Fundamental socioeconomic change has aggravated social inequality in cities and towns. More and more neighbourhoods are becoming the focus of negative trends. For almost 20 years evidence has been mounting that traditional urban development support is unable to solve the complex problems in disadvantaged urban districts. Although urban development promotion always considered welfare state principles, (1) investive construction measures and projects dominated. North Rhine-Westphalia and Hamburg were pioneers in testing and implementing integrative-integrated (2) district development concepts. They ran the 1993 Districts with Special Development Needs Programme and the 1994 Poverty Reduction Programme, respectively. The ARGEBAU Construction Ministers Conference spurred on the continuing development and dissemination of the new political approach considerably in Potsdam on 9 November 1996, when it approved the joint Socially Integrative City initiative to combat rising sociospatial polarization. (3) The federal-Land programme, Districts With Special Development Needs - the Socially Integrative City (in short, Socially Integrative City) was finally established in September 1999 through the administrative agreement between the government and Germany's Länder to complement conventional urban development aid. It was based on the coalition pact between Germany's Social Democratic Party (SPD) and Alliance 90/The Greens.
Currently there are 300 "urban districts with special development needs" (4) in 214 cities and towns (cf. Figure 16). In 1999 the Länder welcomed a total of 162 districts in 124 towns and cities into the Socially Integrative City programme. This number increased by 53 in 2000, 48 in 2001 and a further 38 in 2002. (5) The districts aided in 1999, 2000 and 2001 had a total of about 1.74 million residents. Western German Länder accounted for 1.34 million and the territory of the former East Germany 0.4 million. However, there is considerable evidence that many more urban districts have comparable development requirements but could not yet be reached by the programme.
In late 2002 the Federal Office for Building and Regional Planning (BBR), at the behest of the Federal Ministry of Transport, Building and Housing (BMVBW), awarded a one-year contract to provide an expertise, Interim Evaluation of the Federal-Land Socially Integrative City Programme, to the Urban Research Institute (IfS). The interim evaluation is due to commence in June 2003. The Socially Integrative City expert/steering panel, which is preparing and supervising this evaluation, was founded on 11 September 2002. Findings will furnish input for further programme implementation. (6) All parties agree that the results of Difu support are a foundation for the interim assessment. (7)
(1) See Uwe-Jens Walther, "Ambitionen und Ambivalenzen eines Programms. Die Soziale Stadt zwischen neuen Herausforderungen und alten Lösungen" Walther, Soziale Stadt - Zwischenbilanzen. Ein Programm auf dem Weg zur Sozialen Stadt?, Opladen 2002, pp. 26 f.
(2) The term "integrative" refers to the process of integration. "Integrated" describes the result.
(3) For details on the evolution of the programme, cf. Hans-Jochen Döhne und Kurt Walter, "Aufgabe und Chance einer neuen Stadtentwicklungspolitik. Ziele und Konzeption des Bund-Länder-Programms "Stadtteile mit besonderem Entwicklungsbedarf - Soziale Stadt"", Bundesbaublatt, No. 5 (1999), pp. 24-29; Heidede Becker und Rolf-Peter Löhr, "Soziale Stadt. Ein Programm gegen die sozialräumliche Spaltung in den Städten", Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, Beilage zur Wochenzeitung Das Parlament, Vol. 10-11 (2000) (german), p. 22-29;
On programme forms, cf. Michael Krautzberger und Birgit Richter, "Die soziale Stadt" - Neuorientierung in der Stadtentwicklungspolitik und in der Sozialarbeit, Theorie und Praxis der Sozialen Arbeit, No. 1 (2002), pp. 36-41.
(4) Here and in the following chapters, the terms "district", "area" and "neighbourhood" are used synonymously for the spatial units of Socially Integrative City.
(5) For more details on this and the following, see Appendix, Table 1 (german), on the amendments to the federal programme, including the annual rearrangements.
(6) From the BMVBW's 18 June 2002 invitation to the constitutional meeting of the expert/steering panel.
(7) Cf. Chapter 9 (german).
Translated from: Soziale Stadt - Strategien für die Soziale Stadt, Erfahrungen und Perspektiven – Umsetzung des Bund-Länder-Programms „Stadtteile mit besonderem Entwicklungsbedarf – die soziale Stadt", Deutsches Institut für Urbanistik 2003
