Description of measures

In many areas, politicians and administrators are recognizing that a cooperative culture of negotiation can contribute to sustainable partnerships for the implementation of urban development plans and projects.
The effects of political decisions - especially when it comes to urban planning and development - are felt and experienced by citizens in their immediate surroundings. The involvement of all those affected in conceptual and practical work is therefore essential for spatially relevant self-organization processes. However, sustainable development can only be achieved through cooperation between administration, urban society and science, because the demand for more participation is also linked to the need to accept the associated duties and responsibilities.

Participation instruments have also been tried out in Gera in the past, but there was a lack of agreement on binding rules and quality standards - in other words, a comprehensive culture of participation. The project aims to create a culture of participation and evaluate it on the basis of specific projects. Such a culture of participation should create acceptance among citizens for urban development projects, but also provide planning certainty and make the city attractive for companies, investors and newcomers.
To this end, a strategy for citizen participation (including organizational forms such as advisory boards, round tables, etc. and forms of participation) must be developed.
The project is based on the working paper of the German Association of Cities on the culture of participation in integrated urban development. According to this paper, the establishment of reliable and binding rules and organizational forms for participation procedures is a decisive criterion for the success of participation procedures. Irrespective of citizen participation and coordination in the administrative departments, the final decisions are always reserved for the city council. Therefore, at the beginning of the project, guidelines for citizen participation in Gera will first be developed in a participatory manner, which must be adopted by the city council.

The participation options cover a very broad spectrum, ranging from citizen information, newsletters and citizen surveys to established committees in which citizens can participate in planning/decision-making tasks on an ongoing basis. The project aims to find out which participation options are suitable for which use cases in Gera; in particular, digital participation options are to be tested and introduced. To this end, a suitable platform is to be made available to systematically and strategically develop a culture of citizen participation in municipal planning and decision-making processes.