An overwhelming rush to the "Open City Hall" day for Dresden's city administration: around 12,000 interested people wanted to see the inside of the Stadtforum Dresden, a new administrative center in the heart of the city, on 29 March 2025. The model project Smart City (MPSC) Dresden was also present with several offers.
Environmental monitoring
Visitors to the Open Town Hall were given advice on the risks of heavy rain and flooding in the state capital Dresden. The focus was on the heavy rain hazard map, the implementation measure "Digital urban heavy rain twin and environmental monitoring" of the model project Smart City and the potential flood hazards of the Elbe in the 3D city model. Building on this, adaptation measures against heavy rain and flooding were presented to interested parties and discussed in more detail in one-to-one meetings.
Toolbox Smart Participation
As part of the MPSC measure "Toolbox Smart Participation", interested parties were also able to try out instruments for citizen participation. The co-design tool U_CODE, which can be used to create designs and make comments in the model, mapped the city forum: visitors were able to mark their favorite places and leave their opinion on the building. A short survey on the touch table next door wanted to know what types of participation are known, which methods of co-determination are considered the method of choice and the Smart-City question: digital, analog or both? The results are stored and can serve the team as trend indicators for future surveys.
Smart City Radar
As the scientific lead institution for the accompanying research in the pilot project Smart City Dresden , the members of WISSENSARCHITEKTUR also presented a model of their "Smart City Radar", which is currently being developed, at their stand. The tool is intended to bundle projects, topics and players that use digital innovations to make Dresden a "Smart City ", i.e. more sustainable, social and liveable. After an internal test phase, the radar will be made publicly available and populated in a participatory manner; it will offer brief information, links and contact persons; views and filters will group the data and show connections. The aim is to obtain a broad picture of Smart-City activities in Dresden in order to identify synergies and make networking possible.
Overall, these offers, the billboards and the new website smartcity . dresden.de met with a great response, and in addition to the digital participations, there were exciting discussions.
You can find more information about the new city forum and the opening on the state capital's website Dresden.
