The Federal Office for Building and Regional Planning

Research Project: Digital learning labs of the City of Oldenburg

Project briefing

  • Status Completed
  • Project duration December 2017 – March 2022
  • Programme ExWoSt

The research project tested approaches to make citizen participation even easier and more attractive. The City of Oldenburg focussed on expanding digital participation formats. Here, digital events and the improvement of digital skills among the population went hand in hand.

Background

With a population of around 170,000, Oldenburg is a regional centre in the north-west of Lower Saxony and has established itself as a central services and science hub. The city is one of the municipalities in Lower Saxony that is still experiencing population growth. A further – albeit slightly weaker – increase in population is to be expected. The increase in the number of inhabitants and the positive economic development are accompanied by increasing population density. For example, the high demand for new housing comes up against a limited supply of usable land. The city has therefore prioritised the strategy of redensification. With regard to citizen participation, the city has established a participation coordination office and launched a digital participation platform in November 2020.

Objective

New approaches must be advanced in order to make citizen participation easier and more attractive. As part of the Digital Learning Labs research project, the City of Oldenburg focused on expanding digital participation formats. Here, the digital offer and the improvement of digital skills among the population went hand in hand. Digital skills are the tools we need today to exploit the opportunities offered by the wide range of digital services and technologies, but also to safely find our way in this new world.

The City of Oldenburg's Digital Learning Labs project, funded by the Federal Institute for Research on Building, Urban Affairs and Spatial Development (BBSR), consisted of the Civic Data Lab (CDL) and Urban Data Lab (UDL). The main aim of the project was to enable citizens to participate more effectively in urban planning and the shaping of social coexistence. This was to be achieved and simplified with newly developed digital tools. The intention was to answer the question of how people would like to live together in Oldenburg in 2030 in the face of advancing digitalisation and within the framework of a sustainable metropolis.

New digital participation formats were developed for the city's population and events were organised to improve a wide variety of digital skills among the city's citizens. These activities continued to develop concepts which can be used by other municipalities. The two labs focused on different key areas in order to jointly achieve this goal.

The contractor for the project was the Digitalisation Unit of the City of Oldenburg.

Contact us

  • Eva Schweitzer
    Federal Institute for Research on Building, Urban Affairs and Spatial Development
    Division RS 5 "Digital Cities, Risk Prevention and Transportation"
    Phone: +49 228 99401-1654
    Email: eva.schweitzer@bbr.bund.de

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