University Town Mittweida is City of the Future Mittweida

A town with a university is always a town of the future: the same goes for the university town of Mittweida. Research in many important fields like engineering, sciences, economy, media and social work is conducted and young people receive an education here and will one day shape our future as decision makers.

But for some time now, citizens, clubs and associations, business people, public administration and the university have been joining their efforts to come up with ideas for the future in/of Mittweida itself. As many of Mittweida’s approximately 15,000 citizens as possible are to be encouraged to become involved and shape the city's future with their ideas.

Mittweida proceeds to next round

For that purpose, Mittweida, together with its university and the "Institute of City Development and Building Industry" (ISB) at Leipzig University, developed a concept and submitted it for the nationwide competition "City of the Future" – and surpassed 167 other contestants already in the first round: With its idea "Cross-Media City Development - Citizens' Visions of a Mittweida Model in 2030+", Mittweida is now one of 52 cities, municipalities and districts that were selected by the federal ministry of education and research within the competition. Federal Minister of Research Johanna Wanka last week announced the names of the 52 municipalities to receive funding – apart from Mittweida only three other Saxon places were chosen: Dresden, Leipzig and Weißwasser.

Cross-media approach encourages people to become involved

Sebastian Killisch, head of the Department of Construction and Public Order in the city, emphasizes the necessity to "break the mold with public participation. Classic formats such as town hall meetings reach their limits when it comes to planning the future of an entire town." He says, it is a big advantage for the town to have a scientific partner in Mittweida University.

Tamara Huhle, cross-media professor, and Jan Schaaf, real estate and facility management professor, of Mittweida University as well as Tanja Korzer of Leipzig University contributed to the concept and will scientifically supervise its realization in the following months.

By incorporating different media such as television, radio, posters, flyers, social media and also with personal address, all citizens are to get the chance to contribute ideas for the development of a model for the town’s future. The ideas of Mittweida's citizens are to be collected and discussed cooperatively. From that, one definite model and detailed suggestions for its realization shall be created.

Professor Huhle about the critical advantage of the concept: "Citizens are met half-way. Everyone can decide if and how they want to get involved. With the help of different media all target groups can be addressed and comprehensive communication can be achieved."

The competition continues

In this first phase of the competition participants will develop a vision for their municipalities up to the year 2030+ and develop ideas for how to act upon and realize this vision. For that purpose, Mittweida receives an initial budget of 35,000 Euros. If Mittweida succeeds in the second round as one of 20 municipalities, the city will review this central vision and develop a concept ready for implementation. In the third phase, starting in 2018, up to eight selected municipalities will start implementing visions in so-called “Reallabore” (field testing).

Headmaster Ludwig Hilmer is glad that municipal administration, citizens and university get to collaborate for the future of college town Mittweida collaboratively and that the Federal Ministry honours this approach. "This is a good sign, especially in this university anniversary year because even 150 years ago this collaboration was essential for shaping the future."