The story so far

During the first project phase from 2016 to 2019, migrants developed five concrete solutions for sustainable urban development in Mannheim in nine UrbanLabs, such as a KulturTram for intercultural encounters in everyday life and a workbox for flexible working in the countryside. Transferable results of the Migrants4Cities approach include a concept for mobilising the migrant target group, the Urban Design Thinking approach for transformative urban development processes, a concept for municipal sustainability governance and a concept for transferring results from application-oriented research projects.

The results are published in the book "Welcoming Perspectives. Sustainable Urban Development via Urban Design Thinking", which was published in March 2020.

Migrants4Cities 2020: Implementation, consolidation, transfer

However positive the results may be, the anchoring of new solutions in 'real life', changing of familiar practices or adapting the solutions developed in Mannheim to the city's own challenges are all still laborious tasks.

The second project phase, from 2020 onwards, will therefore focus on implementation, consolidation and transfer activities. The city of Mannheim wants to implement selected solutions. The goal is to further develop the Urban Design Thinking method into a compact and practicable format for urban development processes in Mannheim and elsewhere.

In order to be transferred to selected learning partner cities, the Migrants4Cities results are to be adapted to the respective urban objectives accordingly. This is at stake:

• How can co-production processes be consolidated and solutions implemented?
• How can Urban Design Thinking be further developed as a compact format for urban development?
• How can the Migrants4Cities approach be adapted and transferred for other cities?

Advising Learning Partner Cities on testing the Migrants4Cities approach

Since this transfer work often cannot be done by the cities themselves amidst their busy schedule, inter 3 is primarily involved in the process of individually working out with interested learning partner cities which of the Migrants4Cities impacts are of interest to them and how they can achieve them using the components of the Migrants4Cities approach.

In addition, the project partners will analyse how and at what points in time the instruments of transdisciplinary innovation management can meaningfully support the urban design thinking process.

The results will support municipal decision-makers and make it easier for them to use new formats of collaborative urban development for their own projects. In addition, the project provides insights into the factors that promote a successful transfer of results and experiences, as is intended in application-oriented sustainability research.