NUMIC project presents itself on the Future City Tour

As of today, the mobility project "NUMIC - New Urban Mobility Awareness in Chemnitz" of the city of Chemnitz is the current stop on the virtual Future City Tour of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). The city of Chemnitz is presenting its strategies for improving urban citizen participation in urban transport planning at www.nachhaltige-zukunftsstadt.de/tour/ until 4 December.

What should the city of the future look like? How will our cities become liveable, CO2 -neutral, climate-adapted, energy- and resource-efficient? Since 2016, around 50 research teams have been developing practical strategies and products and trialling them together with partners in the municipalities. The virtual tour of Germany will present the results and impulses of the BMBF's future city research for the participating cities.

Background NUMIC

Urban and transport planning of the future is not just about technologies or traffic optimisation strategies. It is also about a mobility culture that focuses on issues such as sustainability, climate protection, resilience and equality for all transport users, as well as upgrading public spaces and creating a new quality of life in the city. The transdisciplinary joint project "NUMIC", funded by the BMBF, was created against the background of the question of how the designs can be put into practice. The aim of the project is to improve the quality of life of Chemnitz residents through attractive and sustainable mobility solutions. Under the leadership of the City of Chemnitz, the Technical University of Chemnitz, the Technical University of Dresden, the Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Engineering IAO, innosabi GmbH and citizens cooperated on the project.

In the first phase of the project, a model route for cycling and walking was developed based on urban planning, transport planning and social criteria. On this basis, various routes were designed, from which the people of Chemnitz were able to choose their favourite by means of an online vote. The selected model route, which was given the name NUMICO, is located away from the motor vehicle-dominated main roads and runs for five kilometres from the Sportforum to Zeisigwald, thus connecting three districts of Chemnitz.

The follow-up project NUMIC 2.0 works practically on citizen participation in future transport projects in the city of Chemnitz: "With NUMIC, we transport planners are breaking new ground. We meet with citizens on site and discuss upcoming planning tasks together. In Nevoigtstraße, for example, we set up a planning table over ten metres long and worked together with local residents to think about how we can improve the traffic situation," says Alexander Kirste, Head of the Traffic Planning Department and overall project manager of the NUMIC project. At the same time, NUMIC 2.0 is investigating the extent to which greater involvement of citizens can improve the dialogue between them and the administration in planning and whether this can strengthen sustainable mobility awareness.

The recommendations for action developed in the "NUMIC" City of the Future project offer considerable potential to strengthen citizen-centred participation approaches in the development of urban mobility solutions in other municipalities and thus make an important contribution to sustainable urban development.

www.chemnitz.de/numic

Background BMBF Future City Research and Future City Tour

Since 2016, the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) has been funding the City of the Future projects as part of the "Flagship Initiative City of the Future" and "Sustainable Transformation of Urban Spaces" funding lines.

The virtual future city tour focusses on the impulses from future city research in the participating cities. Various cities will be visited on the virtual tour and selected concepts and products will be presented on the tour website. The actors from science and municipal practice will also have their say: they will report on the effects of the research and their respective image of the city of the future. From June 2022 to December 2023, the tour will visit more than 20 municipalities and present selected results of BMBF-funded future city research.

The SynVer*Z synthesis and networking project initiates the Future City Tour and accompanies the future city research of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). It is jointly supported by the German Institute for Urban Studies (Difu), the ISOE - Institute for Socio-Ecological Research and Gröschel Branding.