Citizen participation has long been an important part of urban planning and development. The experiences, views and interests of local people can thus be incorporated very specifically into the planning consideration processes.
In addition to the perspectives of affected, fundamentally interested or committed citizens, the views of people who are not initially interested in the respective issues are also helpful. Ultimately, the aim of citizen participation is to reflect a broad spectrum of interests and perspectives from the urban population. The participation of randomly selected citizens, and in particular the instrument of citizens’ councils, has become increasingly important in recent years.
However, there has been little citizen participation to date when new solutions to urban planning challenges are sought with the help of competition procedures. Competitions play a very important role in urban planning.
- On the basis of a detailed, written brief (invitation to tender), design services are submitted anonymously by various planning offices at the same time.
- In a preliminary review, the designs are examined by a neutral body with regard to the technical and content-related fulfillment of the specifications from the competition.
- On this basis, a jury then decides which design should be awarded the contract based on previously defined criteria. The jury is made up of specialist judges (experts from the respective specialist field) and “material judges” (e.g. project sponsors and local stakeholders). The judges do not know who submitted the competition entries and are not allowed to see them before the jury meeting
Given the highly technical nature and strict anonymity of urban planning competitions, the question arises as to how space can still be created for citizen participation. The city of Heidelberg has already found answers to this question in the first few years following the adoption of the guidelines for co-designing public participation in 2012.
The Heidelberg guidelines stipulate that citizens should be “appropriately involved in the process of holding architectural competitions and urban planning competitions”.
This was implemented by, among others
- Participation of citizens in the formulation of the competition task (competition brief)
- their involvement as (non-voting) expert advisors to the jury itself
- or through public events on the evening before the jury meeting, with the opportunity to comment on the anonymous designs and to pass on these comments and information to the jury.
The last form requires a very careful procedure to ensure the anonymity of the works and to exclude the possibility of the jury viewing them before the meeting.
Bremen: first citizens’ council as part of an urban planning competition
Bremen has gone one step further with the first citizens’ council as part of an urban planning competition. As an intermediary whose task it is to actively support the transformation of the city center, Projektbüro Innenstadt Bremen GmbH was established there in 2022 to drive forward the development “between Wall and Weser” on behalf of the City of Bremen. The aim is to achieve a sustainable and resilient transformation of the city center from an ecological, economic and social perspective based on the Bremen Centrum 2030+ strategy. The City Centre Project Office is also managing a number of measures that are being implemented with the help of the federal program “Sustainable Cities and Centres” (ZIZ). One of these projects is the testing of lot-based participation in Bremen. The project office commissioned ifok GmbH to design and implement a citizens’ council with a focus on public spaces in the city center. In autumn 2024, the “Bürger:innenrat Stadtraum Centrum Bremen” (BSCB) was initially involved in the design of two public urban spaces in the city center. Building on the very positive experiences made here and supported by the high motivation of the members of the Citizens’ Council, the project office decided to give the Citizens’ Council a voice in a second urban development project that is central to Bremen’s city center.
The centrally located “Parkhaus Mitte” parking lot is to be demolished in the coming years and put to a new use. The aim is to create a new building that combines a variety of uses and spaces with different layouts and characters. The city center project office launched a competition for the new building. The task of the Bürger:innrat was to provide qualified assessments of the submitted designs in the competition process. Building on the members’ experience in dealing with public urban spaces in Bremen, the focus of its work was on evaluating the submitted solutions for the open space design and the proposed public uses of the building.
The competition was divided into two phases:
In the first phase, twelve architectural firms were admitted to participate. The Citizens’ Council was involved in this first phase. Its task was to view and evaluate the twelve designs. The evaluations were incorporated into the jury’s decision as to which six of these twelve designs should be considered in the second phase of the competition.
Taking into account the results of the Citizens’ Council, the jury selected six designs at the end of June, which were further developed by the participating offices in the second phase of the competition based on the jury’s recommendations. Following the subsequent second meeting of the jury, the award procedure was concluded on October 29, 2024 with the announcement of the winning designs.
Good professional preparation of the Citizens’ Assembly
In the first meeting of the jury, a full-day meeting of the Citizens’ Council in summer 2024 introduced the competition process for the first time. It served as preparation for the subsequent evaluation of the twelve designs. Jörn Ackermann from BPW Stadtplanung informed the citizens about the formal competition process and what role the Citizens’ Council will play in it. BPW Stadtplanung had been commissioned to implement the architectural competition.
In order to familiarize the participants with the area to be planned, a joint inspection of the current building (Parkhaus Mitte) and, above all, the public space in the immediate vicinity took place. Carl Zillich, Managing Director of the Innenstadt Bremen project office, led the tour, accompanied by Carolin Korf, Head of the Planning and New Construction Department of the municipal Bremer Baugesellschaft mbH (Brebau) and Helena Harttung, Head of the Mitte / Östliche Vorstadt local authority. Together, they provided information on relevant aspects of the public space around the Mitte parking garage.
In order to adequately evaluate the Citizens’ Assembly’s designs and identify strengths and weaknesses, it was necessary to follow the formal evaluation criteria of the competition. To do this, these had to be made understandable and therefore applicable for the citizens. Technical criteria such as “address formation”, “power of identification” or “zoning of outdoor spaces” are not familiar concepts for laypeople. For this reason, the seven criteria were discussed and “translated” together in the preparatory meeting with the help of experts from BPW Stadtplanung and the project office. On this basis, the citizens were able to work out how they interpreted the specific criteria and what was particularly important to them. In doing so, they were able to draw on the knowledge gained from the previous participation in the design of two public urban spaces in the city center.
Public participation in competition procedures requires a high degree of diligence and commitment
Competition procedures are subject to strict and legally relevant confidentiality requirements. As this is a process in which all participating offices must have an equal chance of being selected and winning, no information may leak out until the final decision of the jury. It was therefore necessary to keep both the designs and the deliberations in the Citizens’ Council strictly confidential so that no competitive advantages or disadvantages could arise. To this end, all participants (citizens, moderators, experts) had to sign a confidentiality agreement in advance of the meeting, which bound them to secrecy.
The focus of the second, all-day meeting on June 22, 2024 was the discussion and evaluation of the twelve submitted designs. The handout on the evaluation criteria, which had been jointly developed in the first meeting, served as an important basis for this. The handout contained examples, explanations and guiding questions to help evaluate the designs. After an introduction to all the drafts, the individual drafts were discussed intensively in small groups, with strengths and weaknesses identified and an overall assessment of each draft made. The results were brought together in a plenary session and discussed and supported by all participants. ifok compiled the results in a final report, which was handed over to the competition organizer before the jury meeting. This allowed the results of the Citizens’ Council to be incorporated into the jury’s deliberations. For each competition entry, the results of the Citizens’ Assembly were presented to the jury alongside the results of the preliminary review.
When the competition results were presented on October 29, 2024, the members of the Citizens’ Council were invited again. After the public presentation of the winning designs, the numerous members of the Citizens’ Assembly came together again. They were given feedback on how their work results had been incorporated into the jury’s assessments and thus also into the further development of the designs. At the same time, they were able to see for themselves what impact their work had and exchange ideas. Overall, the members of the Citizens’ Council were very satisfied with the results and saw this process as a very successful example of citizen participation.
Success factors and challenges
Cooperation: The close cooperation and dovetailing of the Citizens’ Assembly with the planning and competition processes represented a considerable opportunity, but also a challenge. The close and trusting cooperation of all stakeholders involved and their willingness to try out new things were crucial to the success of the Citizens’ Assembly.
Inspection stings Observation stings Description: In order to give citizens as good a picture as possible of the subject of participation, as many senses as possible should be addressed and the topic should be made as concrete and tangible as possible. If possible, a physical tour is recommended, ideally with relevant experts, stakeholders or affected parties. In addition, the input should be made as graphic, concrete and tangible as possible, e.g. through videos, pictures, models or field reports.
Conclusion:
The Bürger:innenrat Stadtraum Centrum Bremen is an impressive example of how public participation and competition procedures can be successfully combined. The active involvement of citizens in the planning processes and the evaluation of architectural designs has enabled a wide range of perspectives and ideas to be incorporated into urban development. This not only strengthens the acceptance of the planned measures, but also promotes citizens’ trust in the political decision-making processes. The highly technical nature of an urban planning competition is retained and enriched by the perspectives of the citizens. At the same time, the anonymity of the competition process and thus legal certainty is maintained without restriction. The citizens’ council for the “Parkhaus Mitte” competition process in Bremen is a model that should also set a precedent in other cities and municipalities.
