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Difu city survey "OB-Barometer 2020" gives municipalities' assessment of the future*
Berlin/Cologne. Climate protection and adaptation to the consequences of climate change will become increasingly important for cities. This is one of the findings of the survey of (Lord) Mayors of large German cities* conducted by the German Institute of Urban Affairs in January and February 2020. Almost two-thirds of the respondents named climate protection as an important municipal issue for the future. This means that the number of mayors who attribute an increase in importance to this field of municipal policy action has more than tripled compared to the previous year. Future surveys will show how strongly this result was influenced by the protests of the 'Fridays for Future' movement.

More than half of the respondents also see a growing need for action in the area of mobility. This topic, which already ranked second among the future topics last year, has thus once again gained in importance for city leaders. This may also have something to do with the fact that urban mobility is an essential aspect of municipal climate protection. The top future topic of the two previous years, digitalization, is in third place in the survey among the most important future topics for municipal policy. A good third of respondents believe that digitisation will become more important for cities in the next five years. Other municipal policy issues to which the mayors attach particularly high relevance for the future are the creation of affordable housing, the financial situation of the cities and the strengthening of the economy.

City leaders agree that the future challenges facing cities will require a high level of funding. This is particularly true for the topics of mobility and climate protection. Almost 90 percent of those for whom these are key issues for the future expect to have to make large or very large investments in these areas. The situation is similar in the areas of digitisation and the creation of affordable housing: here, around three quarters of the city leaders who see digitisation and housing among the most important future issues for cities still consider the future financing requirements in these policy areas to be high or very high.

* The survey was conducted before the Corona pandemic in Germany pushed other issues into the background. Even if normality should have returned to some extent in the cities after the state of emergency, the view of the political decision-makers on the municipal world will be different. Difu will therefore publish the full results of the OB-Barometer 2020 at a later date, possibly linked to current surveys that include "Corona aspects". This report therefore focuses primarily on the sub-area of "future issues".

Source: PM Difu from 12.5.2020

Keywords:
DE-News, Renewable, Climate emergency, Climate protection, Communities, New books and studies, City, Transition Town, Environmental policy