Nexthamburg

Nexthamburg is a citizen-based think tank in urban development of Hamburg. The independent and open crowd-sourcing project Nexthamburg gives citizens the possibility to contribute to current discussions about urban development in Hamburg with their own ideas. It gives them space to grow, for discussion, and a feedback from its community of more than 5.000 as well as from experts and the Nexthamburg team. Every participant can create own visions for Hamburg on www.nexthamburg.de, vote for other visions or ideas, and participate at events to learn about urban development, contribute with own ideas and discuss them with others, connect with other citizens, organizations, and representatives. Nexthamburg has developed different tools and formats for those events, such as the so-called idea speed dating. In October 2012, a book will be published about the whole developmental process of the project, its tools, community, influence on urban politics, and a vision built from mostly discussed topics during the last three years.

The long-term goal of the project is to organize a crowd-funding channel for promising ideas for Hamburg’s urban development to finance feasibility studies and realization efforts.

Nexthamburg is active since April 2009 and has been promoted as a pilot project of national politics of urban development by the federal ministry for traffic, building, and urban development until 2011. It is supposed to become a non-profit association in 2012.
Nexthamburg will continue contributing to the discussions about urban development in Hamburg with citizen ideas as a crowdsourcing platform. Although, the founder Julian Petrin has had the idea for the project years before he actually started it.

Financing

Nexthamburg has been promoted as a pilot project of national politics of urban development by the federal ministry for traffic, building, and urban development until 2011. In cooperation with foundations, the city of Hamburg, the hamburgmuseum and others Nexthamburg has organized and operated several events during the past three years and will continue with it. It also develops participatory strategies and events for other regions, cities, or districts. It is supposed to become a non-profit association in 2012.

Structure

Nexthamburg consists of a core team of about six people (town planners, sociologists, cultural scientists, designers) and approximately twenty-three other team members which are consulted for bigger events and projects.
Nexthamburg was officially founded in April 2009 by nine partners (now they are ten).
Julian Petrin came up with the idea; the team has developed the online platform and participatory tools throughout the years; the ideas come from the Nexthamburg community, mainly citizens living Hamburg; topics are chosen from editorial team according to discussion focus in community.
Nexthamburg realizes several workshop events throughout the year. The last big event was the Hamburg Future Camp 2012 (Zukunftscamp Hamburg 2030) in February 2012. Nexthamburg has also organized a kick-off event for a dialogue on the Hamburg district Wandsbek initiated by the Social Democratic Party in April 2012 which will be continued in fall 2012.