The theme of this year's "Environment Day" appealed to many students and, fortunately, also to Zittau residents. For the first time in the tradition of this event, the seats in the university lecture hall were far from sufficient.
This pleasing fact could be due to the fact that the impetus for the topic "Urban Gardening: "Your city. Your garden" was a student environmental initiative founded at the beginning of the year, which took up the idea from our public participation in the urban action plan for Zittau's city center until 2020. The Environment Day on October 14 was the starting signal, so to speak, for all interested students and Zittau residents.
A suitable inner-city brownfield site has already been found on Amalienstraße. However, the first question was why the city and the university are dealing with this topic, which is nothing new worldwide and has also been present in Germany for around five years.
The first deputy mayor, Thomas Krusekopf, already referred competently to the topic of the day in his welcoming address and expressed numerous thoughts and aspects of green design in Zittau.
Birgit Kaiser, Managing Director of Zittauer Stadtentwicklungsgesellschaft mbH, pointed out how green Zittau already is and the considerable amount of money that has to be raised for the design and maintenance of the numerous green spaces in the municipal budget. She pointed out that, compared to other such projects in Germany, the "Amaliengarten" in Zittau is something special. A community garden in a baroque city center could be a real challenge for the design, but this does not mean that a baroque garden has to be created.
Urban gardening is all about working together - planning, working and living together. And so the design ideas in the minds of those who will be active in this community garden in the future will be created together. The aim of the student project is to investigate and try out which gardening options can be implemented in this way in a relatively small town like Zittau . The town of Zittau hopes that the implementation of this project will attract even more students to the town centre.
The next concrete steps were already addressed in the concluding panel discussion. Fortunately, the entrepreneurs present spontaneously expressed their willingness to support the project, but the lists on which interested supporters were able to sign up were also well filled at the end.
The agreement signed by the city and university before the start of the event to facilitate urban gardens as an interim use of vacant lots and the creation of a community project under the motto: "Zittau is(s)t Grün - Deine Stadt. Your garden" is now the basis for further project work.
In the fall and winter, students from the International University Institute Zittau will examine the soil of the future Amaliengarten and all future "community gardeners" will come together for an initial workshop.
Text: Ines Hirt, Zittau City Council, Head of the Mayor's Office
Contact for queries:
Andreas Bulcsu
Theodor-Körner-Allee 16 / Room 234
02763 Zittau
Tel: 03583-61 1461
Mail: a.bulcsu(at)hszg.de