Cologne Perspectives 2030+

An urban strategy for Cologne

How do we want to live in 2030? The city strategy 'Cologne Perspectives 2030+' provides answers.

Like many large cities in Germany and abroad, Cologne has already had to deal with far-reaching transformation processes. Population growth, demographic change, climate change, climate protection, economic structural change, digitalization and globalization are just some of the issues that Cologne will continue to face in the future. In particular, urban growth, which reflects the attractiveness of the city and places new demands on density, coexistence and land use, is a key challenge.

This challenge not only requires the mobilization of building land and the creation of new living space, but also affects all areas of life: be it the provision of kindergartens and schools, jobs, social and cultural facilities, the securing of open and recreational spaces, the technical infrastructure or the organization of mobility services.

The work of the coming years requires a targeted, strategic focus and integrated cooperation between stakeholders from politics, administration, business and citizens. The focus here is on two questions: ‘How do we want to live in Cologne in 2030?’ and ‘How do we position ourselves in regional and international competition?’

The central task of the city strategy is to bring together the sectoral perspectives of the individual departments, to develop future prospects for the city as a whole across all urban fields of action and to transfer these to the urban space. 360-degree objectives and recommendations for action are developed for the city as a whole, taking into account interdependencies and regional links. Existing, largely sectoral objectives, concepts and guidelines of the specialist departments are supplemented by strategies interpreted for the city as a whole, and key projects and measures for implementing the objectives are formulated together with a view to the big picture. At the same time, a comprehensive spatial analysis of the entire urban layout is presented and interpreted. The urban strategy thus describes a series of spatial approaches and translates the formulated objectives into the specific urban layout. Five target maps show spatial implementation options, but also, in their overlapping, target conflicts between individual fields of action, and are finally summarized in a spatial model. With the city strategy “Cologne Perspectives 2030+”, Cologne is creating a medium-term development perspective and a reliable orientation framework for the next decade. The “Cologne Perspectives 2030+” form the central basis for Cologne’s urban development in the coming years.

Participatory process
The strategic urban development concept ‘Cologne Perspectives 2030+’ was developed in a broad process involving a total of 41 specialist departments and offices of the City of Cologne and discussed with citizens in several future forums.