The city of Ulm receives funding of 1.4 million euros from the federal programme “Sustainable Inner Cities”.
In September, Markus Mendler, responsible for the “Ulm Inner City Dialogue” at the Real Estate and Economic Development Department, had submitted the funding application, and now the positive news has come from Berlin: the City of Ulm will receive 1.404 million euros from the Federal Ministry of Building’s funding programme “Sustainable Inner Cities and Centres – Promotion of Innovative Concepts to Strengthen Resilience and Crisis Management in Cities and Communities”. Lord Mayor Gunter Czisch thanked everyone who had been involved in the application process, from the inner city dialogue project group and various city departments to the Chamber of Industry and Commerce and Ulm City Marketing, for their efforts. “This was a real joint effort. I thank everyone who worked together and made this result possible in the first place.”
The motion is based on the previous results of the Ulm city centre dialogue, “which we now want to and can realise”, as Mendler says. “A strong signal.” For Ulm’s inner city, the package of measures already worked out with various “stakeholders” to strengthen the city centre is to be further concretised and then implemented. This includes, among other things, a feasibility study that will look into the question of what kind of shops could provide better customer frequency in the secondary locations in the future, and the establishment of a vacancy management system that will, for example, ensure that vacant shops are used temporarily as pop-up shops. The fulfilment of a long-cherished wish on the part of the retail sector is also coming closer: as an individual measure, money is available from the programme for new Christmas lighting.
Mayor Czisch on the significance of the positive grant decision: “The central message to trade and commerce, restaurants and hotels is that the city is doing everything it can to get people back into the city centre – even after the pandemic. But it is not only about Corona, the general structural change as well as online trade must be understood as a challenge. It is also important to send a signal to the outside world: Ulm is back and will remain a feel-good place. It is worth coming to Ulm.”
About the federal programme: Within the framework of the federal programme, the federal government would like to support cities and municipalities in an exemplary manner in the development of innovative concepts and action strategies, but also with concrete individual measures; a total of 250 million euros are available through the programme. The aim is to support cities and municipalities in overcoming acute and also structural problem situations in the inner cities as well as in city and district centres. The project proposals submitted were evaluated on the basis of four criteria: innovation, cooperation, consistency and feasibility. In addition to these four evaluation criteria, the framework conditions, the need for action and the relevance of the problem situations in the municipalities were included in the overall evaluation.
