Together instead of one upon the other – The day of action ‘Northern City’ in Hildesheim
Our intern Katharina Brauckmann shares her thoughts on 2019’s last Dome Event!
The aim of a discussion should not be victory, but progress… this also applied to the action day within the ‘Living Places’ Project („Lebendige Plätze”) on the Hildesheim station forecourt, to which we were invited with our Europe-Dome on 17 October 2019.
The association Nordstadt.Mehr.Wert animated different representatives from the local city administration, the political sphere and interested citizens to talk about the future, the renovation and revival of public places in the Nordstadt (Northern City) in Hildesheim.
Within three discussion rounds we dealt with the role of the Nordstadt, its renovation, citizen participation in this regard and characteristics creating a vibrant urban atmosphere.
Since a station forecourt is a place where people of all ages, sexes and origins meet and literally “cross path”, the organizers decided to offer an opportunity to get into conversation and exchange ideas.
To me, this day was really special. I had just started my internship at Democracy International and I directly got to experience one of the projects, the European Public Sphere.
The day before the event, we had arrived to Hildesheim from Cologne in the evening. The next day, we started the construction of the wooden dome early in the morning with diligent helpers from the district office and from Nordstadt.Mehr.Wert. After some initial difficulties we began our first round of talks with a little delay, but all the more enthusiastic as we finally could get going!
In all the discussions it became clear that Nordstadt is a district with potential and that all those involved are convinced that the right projects and offers will make the squares and the public space attractive and lively again. How this is to be implemented in concrete terms will continuously be discussed with citizens and local initiatives. The dome offered the first successful opportunity for exchange and discussion.
It was exciting for us to experience a new version of the Dome Talks, since most of the other talks were about visions of the future of Europe. But also for local topics the dome offers a great opportunity for interested people to exchange their ideas and thoughts. And as already mentioned at the beginning: Everyone has certainly progressed in this discussion!