The Federal Office for Building and Regional Planning

Research Project: Shaping the digital city: A guide for municipalities

Project briefing

  • Status Completed
  • Project duration January 2019 – May 2022
  • Programme ExWoSt

The digital transformation of cities and society is changing the way we live – the way we work and learn, move around and produce, trade and consume things. For municipalities, this means new tasks as well as new opportunities and risks. On the one hand, they are faced with the challenge of taking up digital trends and opportunities in the service of sustainable urban development for the common good and making them usable for their citizens. On the other hand, they have to meet the demands of data security, privacy and technological sovereignty. The project investigated how municipalities can use these digital opportunities for themselves while keeping an eye on the possible risks.

Background

At the beginning of the project, only a few municipalities had started to develop digital strategies and implement real projects. In many cases, there was uncertainty how to integrate and implement the possibilities of digitalisation in municipal action. Here, the Smart City Charter of the German Federal Government provides orientation on how to deal with the digital transformation of cities for the federal government itself, the federal states (Bundesländer) and the municipalities.

So far, however, little guidance has been compiled for municipalities that want to embrace digital transformation. As a result, many of them face similar questions and challenges. The project "Shaping the digital city: A Guide for Municipalities" is aimed at developing such a handbook, which is aligned with the guidelines and recommendations of the Smart City Charter.

Objective

The guidelines of the Smart City Charter provide municipalities with information on how to deal with urban digital transformation. For many municipalities, however, it is questionable how to implement the normative framework of the Smart City Charter into concrete municipal action. Against this backdrop, the practical guide should be aimed at supporting the municipalities in recognising their specific development and digitalisation needs, compiling suitable projects and assessing their opportunities and risks. Furthermore, the success and risk factors on the way to successful smart city concepts need to be identified and an intermunicipal exchange mechanism should be secured via case study cities.

Contractors of the research project were the think tank Knowledge Architecture and the chair of Urbanism and Design (Institute for Urban and Regional Planning) of the Technical University of Dresden in cooperation with the Institute for Work and Technology (Westphalian University of Applied Sciences and Ruhr University Bochum) and Urban Catalyst (Berlin).

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Contact us

  • Dr. Charlotte Räuchle
    Federal Institute for Research on Building, Urban Affairs and Spatial Development
    Division RS 5 "Digital Cities, Risk Prevention and Transportation"
    Phone: +49 228 99401-1503
    Email: Charlotte.Raeuchle@BBR.Bund.de

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