Alliance for living in rural areas - new instruments for strengthening the town centers of small towns and communities
BüWoLand - Small Town Academy
Creating equivalent living conditions in rural and urban areas and making cities resilient is a particular task of the federal government, which is formulated in the coalition agreement: “We will relieve strained situations in cities and counteract the effects of demographic change in rural areas and structurally weak cities.” As a result, the Federal Ministry of the Interior, together with the Federal Institute for Research on Building, Urban Affairs and Spatial Development (BBSR), has initiated the development of a small town academy. Because “municipalities are where people live and the foundation of the state.” The more than 2,100 small towns in Germany, with more than 24 million people and thus 30 percent of the population, play a key role in this. They are diverse residential, working and service locations with their own urbanity and offer their population a special, unique quality of life, identity and home. For their surrounding areas, small towns are usually particularly important centers of communication, development and stabilization. They contribute significantly to social cohesion and are supporting elements of the German settlement system. However, they also face special challenges due to demographic change, economic challenges, a loss of attractiveness and high expectations for the place of residence and business.
Goals and Content
The aim of the model project in the pilot phase of the “Small Town Academy” is to strengthen the sustainability of small towns in order to ensure the respective quality of life, living and economy and thus to come closer to the goal of equal living conditions. In addition, it should contribute to generating increased political and scientific attention for small towns, because urban research and the view of society in Germany are traditionally predominantly oriented towards large and medium-sized cities.
The pilot phase of the Small Town Academy has two objectives: on the one hand, the small town associations are to develop as many solutions and approaches as possible for future-proof small town development in the model projects. The aim is to develop ideas and transferable approaches to urban development for, with and by small towns. The participating small towns of Nieheim (NW), Vlotho (NW), Marienmünster (NW), Schieder-Schwalenberg (NW), Seehausen (ST) and Drebkau (BB) are to implement participation projects with the help of different methods and formats for the urban community.
On the other hand, small towns often have few resources and little leeway to deal with different types and forms of change and transformation processes and to find their position in a changing world. Attention, exchange with others, time and courage for experiments: everything that is necessary for innovations and new ideas often gets lost in the day-to-day business and should find time and space in the small town academy or the corresponding modules and projects. Therefore, the model project is based on an open-ended approach with a wide range of insights and impulses for the small towns themselves and for the sustainable conceptual design of the small town academy.
The project is recognized as a project of the “UrbanLand” regional initiative and thus also serves as an essential instrument for the future-oriented development of the polycentric region of Ostwestfalen-Lippes. Due to the model character, the project findings will also be made available to other small towns in OWL and beyond.
The University of Applied Sciences for SMEs is providing scientific support for this project together with the Ruhr University Bochum and in collaboration with InWIS.
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