Summary:

The research project ‘Small and smart? Digitalisation in medium-sized German cities’ examines the digitalisation strategies of medium-sized German cities.

Background:

The study is based on the observation that distinctive digitalisation strategies, such as smart city agendas or digitalisation strategies, are predominantly found in large cities. Scientific and practical discussions on urban digitalisation also focus primarily on the ‘smartification’ of large cities. For example, the 2019 Smart City Atlas by Bitkom e.V. and the Fraunhofer Institute (IESE) mainly covers municipalities with more than 100,000 inhabitants, and the ‘Digital Model Municipalities’ project in North Rhine-Westphalia also focused primarily on large cities at the outset. At the same time, however, small and medium-sized municipalities must also face the challenges of digitalisation, and not only within the framework of the Online Access Act. In order to understand which strategies are being pursued in digitalisation outside of large cities and which hurdles must be overcome in the digital transformation of medium-sized cities, the project examines everyday practice in the field of digitalisation in smaller municipalities.

Key question:

What particular challenges does the digital transformation pose for medium-sized towns and what strategies are being used to implement concepts?

Publications:

Follmann, A., Leitheiser, S., Kretschmer, H., 2021. Smart und/oder partizipativ? Eine kritische Betrachtung der SmartCity Cologne. suburgan. Zeitschrift für kritische Stadtforschung 9 (1/2), 115-139. https://doi.org/10.36900/suburban.v9i1/2.612