German
Citizen Participation
Citizen Participation and Citizens’ Commissions in Berlin’s Boroughs
- Street signs
Photo: Neighborhood management Hellersdorfer Promenade
The Berlin Neighborhood Management program is a limited-term special program designed to overcome trends towards increasingly unequal life opportunities among residents of different areas in Berlin, to counteract increasing segregation tendencies in the neighborhoods, and to support and stabilize neighborhood structures. The coexistence among different ethnic groups in the neighborhood is organized in a socially compatible fashion in order to reduce or neutralize negative contextual effects on the life opportunities of area residents. The task of Berlin Neighborhood Management is thus to organize new forms of neighborly interaction and cooperation in areas weakened by structural economic change and outward migration. This “we” feeling can in turn open up the widest sense of personal responsibility for the neighborhood’s development and form the starting point for a new, stable community life.
A central precondition for the development of community life lies in continuously integrating the residents in the process of neighborhood improvement and stabilization. They need to be placed in the position to shape their community’s life on their own responsibility: they need to be empowered. The activation process this entails penetrates all processes, procedures, and structures. The extent to which citizens in the neighborhoods actually participate and take on responsibility is in fact the ultimate criterion for the success of the program.
The strategic reorientation of the Berlin Neighborhood Management program makes use of positive past experiences (Neighborhood Funds) and develops these elements further in line with the program’s philosophy. The evaluation of the program up to now has revealed that only when we succeed in reaching citizens—addressing them as the key players responsible for their neighborhoods—and only when we motivate them to embrace this responsibility as a community is it possible to build networks from which a system of social control and solidarity can emerge in the long term.
Setting up the Neighborhood Funds led to previously unseen levels of local citizen involvement on the part of many people: for the first time, the Berlin city administration allowed the local population to decide on how the funds would be distributed within their neighborhoods. The Neighborhood Funds proved that citizens are capable and competent in working together to identify the problems in their neighborhoods and in pursuing solutions through the responsible use of resources.
The “Socially Integrative City” program shows that citizens who have ideas for improving the integration, tolerance, and cooperation among the people of their neighborhoods or who are not satisfied with their urban environment can use the opportunities available to them and make a contribution. Since its inception, the program has emphasized the necessity of activating residents. Not least, these experiences are crucial for the development of future strategies for urban development and citizen participation. One positive outcome has been the creation of councils in many areas that play a role in determining the allocation of public funds.
Citizen participation – a future for Berlin?
With the “Socially Integrative City” program, the Berlin Senate has generated an important impetus to stabilize and further develop 33 “districts with special development needs.” These districts are struggling with a diverse array of problems in the social, economic, ethnic, and urban spheres.
With the help of the “Socially Integrative City” program, disadvantaged population groups are provided with the basis for achieving well-being and a quality of life in keeping with the times, independent of where they live and where they come from. The goal is that they will take advantage of employment opportunities and enjoy a sense of security. Such an ambitious and comprehensive program cannot, however, be implemented through traditional structures and procedures: therefore, the organization of work and decision-making structures within and among the administrative agencies has required changes, and it has also been necessary to set up new ways of managing the partnership with the institutions and people in the neighborhood.
Existing networks, organizations, and initiatives create the basis for the Neighborhood Management program. They create the starting point for a process of stabilization. Involving and strengthening them and motivating people to take on more responsibility for the social life in the community is the high and ambitious goal that the neighborhood managers have taken on. With their help, strategies are developed and implemented for overcoming increasing anonymity in the neighborhoods, creating modes of social control, and building vibrant neighborhoods. The success of this undertaking will depend on making the activities of the commissions transparent, a goal which in many areas still needs further work.
The federal government has assigned high policy priority to the “Socially Integrative City” program. In order to break down traditional administrative processes and find new modes of action, this kind of support has been indispensable. Numerous changes have been initiated, both in internal Senate and borough planning processes in the direction of more integrated and integrative organizational forms, and also in the relationship between public administration and civil society—including the economic sphere.
These new structures also give rise to tensions regarding goals, interests, and players: again and again it is necessary to think carefully about which decisions make wisest use of district funds and serve best to achieve program goals. Often opinions differ among the different parties involved—not only among residents, but also among those whose usual scope for decision-making has been restricted by new processes.
How do residents affect the development of their neighborhoods?
The following points describe the main elements of the program strategy:
- Pooling resources: Cooperation among different administrative agencies on all levels to compile specialist knowledge, personnel and financial potential. Citizens demand efficient and transparent procedures.
- Partnership with local players: Aggressively and actively seeking to integrate neighborhood residents, as well as players from the local business and social sphere, is crucial for the stabilization process. Attention must focus on supporting sustainable organizational structures for civic involvement and stable partnership.
- Empowerment: Fostering the provision of information by administrative agencies, providing training and educational opportunities as the basis for self-determined action, developing perspectives, and encouraging people to take on responsibility are crucial. Here, Neighborhood Boards can also have a positive impact on neighborhood structures.
- Resident Funds: The establishment of funds within neighborhoods has proven effective in activating citizens and passing responsibility on to them. Here, juries composed mainly of individual area residents, with the addition of local organizations and initiatives active in the neighborhood, decide on the allocation of funds with advice from the Neighborhood Management team. These funds help residents realize projects that have received approval.
How does the program work in practice?
- A professional Neighborhood Management team was put to work in each area. By holding public events, conducting surveys, and going directly to residents to offer advice and counseling, the Neighborhood Managers try to reach people who do not find ways to participate on their own. In all the Neighborhood Management areas, decision-making and work structures have emerged and emphasis is being placed increasingly on promoting processes of participation.
- Since the program’s inception, it has involved citizens in different planning procedures. Under the leadership of a moderation team and with specialist input, residents focus on the problems and potentials of their neighborhoods. Their “Citizen Reports” present their findings and priorities for activities promoting neighborhood development in the coming years from the viewpoint of local residents and directed at government administrations and policy-makers. The Neighborhood Management teams use the reports as one of the foundations for their action plans for the particular Neighborhood Management area. Furthermore, for planning processes attempts may be made to recruit new participants who can carry the work on into the future and who acquire useful experience and qualifications.
- One of the next steps is to implement the projects together with local players in the neighborhood and to build networks among diverse participants. Since strategic concepts of action are not fixed programs for the future, they have to be readjusted annually to reflect developments within the neighborhood, and completed projects and measures must be evaluated. The main criteria for judging the efficiency of the program are, from the point of view of the residents, how fast projects are carried out and to what extent visible changes are produced within the neighborhood.
- The Neighborhood Management teams act as trustees, managing an Action Fund or a Resident Fund that allocates a total of €15,000 per year to microprojects (e.g., putting on a street festival or a party in a courtyard). These funds make allocation decisions with the involvement of changing constellations of local people who are active—or are now becoming active—in their communities. A strong sense of responsbility in the management of these funds has been in evidence up to the present day. They make up a central and highly succcessful element of the Neighborhood Management work.
- The €500,000 Neighborhood Fund that neighborhood juries allocated through a voting process in the years 2001 and 2002 resulted in a major amount of work and was very demanding for those involved. Those local people who thought that this was going to be a sort of “self-service buffet” for the neighborhood had to think again: the residents participating in neighborhood juries proved to be careful, economical, and precise in making decisions according to their priorities. This was an important learning process for policy-makers and city administrators alike, gradually enhancing their view of area residents as real partners who are worthy of being respected and taken seriously. And even if disputes did sometimes arise over projects, the ideas that came from the neighborhoods were realized. In retrospect it is clear that the neighborhood funds were a key to the long-term mobilization of people within the neighborhoods. Out of this, Citizens’ Boards were created with different agendas, ranging from realizing their own planning concepts to deciding on the allocation of all available funding sources. There has been consistently keen international interest in these experiences up to the present: it is not only in Germany that models for activating and increasing citizen participation are being sought. Support for citizen participation and co-determination over program funds has been a subject of increasing discussion, and the Neighborhood Fund jury model has been expanded to cover all the funds allocated in the neighborhoods within the framework of the decisions of neighborhood councils. Since the strategic reorientation of the “Socially Integrative City” program in 2005, the teams chosen have worked towards creating Neighborhood Boards, and these now exist in almost all areas or are in the final stage of preparations. This is a component of the strategic reorientation and simultaneously demonstrates a new qualitative aspect of the revised procedure.
- Sixteen areas with moderate problems were brought into the “Socially Integrative Cities” program for stabilization and improvement. In these “Intervention and Prevention” areas, early-stage action is intended to stop a downward spiral, and an increasing focus is to be placed on measures in the activity areas of integration, education, and employment. A strong focus is placed on giving migrants the ability to shape local civic life, and their own local organizations are also integrated into the process. Strong partners, including local housing companies, existing neighborhood and community centers, schools, and local businesses are brought into the Neighborhood Management process to ensure the long-term positive development of the neighborhood. Together with them, important synergies can be created to propel neighborhood improvement forward. Without the long-term activation and creativity of citizens in these areas, any attempt at building new neighborly relationships and structures within the community will fail, given the limited possibilities of financial support from the federal level.
- The strategic reorientation of the program also created a strong focus on intercultural competencies within the teams and councils, incorporating an awareness of the very different life circumstances of the different social and ethnic groups in the process.
- The designations used for the different committees involved is not unified: we find them referred to as Neighborhood Boards, Neighborhood Councils, Resident Juries, Project Juries and Project Fund Juries, depending on each one’s particular self-conception and tasks. Efficient working structures have been successfully established but the details are still under discussion depending on the changing composition of the various resident councils. These discussions at the neighborhood level revolve around questions of legitimation, rules of procedure, new ideas, project objectives, and funding allocation to the projects. Talking about these issues is already one crucial element on the road to a vibrant community life. Rather than being regulated, locally oriented solutions need to be fostered and supported. Here it is important to avoid giving residents the impression that neighborhood councils just do what city administrations prescribe. This would be a bureaucratic approach and a fundamentally wrong way of doing things.
- The complex problems facing the districts demand close cooperation spanning different municipal departments, involving those responsible for the program in the Senate Department for Urban Development and those borough representatives responsible at the local level for implementing Neighborhood Management programs and carrying out projects. Since the inception of the new program, those districts involved (in cooperation with the district commissioners) have taken on increased management responsibilities. Their new tasks include steering activities by district commissioners, work to increase citizen participation and activation, preparation of integrated plans for action, project development and accounting, establishment of interdepartmental working groups, and organization of steering or management committee meetings at the borough level. The program has succeeded in gaining the city administration’s acceptance of the resident-run processes at the local level, and in obtaining increased resources to enable the increased workload.
Composition of the advisory boards: the average size is between 15 and 30 persons. The boards in the new districts are composed according to the principle of gender equality, and are usually not male dominated. In the old areas, women clearly show greater endurance and a stronger interest in participating, given the higher number of women represented. Migrants are also involved but in proporation to their percentage of the population, they are still underrepresented. It is necessary to address them directly.
The potential for involvement is most apparent in areas where clubs or groups act in their own interests. This is the traditional model for participation, ranking above involvement out of personal interest. The attempt to involve new participants by random selection into decision-making bodies has been used in some areas, but an overall balance is difficult to achieve.
(Translation: Deborah Bowen, Monika Scheele Knight, H. Hübner)