Creative ideas pushing the urban development of the future

The first thing you see when you step out of your front door in some of Bonn’s neighbourhoods is cars. So, we plan to give the neighbourhoods back to the people. We have become so used to certain images in our immediate surroundings that we often simply accept them. The city of Bonn and we believe that this needs to change. So we set out to find solutions and gave our creativity free rein. The result: the “Bönnsche Viertel”, a model neighbourhood with the aim of gradually relieving the residents of traffic and parking issues, strengthening alternative forms of mobility and creating new opportunities for encounters and social participation with the space gained .
Taking the inner Nordstadt and the Combahnviertel [two neighbourhoods in Bonn] as examples, we asked ourselves: How can we reduce the traffic and parking pressure? What does it take for people to enjoy spending time in their neighbourhoods, doing errands, meeting each other and spending time outside? In two workshops with the city administration, we concretised visions and laid path for the journey ahead. The participants included the city’s decision-makers, including the mayor, department heads and mobility experts. We took the participants on a journey into the future, during which the vision of lively neighbourhoods emerged – an urban space for people, not for cars.
To make this vision a reality, we developed concrete measures for the city to implement – so that we were literally able to put our ideas on the road.