In May, our team continued the field research planned as part of the i4i project. Between May 18th and 22nd, dr. Marta Hoffmann, together with Justyna Maksymowicz (a German language and literature student at Adam Mickiewicz University who was recruited to support the research by providing German translations), visited Bonn to conduct interviews and collect materials related to the Bonn4Future process, which took place in 2021–2022. This initiative consisted of four so-called “climate forums,” during which Bonn residents developed as many as 37 action plans aimed at achieving climate neutrality for Bonn by 2030. Representatives of the City of Bonn and the non-governmental organization BonnImWandel were equally involved in organizing the entire process. Our team had the opportunity to speak with key individuals involved in this assembly and visit the venues where the Bonn4Future meetings took place.
Meanwhile, between May 27tht and 2h9, Marta and Justyna visited Neumünster—a small town north of Hamburg. At the turn of 2022 and 2023, a citizens’ assembly was held there and it was dedicated to the transformation of Christianstraße and the city’s parking policy. There, too, they conducted interviews that provided deeper insight into the characteristics of citizens’ assemblies organized in smaller German cities. They also had the opportunity to examine the Christianstraße and the Wrangelstraße, the streets addressed by a significant portion of the recommendations from this process.
Both research visits were filled with interviews with local officials, politicians, and representatives of non-governmental organizations. Furthermore, in Bonn, Marta and Justyna met with our project partners from the ULB and Goethe University Frankfurt. The next cases to be studied by the Democratic Innovations team will be the citizens’ assemblies that took place in Poznań and Rzeszów.
