Research Project: Global urban transformation: involving New Urban Agenda, SDGs and the Paris Agreement into Germany‘s local and national urban development

Concept

The project team combined different research and practical methods to work on the five project objectives.

Background analyses on the national and European level

In order to understand the relevance of global and European agendas and their follow-up processes for local planning in German and European cities and for the National Urban Development Policy in more detail, the project team first of all executed two background analyses on the current state of discussions and current trends in a national and European context. To this end, the project team processed related decisions and their follow-up processes, analysed their relevance and benefit for urban development in a national and European context and reflected upon the results in the context of expert interviews.

Planning workshops with municipalities and workshop talks

The project’s main activity was the intensive work with German and European municipalities in the context of three planning workshops. They served to gather the practial experience of the municipalities when applying global and European decisions.

In order to prepare the planning workshops, local development paths in ten German and five European municipalities were investigated in a first step. The aim was to work out the various approaches and sustainability strategies and related governance processes.

When choosing the municipalities, the project team paid attention to a best possible variety in terms of size, regional distribution, type of transformation challenge, state of the local development concept, involvement in European and global processes or dealing with the agendas in order to catch different local perspectives. The experiences of the municipalities were collected through surveys and telephone interviews and presented through factsheets.

During the planning workshops, the project team intensified the activities first of all with seven German municipalities: Hamburg, Leipzig, Stuttgart, Mannheim, Arnsberg, Jena and Finsterwalde. The participants from the muicipalities came from administrations, scientific institutions and the civilian population. The workshops were followed by an intensive working phase with the European municipalities of Utrecht, Wrocław, Madrid, Athen and La Rochelle. During the three planning workshops, the impacts of global and European agendas on local development paths were discussed and concrete implementation strategies worked out. Another topic was how cities can be strengthened in the course of implementation and which general conditions must be created for this. The interactive visual-haptic workhop formats applied enabled a creative, open and practice-oriented exchange.

The project team held interviews and, during the workshops, had talks with selected national and European experts for sustainable urban development from the scientific and the private sector.

Developing recommendations of action

The results of the background analyses, of the planning workshops and the expert talks were included in a catalogue of recommendations for advancing the National Urban Development Policy, the Leipzig Charter and the Urban Agenda for the EU. The central results of the project will be presented by a BBSR online publication which will soon be published.