Willkommene Perspektiven – Nachhaltige Stadtentwicklung durch Urban Design Thinking

Which needs, ideas and solutions do migrants identify for a sustainable urban development? Is Urban Design Thinking a suitable method to enable co-creation in urban transformation processes? What are the effects and benefits of such co-creative approaches in a city like Mannheim with its very diverse population, and how do they practically fit into urban governance? How can the interest of other cities be aroused for what is happening in an experimental setting like in Mannheim? These curious questions have been the starting point for a research and development process that took place in Mannheim between 2016 and 2019 within the project Migrants4Cities. High-qualified migrants design future cities. The project experimented with Urban Design Thinking in a real-life, co-creative urban laboratory on key challenges of urban development. This book presents answers to the questions mentioned above, that have been developed by the project team consisting of the City of Mannheim, the Chair for Urban Renewal and Sustainable Development at TU Berlin and inter 3 Institute for Resource Management.The book describes why co-creation gains importance in urban development and how Urban Design Thinking offers tools to structure implement such human-centred approaches focussing on the needs of the people also in urban settings. It offers illustrative insights how Urban Design Thinking was applied in the sub-projects of Migrants4Cities, which persons were involved, what characterized the working process and which results were elaborated. Based on these experiences the authors reflect the co-creative approach concerning: the peculiarities of applying Urban Design Thinking; the integration of such methods into the routines of urban governance; the mobilization and integration of migrants; and the transfer of results to other cities.The project was funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research within the program of Sustainable Transformation of Urban Areas.