Students begin design work for a green Martini in Mühlhausen

The city of Mühlhausen’s Smart City project is now receiving support from Fachhochschule Erfurt [Erfurt University of Applied Sciences] to advance its plans for green infrastructure connections and a neighbourhood garden [Quartiersgarten] in its Martini suburb. Landscape architecture students, led by Prof. Inga Hahn and her team, are currently developing design proposals for the area. On the 25 October 2023, they came for a first visit which included a detailed tour of the site and town as well as topical talks by the Smart City team.

The students will also draw on the ideas and wishes that residents have for the wider site and future communal garden. These were collected at a neighbourhood festival in September. This festival was already the third opportunity for Mühlhausen residents to get involved in what a neighbourhood garden in Martini-Vorstadt could look like. The Smart City team had already collected ideas at the 2022 neighbourhood festival. In addition, the neighbourhood garden concept builds on a public participation process in July 2022, when residents expressed their views on this topic in various workshops over several days. Ideas are also discussed in the neighbourhood garden working group, which includes representatives from BUND e.V., ThINKA e.V. and the city administration. The neighbourhood garden working group is still open to all interested parties. We are always happy to welcome new faces.

Martini-Vorstadt is one of three neighbourhoods in Mühlhausen that will benefit in the coming years from the federal funding programme Modellprojekte Smart Cities [Smart Cities Pilot Projects] by the Bundesministerium für Wohnen, Stadtentwicklung und Bauwesen (BMWSB) [Federal MInistry of Housing, Urban Development and Building].

Katrin is advising the Smart City project on green infrastructure and community garden issues and acts as the academic and communication link between the Smart City team and the Fachhochschule Erfurt.

This article – in German – was written by Katrin Bohn and the Smart City team and can be found here.

For information on Smart City Mühlhausen see the project’s own website.

Image: The focus of the green infrastructural project is an area characterised by multi-storey housing with generous open space provision. (source: Stadt Mühlhausen und Katrin Bohn 2023)