Smart or lovable and livable? At the Forum UnternehmerTUM in the BMW Welt, 650 representatives from established companies, politics, science and the start-up scenewhat constitutes a smart city and where Munich wants to develop.
In Munich, the cosmopolitan city with heart, do we prefer to develop a warm-hearted, “livable and lovable” city of the future or a cool smart city?
The challenges of a smart city
Rural exodus, demographic change, growing cities, and inequalities. The challenges lie in the areas of mobility, housing, the environment, and changing working environments—and also in people's fear of digitalization and loss of control.
Illustrated by Julian Petrin. The urbanist knows what he's talking about, having founded Nexthamburg, a platform that enables citizens to collaborate on implementing their visions for the city of tomorrow. Petrin also said:
"The course for the future is being set in the city. Because many of the causes, but also many of the opportunities, for climate change lie in cities."
The drivers of change are needs such as slowing down, the desire to do things yourself (in Munich clearly visible at the Growth in the maker scene) – but above all the desire to change things together and create a “co-creative” city.
The panel discussion, which was attended by a wide range of experts, revolved around these very challenges and solutions. Dr. Bieberbach from the Munich municipal utilities (SWM), Jürgen Enninger, Head of the Cultural and Creative Industries Competence Team of the City of Munich, Joseph Schmid, Second Mayor of the City of Munich, Dr. Schönenberger, Managing Director of UnternehmerTUM, Peter Schwarzenbauer, BMW Board Member and SSophie Wolfrum, Professor of Urban and Regional Planning at the Technical University of Munich. Thanks to the engaging contributions and certainly also to the sometimes awkwardly questioning moderator Dominik Wichmann, DLD Managing Director and former editor-in-chief of Stern magazine, it was also a very entertaining discussion.
Achieve more together
The message: “Together we can achieve more.” For example, if creatives, startups, industry and citizens meet in the planned Start-up and innovation center in the creative quarter mutually enrich and develop innovations together. Directly tailored to the needs of B2B and B2C customers.
Helmut Schönenberger considers the new creative quarter to be a unique approach in which Munich could play an international pioneering role:
"Working together under one roof creates something far more special than if everyone works for themselves. When different disciplines come together, something new emerges."
Develop future scenarios as a lighthouse
With a current population of 1.5 million and an expected 1.8 million by 2030, Munich is definitely one of the growing cities. And the Bavarian capital is already building the city of the future – with new mobility concepts, renewable energy, and citizen participation.
"Smarter Together" is the name of the EU project currently being implemented in Freiham, west of Munich, and is intended to serve as a flagship project. 10,000 apartments are to be built here, providing housing for 20,000 people.
And we have probably all had the orange cable in Munich: SWM intends to make even greater use of geothermal energy as a renewable energy source in the heating sector in the future. Even though Dr. Bieberbach says: “A lot still needs to happen technologically here.”
At the same time, Munich is a pioneer, for example with the linked MVG app, which is intended to enable fast routing through the city, taking into account the traffic situation and the available public transport.
“We have to take people along on the journey”, said Schönenberger at the end of the discussion at the UnternehmerTUM forum. “We need processes and structures, but also a culture of playful experimentation. Then new things emerge."
A nice closing sentence. So let's get started – let's work together to develop a lovable, livable, intelligent city of the future!
