For the first time in the history of this event, there were not enough seats in the university’s lecture hall to accommodate all those who wanted to attend. The theme of this year’s “Environment Day” resonated with many students and, encouragingly, with Zittau residents as well.
This encouraging development may be due in part to the fact that the driving force behind the theme “Urban Gardening: ‘Your City. Your Garden’” was a student environmental initiative founded at the beginning of the year, which took up the ideas from our citizen participation in the urban action plan for Zittau’s downtown area through 2020. Environment Day on October 14 served, so to speak, as the kickoff for all interested students and Zittau residents.
A suitable vacant lot in the city center has already been found on Amalienstraße. The city of Zittau is making this lot available for such a community garden. Initially, however, the question arose as to why the city and the university were addressing this issue, which is not new worldwide and has also been present in Germany for about five years.
In his opening remarks, First Deputy Mayor Thomas Krusekopf competently addressed the topic of the day and shared numerous thoughts and perspectives on green space design in Zittau.
Birgit Kaiser, managing director of Zittauer Stadtentwicklungsgesellschaft mbH, highlighted just how green Zittau already is and the considerable sum that must be allocated in the city budget for the design and maintenance of its numerous green spaces. She noted that, compared to other similar projects in Germany, something truly special is already planned for Zittau with the “Amaliengarten.” A community garden in a Baroque city center could pose a real design challenge, but that doesn’t mean it has to be a Baroque garden.
In “urban gardening,” the focus is on community—planning, working, and living together. And so the design ideas will also emerge collectively from the minds of those who will be active in this community garden in the future. The goal of the student project is, after all, to explore and test which possibilities for horticultural use can be implemented in this way in a relatively small city like Zittau. The city of Zittau hopes that the implementation of this project will draw even more students to the downtown area.
The next concrete steps were already discussed during the concluding panel discussion. Encouragingly, local business owners in attendance spontaneously expressed their willingness to support the project, and the sign-up sheets for interested participants were also good by the end.
The agreement—signed by the city and the university even before the event began—to enable urban gardens as a temporary use of vacant lots and to create a community project under the motto: “Zittau is(s)t Grün – Your City. Your Garden” now serves as the foundation for further project work.
This fall and winter, students from the International University Institute Zittau will analyze the soil of the future Amaliengarten, and all future “community gardeners” will come together for an initial workshop.
Text: Ines Hirt, Zittau City Administration, Head of the Mayor’s Office
Contact for inquiries:
Andreas Bulcsu
Theodor-Körner-Allee 16 / Room 234
02763 Zittau
Phone: 03583-61 1461
Email: a.bulcsu@hszg.de