Citizens deliberated participation
How should the city involve the people of Göttingen in the future? This question was the focus of the city's second Future Forum, which ran from 17 August to 28 September 2024. A group of randomly selected residents has developed recommendations for the city administration and city council.
A total of 1,000 people were invited to this mini-public in July 2024, whose names were randomly selected from the city's register of residents. From the people who responded, 36 people were randomly chosen to take part in the Future Forum.
During the application process, the gender and age of the applicants were queried in order to put together a balanced group according to these criteria. In addition, there are some criteria that exclude participation in the Future Forum:
- active functionaries of a political party
- Members of municipal advisory councils or the youth parliament
- Employees of the Göttingen city administration and its companies
Statute on future forums
A statute for the implementation of future forums in Göttingen, which came into force on 12 April 2024, regulates, among other details, that the criteria of age, gender, number of children, highest educational qualification, migration history and the presence of a disability can be taken into account when compiling such forums, so that the mini-publics are a reflection of the population.
The members of the Future Forum received an expense allowance of €20 per meeting, which is based on the municipal statutes on compensation for council members, local council members and volunteers.
‘Participate, have a say and help shape"
Lord Mayor Petra Broistedt commented on the Future Forum: ‘The opinions and expertise of the people of Göttingen are important to us. After all, we make urban policy for people who live in our city. They should be able to participate, have their say and help shape it.’
The participants met on 17 August and on 7 and 28 September 2024 in the New Town Hall to discuss the topic of participation in Göttingen. According to the city, Göttingen residents already have many different opportunities to get actively and directly involved in planning processes and urban projects. In order to expand these opportunities and further strengthen the culture of participation in Göttingen, the Future Forum developed recommendations on how public participation in Göttingen can be even more successful in the future.
Goal: Participation guidelines
Based on these recommendations and feedback, a working group known as AG Beteiligung has been developing draft binding guidelines for participation processes in Göttingen since January 2025. These guidelines are intended to set out fundamental principles for successful participation. Concrete measures for implementing participation opportunities can then be derived from the guidelines.
The Participation Working Group has a total of nine members. It consists of three representatives each from the city administration, the city council and the city's civil society. This ensures that representatives of all groups involved in participation are included in the drafting of the guidelines.
Their draft will then be submitted to the political committees, which will vote on the final adoption of the guidelines. The guidelines are then published. At the end of the process, documentation of the work in the Future Forum and the working group is made available, including the recommendations from the Future Forum.
Cooperation between the urban community, administration and council factions
The working group members from the urban community have already participated in the Future Forum and were elected there by all participants. On the administration side, employees from the Planning, Building Regulations and Surveying Department, the Urban Greenery, Environment and Infrastructure Department and the Public Relations and Participation Department are participating. These three departments are particularly frequently involved in participation projects. On the political side, one representative from each of the three largest council factions (Greens, CDU and SPD) is participating.
The working group is led and moderated by employees of the Nexus Institute in Berlin, who previously moderated and supported the Future Forum. The working group will meet five times in the first half of 2025.
Precursors in Brandis, Frankfurt/Main and Wolfsburg
Previously, public participation meetings at municipal level had already been held in Frankfurt/Main and Wolfsburg. The city of Wolfsburg had already invited randomly selected residents to a citizens' forum in 2013 to strengthen citizen participation. In Frankfurt, a democracy convention organised by the ‘Mehr als Wählen’ association in 2019 discussed the question of how civic participation can be improved in the city. In 2022, a youth council in Brandis, Saxony, focused on youth participation in the municipality.
The Göttingen Future Forum took place for the second time in 2024. At the first Future Forum, people from Göttingen drew up recommendations for the redesign of main roads, which are to be adopted as guidelines in the course of the conversion of Weender Landstraße and applied to other road construction projects. Following a positive evaluation of the first Future Forum in November 2023, the City Council decided to hold another Future Forum.