Citizens deliberated participation
How should the city involve the people of Göttingen in the future? This question is 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 will develop recommendations on how public participation in Göttingen can be even more successful in the future.
Goal: Participation guidelines
Following the conclusion of the Future Forum, the recommendations developed there will be taken up in dialogue between politicians, administration and the public and developed into binding guidelines. The aim is to have these guidelines officially adopted by the political bodies in 2025. The nexus Institute from Berlin has been commissioned to organise and moderate the Future Forum and the guidelines process.
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 on the River Main.
Second Future Forum in Göttingen
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.