It is the responsibility of the federal government and the Länder to organize the discussion of results and transfer of knowledge between cities and towns participating in the programme. As in the case of the sharing of experience by the Länder, the focus is on good practice and quality standards, particularly those related to instrumental-strategic fields of activity. Ultimately the performance of the programme depends on how successfully the federal government and the Länder cooperate to give permanence to Socially Integrative City and to tear down barriers and eliminate weak links. Without additional reforms of public service systems, and particularly national economic and labour market policies, successes in implementing the programme will be limited to territorial islands and isolated subject areas, reducing their long-term impact, because problem causes in the urban districts cannot be eradicated with an update of the urban development support programme.
Experience sharing and player networking
Implementation of a programme as complex as Socially Integrative City, which also embodies a new policy approach, demands a large amount of experience sharing, knowledge transfer, cooperation and public relations. German Länder support exchange among their cities and towns to a greater or lesser extent. Hesse, North Rhine-Westphalia, Saxony and Saarland are particularly instrumental in organizing comprehensive sharing of findings among their programme municipalities. These Länder commission expertises and accompanying research in support of this effort.
Besides targeted counselling and further training services, the Land measures that have proved to be especially useful in the day-to-day implementation process include numerous published operation and orientation guides. The works range from tips on how to draft integrated action plans and set up neighbourhood management and how to obtain funds and pool resources to evaluation proposals and models. Land recommendations on elaborating and updating integrated action plans are available in Bavaria, Hamburg, Hesse, North Rhine-Westphalia, Saarland and Saxony. Particularly detailed neighbourhood management specifications have been issued in Berlin, Hamburg, Hesse and North Rhine-Westphalia. Funding guidelines or comparable catalogues have been published by Bavaria, Lower Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia. Bavaria, Bremen, Hamburg and Mecklenburg-West Pomerania are starting to think about evaluation. Saarland and Saxony-Anhalt's evaluation activities are decisively shaped by simultaneous implementation of EU Structural Fund programmes which specify evaluation as a grant requirement. Berlin, Hesse and North Rhine-Westphalia have the most advanced designs and have made the most progress on implementation.
Harmonization of funding programmes is lagging. The federal government and, to a greater extent, the Länder are challenged to do much more in this area. Despite efforts to provide information and foster coordination via interministerial task forces, counselling on grant application procedures and resource pooling, the idea of efficient pooling has not yet come to fruition. The conventional vertical organization of government departments still appears to dominate administration behaviour. North Rhine-Westphalia and Hesse are doing their own thing, establishing Land programmes in each pertinent government department to directly address urban districts with special development needs.
One of the main goals of Land and nationwide experience sharing is elucidating the enforcement of regulations and gauging the scope for interpretation. Among other things, this concerns the eligibility of projects and measures in the non-investment sphere for financing within the framework of the Socially Integrative City programme. The example of the hurdles created by Article 104, Paragraph 4 of the Basic Law for federal aid to the Länder demonstrates that the Länder enforce the rules variously. A broad interpretation of the clause permits employment of Socially Integrative City resources not only for neighbourhood management, but also even for contingency funds, public relations work and further training if they are needed to prepare, support and sustain investments and foster public acceptance.
Quality standards should also be discussed more extensively and plausibly than has been the case. They should be incorporated into grant approvals and be enforced, e.g. in the realms of integrated action plans, neighbourhood management, resource pooling, evaluation and monitoring. This would promote quality competition. Overall, the terms for applying for public funds seem to attach too little importance to quality standards. The awarding of resources should encourage good ideas, innovations and creative concepts rather than fan competition in demonstrating the direst needs.
Sustaining the Programme
Socially Integrative City is currently supported and managed by many professions and institutions, including onsite players. But commitment and enthusiasm wane when uncertainties arise. Two basic prerequisites for successful implementation of the programme are continuity and reliable frameworking. The renewal procedures of traditional urban development promotion took 15 years on average, despite widespread urging of "expedience", and led to the conviction that urban revitalization is a never-ending task. It would therefore be unrealistic to expect proof of sustainable improvement at this stage, only three years into such a complex and complicated programme as Socially Integrative City.
The problem complexes in many programme districts are even more complicated than originally believed. They require stronger financial support, particularly in the start-up phase - and Socially Integrative City funds must be tapped to this end. Organs furnishing local neighbourhood management support are frequently dramatically understaffed and unable to tackle the variety of claims on their resources or the jobs they are assigned. Moreover, the programme cannot function with any degree of independence in some districts because it overlaps with better-financed schemes. Under these circumstances increasing resources appears to be sensible and desirable, particularly when the measures and projects are subject to auditing in the course of process evaluation. The precarious municipal financial situation in some cities and towns erects barriers for raising local funds and thus rules out candidacy for the programme from the start. Responding in this vein, respondents from 10 percent of the programme districts cite "lack of local municipal resources" or "empty coffers" as an obstacle. One fifth of all programme districts apply additional resources by way of cofinancing. The problem of raising matching funds has already knocked several cities out of the programme and observers fear that others will follow. Therefore there are plans in the wind to reduce the required local share or allow communities to enlist the aid of third parties who do not receive any federal aid.
The programme districts assume functions which disencumber the municipalities as a whole, like providing a home for the homeless, and they serve as a test bed for sustainable development of entire cities. This alone legitimizes a greater injection of resources, which is also justified by the extreme problem density in the needy neighbourhoods.
Thinking further ahead, we should explore notions of how and when to move integrative urban district development from reactive emergency control and ad-hoc intervention toward permanent preventive action. In the Netherlands neighbourhood action has been supplanted by integrated municipal development planning. New impulses can certainly be expected from the output of the research cooperation "Stadt 2030". (1) This asks contestants to develop citywide models of "future integration of a mutually supportive urban citizenship to combat tendencies toward inequality, exclusion and fragmentation" which can provide orientation for decisions on necessary processes and projects.
Legal underpins of the programme approach
The Socially Integrative City programme is already irradiating charismatically and beneficially influencing other forms of urban renewal. According to data provided by several Länder, the programme is stimulating expansion of revitalization objectives and reinforcement of resource pooling. Nevertheless, uncertainty, unconducive to sustained prosecution of Socially Integrative City missions, persists. The doubts concern not only the continuity of supporting funds, but also the viability of the programme.s participatory, cooperative and integrative approach. It therefore seems appropriate, to promote the stability and implementation of the programme and to magnify its radiance, especially at the municipal level, to integrate its principles into the special building law of Articles 136 ff of the Building Code (BauGB).
While objectives and principles of renewal are incontestably compatible with Socially Integrative City, enactment of the following central programme approaches into law appears to be indicated:
National government reforms
The programme was not created with the aim of solving all problems in urban districts with special development needs which encumber and stigmatize lifestyles and outlooks on life. Nevertheless, the basic problem of socially integrating cities must be tackled much more aggressively. The new awareness of the needs of the districts and their inhabitants, the diversity of projects and palpable improvements in urban neighbourhoods should not veil the fact that problems such as unemployment, welfare dependence, gaps in provision of homes for low-income households, and education and training deficits were not caused locally and that many policy areas which impinge on solutions are beyond the jurisdiction of cities and towns. There is a general consensus that neighbourhood initiatives and activities must be reinforced by overarching macrosocial policies, primarily in the areas of job and housing markets, economic development, education and migration.
It also appears crucial to obtain a full account of the threats which are compounding the arguments for application of the Socially Integrative City programme. Continued liberalization of housing markets, sale of municipal housing authorities and abolition of tenancy stipulations will increase the geographical concentration of tight-pinched households and, unless infrastructural measures are taken to alleviate the anticipated problems for in-migrant groups in Germany and integration efforts are intensified, the country will run the risk of aggravated conflicts, bitter rivalry and xenophobia.
Adopting good practice from European neighbours
Taking advantage of neighbours' solutions will evolve into a best practice. We are observing a growing requirement to tap experience gained abroad and to share German findings with other countries. (2) The July 1999 event which kicked off the Socially Integrative City programme included a presentation of Dutch and British experiences, which have subsequently produced more advanced findings and continue to stimulate German thinking. In the Netherlands the Stedelijk Beheer approach accentuates monitoring, district typology and elements of integration, coordination, decentralization and citizen participation. Britain's New Deal for Communities stresses new local partnerships between private, charitable and public institutions and tying awards of grants to certain types of competition, and thus to model quality. International comparisons point to shortcomings in ministerial underpinning in Germany. The apportionment of tasks and the requirements of Socially Integrative City demand special tailoring of responsibilities. "What we really need is a Ministry of Urban Affairs" or a "Ministry of Urban Integration Policy" is the message Socially Integrative City activists are sending. They argue for adequate federal and Land ministry powers and responsibilities to handle the conspicuously worsening social problems in cities and towns.
Outlook
The district-oriented, integrative and participatory approach to urban district development propagated by Socially Integrative City has won great across-the-board acclaim. It is proving a necessary and correct avenue to construction of viable, high-performance organizational structures, elaboration of integrated action plans and implementation of stimulating measures and projects for development in disadvantaged parts of towns.
The Socially Integrative City has encouraged the commitment and operation of all players and vindicated everyone who had previously advocated or launched an integrative, cooperative urban district improvement approach. The programme is having a stabilizing effect which many perceive to be a great boon. It gives players who are new to the idea the nudge they need to explore integrative procedures and to draft and implement new schemes and organizational structures to develop urban districts.
Successes in implementing the programme have so far centred on the instrumental, strategic sector (advancing full speed on integrated action plans and neighbourhood management but only tentatively on resource pooling). In territories where integrative urban district development has long been practised, notable improvements in neighbourhood housing and living conditions have been accomplished by diverse infrastructure schemes, employment measures and training courses as well as through upgrading the spatial environment and polishing the image of the community. However, sustained improvement of situations and outlooks can hardly be achieved with a strictly macrospatial approach.
The ideal of the socially Integrative city will assume more distinct contours and will constitute a beacon for future development and a model of viability if the new policy approach is pursued aggressively and on a wide front in cities and towns, if the federal and Land governments agree on quality standards and programme option refinements on the basis of municipal experience, and above all, if onsite policymaking is accompanied by the necessary coherent reforms in federal and Land governance.
(1) www.stadt2030.de/ergebnisse.shtml (german, retrieved 18 March 2003)
(2) Several EU and OECD projects and a number of enquiries from beyond Germany demonstrate the great interest in Socially Integrative City.
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
