The Federal Office for Building and Regional Planning

Research Project: Integration of immigrants – challenges for urban development

Project briefing

In 15 case studies with different communal starting points and different basic conditions, in 2017 and 2018 the project collected communal strategies for dealing with current immigration development. The objective was to gain systematic knowledge about conditions and approaches for promoting integration and to identify the effects on urban development. The results of the study were incorporated into the process of drawing up the National Action Plan for Integration (NAP-I) in the topic forum ‘Local Integration’. Against this backdrop, the project completion has been postponed by two years.

Background

Integration is shaped locally in cities, districts and communities. Municipalities play a key role in integration. Many of them have decades of experience and important basic structures in order to achieve successful integration at the local level. In recent years, they have adapted to the challenges and expanded their involvement in integration policy.

Due to the wide range of local implementations and given the underlying conditions, there are considerable regional, and even small-scale, differences within cities. These are the result of immigration patterns in the different development phases of immigration, economic development, urban development phases and the housing markets of the respective cities. These differences became particularly clear during the high level of refugee movement since 2015. In addition to refugee movement, immigration from EU countries has also been increasing since 2012. During this period, there has been an increase in the local concentration of immigrants in individual neighbourhoods and the associated social segregation.

While municipalities with a long history of immigration were able to fall back on tried and tested structures during the strong influx of refugees, others had to set up new structures and adapt their administrative measures. Since 2018, in addition to the organisation of public services, other qualitative dimensions have come to the fore. These include: integration in education/training and further education; occupational integration; the transition from shared housing into the regular housing market; the integration into neighbourhoods and urban society, also in the sense of social participation.

The research project is part of the research initiative ‘Living integration locally’. In addition to this project, this includes the following two projects:

  • Immigration – effects on urban development
  • Integration of refugees into the regular housing market

Objective

Against this background, the research project observed different municipal objectives and strategies in dealing with the current development of immigration and refugees in order to derive systematic findings on conditions and approaches that promote integration. To this end, the project categorised the different basic municipal conditions in order to identify the types of urban development and typical strategies adopted to promote the integration of immigrants over the course of the project.

After two years of monitoring 15 case studies, conclusions were also drawn for the further development of the federal government’s urban planning and urban development policy instruments.

Contractor of the research project was empirica ag, Bonn.

Contact us

  • Dr. Karin Veith
    Federal Institute for Research on Building, Urban Affairs and Spatial Development
    Division RS 4 "Urban Development Grants, Social Urban Development"
    Phone: +49 228 99401-2140
    Email: karin.veith@bbr.bund.de

  • Teresa Grundmann
    Federal Institute for Research on Building, Urban Affairs and Spatial Development
    Division RS 4 "Urban Development Grants, Social Urban Development"
    Phone: +49 228 99401-2337
    Email: teresa.grundmann@bbr.bund.de

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