City council confirms playground concept 2025
The city council adopted the 2025 playground concept yesterday: The document contains details on which municipal playgrounds and leisure facilities in Chemnitz will be renovated, expanded or, if necessary, demolished. Broken down by urban area, it describes the condition of individual playgrounds and the city's specific plans for their continued existence, improvement or, if necessary, demolition.
The local authority currently has 111 playgrounds covering a total area of 18.1 hectares. In the recent past, the Parks Department collected facts on the condition of each individual municipal playground and assessed the results according to aspects of urban redevelopment, demographic development and budget consolidation.
In addition, the city took part in a public consultation in late autumn last year to get an idea of which playgrounds Chemnitz residents thought were worth keeping or even expanding. Around 600 people took part in the survey and gave over 1,800 ratings on playgrounds, with around 3,300 of them assessing the development of individual playgrounds proposed by the city. Around 800 comments on individual playgrounds also made this citizen survey so valuable for the city administration.
Citizens were therefore involved in deciding on the range of playgrounds in their city in the run-up to the concept that has now been adopted.
The draft municipal budget for 2014 includes the same amount of funding for playgrounds as in previous years. However, it has become apparent that not all existing playgrounds can be maintained in a satisfactory condition. In order to make do with the available funds in future, the Parks Department is planning to maintain fewer playgrounds than before, but these will be of a higher quality and more attractive.
In addition to the results of the public participation process, the administration's view was also incorporated into the "Playground Concept 2025" that has now been adopted.
The plans are also a proposal by the department from the administrative and structural concept, which aims to balance the municipal budget by 2015. However, this proposal does not involve any financial cuts: The money that is freed up by giving up old playgrounds or playgrounds that the administration considers to be underutilised is to be invested in the remaining facilities, thereby improving their quality.
In addition to the 111 municipal playgrounds, there are also 300 privately operated playgrounds in Chemnitz.