakeholder constellations. The presentation presents selected findings from the research accompanying the federal program. The developments between the initial situation and the end of funding (approx. 4 years), success factors, obstacles and special features can be presented from the database, which records and evaluates indicators, the exchange at the network meetings with the municipalities and the visits to the municipalities with interviews with the key players.
Two overarching themes emerge: A central key to strengthening city centers and town centers lies in a balanced mix and diversity of uses. It has been shown that particularly diverse centers with an attractive mix of consumer-oriented and non-consumer-oriented locations react to structural change in a crisis-proof and resilient manner. Accordingly, city centers and town centers are now being used by many local authorities as test areas and real laboratories to counteract a possible one-sided usage structure, increase the quality of stay and length of stay and spread the sense of responsibility across many shoulders. Against this backdrop, “third places” and the cultural and creative industries are becoming increasingly important as drivers of (inner) urban development. What almost all activities have in common is that they want to generate added value from the diversity of uses, which benefits all stakeholders and ensures a vibrant city center or a lively center with a high quality of stay for the citizens. Those responsible have realized that inner city development is a joint task and that a new building and planning culture is needed to implement the numerous ideas and achieve the objectives: involving all stakeholders, the already established inner city players as well as new groups that have rarely been represented in inner city development to date. Volunteers, multipliers and advocates as well as steering instruments such as city center management were key players in this process.
From an urban planning and open space perspective, the highly sealed inner cities also need to become green, healthy and climate-resilient against the backdrop of climate change, demographic change and the mobility transition - this is being tackled in the municipalities.
| Keywords | inner-city centres; multifunctional; resilient; stakeholder, cooperation |
|---|---|
| Best Congress Paper Award | No |
