Our beautiful city is growing, and this in times of dramatic climate change and equally devastating species decline. This has an impact on Bonn's green and open spaces. With the "Bonn Open Space Plan", the city is developing a city-wide open space concept that offers long-term goals and potentials as well as visions for the city's future open space and green planning.

Rheinauenpark, Hofgarten, Alter Friedhof, Kottenforst, Meßdorf Feld ... the city of Bonn has a diverse urban green area. Green and open spaces make up 55.9 percent of Bonn's urban area and play a key role in shaping the cityscape. You probably also use one or other of these green oases as a meeting place, as a place to play and exercise or simply as a place to relax. At the same time, these spaces are also habitats for animals and plants, areas for growing food, air conditioning, infiltration and water storage.

But what does the future hold for these places?

Questions like these show the challenges facing open space planning in the city of Bonn:

• How good is access to local recreation areas, sports grounds and playgrounds in the various residential areas of the city?
• What impact have the events of recent years, such as hot summers and heavy rainfall, had on residents when space is becoming scarcer due to the growing population?
• And what does this mean for the preservation of biodiversity?

The "Bonn Open Space Plan" deals with these questions. This is a city-wide concept that aims to provide answers to the future development of open and green spaces in the city of Bonn. It provides a strategic basis for action for urban development in order to develop visions, goals and solutions for the future of urban green spaces in Bonn.

The city of Bonn is growing, and with it the competition for increasingly scarce space. At the same time, the city's green quality is to be safeguarded and further developed in order to meet the new challenges. Since the beginning of 2022, the so-called "Bonn Open Space Plan" has been developed in cooperation with bgmr Landschaftsarchitekten from Berlin as an umbrella strategy for Bonn's open spaces on various specialist topics such as environmental and nature conservation, landscape planning, urban planning, social and youth work as well as health and sport.

New technical requirements for sustainable urban development also require new strategies. But what can these look like? How can the question of more living space be reconciled with the preservation of our natural environment? How can the consequences of climate change be mitigated?

Bonn's open space plan is an overarching plan that considers open space issues for the entire city, taking into account various key topics. Therefore, in addition to an interdepartmental steering group, the involvement of interest groups from the specialist public, the so-called stakeholders (clubs, associations, organizations, etc.) as well as the population should be included in the process.

To this end, district walks have already taken place in Bonn's four districts. Invitations to this participation format were sent out via a random panel of the City of Bonn in order to ensure that a representative cross-section of the population could be represented in the best possible way. Online participation via  www.bonn-macht-mit.de (opens in a new tab) is also planned for spring 2023.

Stakeholders will be involved in the process in the form of workshops at the end of 2022/beginning of 2023.

After reviewing and evaluating the extensive planning-relevant documents as well as site visits and two meetings with the administration's internal steering group, the planning office held discussions with experts from individual specialist areas. The resulting trends and challenges in urban development as well as qualities and potentials were incorporated into the creation of spatial models that represent the development goals and principles for the sustainable development of Bonn's open spaces. These will be presented to politicians in the form of an interim report in November 2022.

The next milestone will be the creation of a concept with more in-depth information and recommendations for action. The city-wide green and open space development concept will cover the entire Bonn city area, including the built-up inner area and the Bonn hinterland. The focal points and measures in terms of content and space will be described and located on an overall map.

With the participation of stakeholders, a concretization of lupen spaces will take place at the turn of the year 2022/23, which will serve to deepen and concretize the measures in the urban area. The aim is to include exemplary solutions to the deficits presented in advance.

The Bonn open space plan is scheduled for completion in mid-2023, and ongoing reflection and further development will also take place in the coming years. This will then become part of the political consultation at regular intervals.