19 million euros for a "smarter" city

State capital and technical university Dresden take part in the pilot project Smart City

How can people in Dresden address their concerns and requests to the city administration quickly and easily? And how will the administration itself be set up in the future to process these in a targeted and efficient manner? To answer these questions, the state capital Dresden and the Technical University Dresden are investing around 19 million euros and developing a joint Smart-City concept. This makes them one of the 28 model projects selected by the Federal Ministry of Housing, Urban Development and Building (BMWSB). Last year, the ministry invited cities, districts and municipalities to strategically address digitalization as a "model project Smart Cities" under the motto "Together out of the crisis: space for the future".

"Most of us are already out and about in the digital world every day. Numerous services and processes in the city can already be handled digitally. With the federal government's funding, we can now take a huge step towards an even 'smarter' city. I am particularly pleased that we are implementing digitalization as a partner between the administration and TU Dresden and thus pooling our expertise. The fact that we are one of the 94 applicants selected clearly underlines this," said Lord Mayor Dirk Hilbert.

The project volume for the Dresden Smart-City concept amounts to 19 million euros, 65 percent of which is funded by the BMWSB. The state capital Dresden is contributing 35 percent to the project. In managing the project, the state capital Dresden is relying on the expertise of its own IT services company and plans to work closely with the TU Dresden as the main scientific partner. The WISSENSARCHITEKTUR Laboratory of Knowledge Architecture (TUD) will play a key role in supporting and shaping the Smart-City strategy in the first phase of the project.

Digital applications and concepts to further strengthen Dresden The model project Smart City focuses on citizens. Digital participation tools for "Dresdens Smart Citizenship" are intended to enable Dresden's citizens to communicate directly with the city administration on all aspects of urban development. The WISSENSARCHITEKTUR Laboratory of Knowledge Architecture and the city planning office have already gained initial experience with the U_CODE participation process, which involves various interest groups in the design of urban spaces and buildings. Using digital tools, citizens can contribute their ideas and comments, which are then processed and evaluated largely automatically. The aim is to create intelligent districts with a higher quality of life, participation and sustainability. The smartapplications and concepts developed during the project, which will run until the end of 2026, should make a decisive contribution to strengthening Dresden as a city worth living in and can be used by other cities throughout Germany.

"The award of the funding project," says Dr Peter Lames, Mayor of Finance and Chief Information Officer of the state capital Dresden, "confirms the very good results in the area of digitalization for Dresden, which led us to 6th place in the Germany-wide Smart-City index for cities published by the IT industry association Bitkom in 2021. The goals we have set ourselves with the new administration center can be implemented much more sustainably as part of the funding project." The new administration center in Dresden's city center, which will be built by 2025, in conjunction with the digitally networked districts, will thus become the prototype of a digital city hall that brings together all processes centrally, integrates stakeholders and enables networked development in the individual districts and the
entire city.

TU Dresden as co-initiator and main partner of the pilot project

As a scientific partner for the model project Smart Cities, the TU Dresden is the first port of call in Dresden, as the WISSENSARCHITEKTUR Laboratory of Knowledge Architecture in the Department of Building and Environment (Faculty of Architecture) has already investigated digital solutions for living and working in the digitally networked city of tomorrow in various research projects. Prof. Jörg Rainer Noennig, head of the working group and co-initiator of the application, explains: "We have been interested in the development of Smart cities and intelligently networked spaces for almost a decade. With initiatives such as our ESF innovation team 'Data4City' or the joint project 'Shaping the digital city', we have investigated pioneering technologies and developed new methods with which the potential of digital transformation can be used to develop socially and ecologically sustainable urban communities. The model project Smart Cities now offers Dresden and its research landscape the unique opportunity to explore and implement such approaches in a targeted manner with stakeholders from the city administration, civil society, politics and business."

Background

94 cities, districts and municipalities as well as inter-municipal cooperations from all over Germany responded to the BMWSB's call under the guiding theme "Together out of the crisis: space for the future". In addition to the Dresdenapplication, 27 other submissions were selected, for which
has a total of 300 million euros at its disposal. With the economic stimulus and future package in June 2020, the German government decided to continue funding the model projects Smart Cities and increase it to a total of 820 million euros.

With the model projects Smart Cities, the German government is supporting municipalities in strategically shaping digitalization in the interests of integrated, sustainable urban development that is geared towards the common good. The pilot projects develop and test cross-sectoral digital strategies for urban life of the future.