Kick-off Session “Munich 2030 – How will our cities change?” - Cities are the workshops in which the future is wrought

The inaugural event launching the Munich Re Foundation’s third series of dialogue forums on 7 November attracted keen attention. An audience of almost 140 listened attentively to ideas on city life in 2030 proposed by Munich’s Lord Mayor, Christian Ude, and the futurologist Dr. Karlheinz Steinmüller.

“Why bother looking ahead to the future?”, asked the Chairman of the Board of Trustees, Dr. Hans-Jürgen Schinzler, in his opening address. After all, Munich is an economically successful and enviably beautiful city where anyone would want to live, he said. However, even Munich cannot escape trends that sound less than encouraging, he continued: migration, old-age poverty, educational crises and climate change present enormous problems for all cities in the next few decades.

In view of the forecasts, which are now over 20 years old, Lord Mayor Ude warned: “Simply extrapolating current developments would be foolhardy.” In 1984, for example, nobody would have imagined that the Iron Curtain would fall and that the EU would expand to include countries such as Poland and Romania, he explained. At the same time, in his opinion, the speed of globalisation was underestimated significantly. “Thus, when looking into the future, the best one can do is to analyse the opportunities and risks”, said Ude.

His vision of Munich in 2030 is as follows: Firstly, the city has, in his estimation, excellent chances of being among the globalisation winners, which would have a positive effect on its companies and on skilled personnel, but a negative impact on the housing market and thus on the underprivileged sections of society. Secondly, says Ude, Munich needs to react to the irreversible demographic changes and consider how to integrate its ageing population into city life. Thirdly, he continued, the pressure of migration from outside would increase, as would the migration need from within. Although being a workshop in which the future is wrought is a challenge the city could fail, in Ude’s eyes it also gives Munich the opportunity to confirm its place at the top.

As befits a futurologist, Steinmüller took his listeners on an entertaining science-fiction adventure. “Munich through cyberglasses”, as he called his short journey through time, allowed each citizen to create his or her own vision of the future of the city based on the principle: “Exactly how would you like your Munich to be?” But as even futurologists lack clairvoyant abilities, they have no choice but to collect facts and identify economic, political, ecological and technological trends. Steinmüller is under no illusions as to the accuracy of predictions, but “Incorrect forecasts are necessary in order to do the right thing.” Without the prediction that Munich would one day be surrounded by mountains of waste, the city would not have been so successful at getting to grips with its refuse problem, he concludes.

Ude and Steinmüller agree that Munich will continue to be spared US-style suburbs, which Ude describes as “oozing out into the countryside like spilt semolina”. In contrast, they envisage the communities around Munich growing in a structured manner, ideally around existing suburban rail links. At the same time, recent years have seen increasing numbers of people returning to the city. Senior citizens in particular appreciate the better infrastructure and the extensive range of cultural and medical provision in conurbations. Moderator Dr. Patrick Illinger’s question on the consequences of the division of society received a great deal of attention. Munich’s Lord Mayor is concerned that this process is likely to further intensify. In order for the city to retain its value as a place to live, however, it needs not only a creative scene with its unconventional thinkers, but also low-income service providers who can nevertheless afford to live there. “If we don’t intervene, we will lose the creative milieu”, Ude fears, highlighting the residential project on Domagkstrasse, where affordable studios have been set up for artists.

Cities also need strong finances in order to be able to provide socially disadvantaged groups such as nurses, police officers or pensioners with municipal housing. But increasing rents are subject to market forces that even city councils cannot override. For Steinmüller, keeping low-income service providers in the city is a matter of constant necessity: “The city needs to make sure it remains intact and keeps its public spaces”, he stressed, continuing that fortunately – unlike local authorities in eastern Germany – Munich was privileged to be relatively affluent.

Nevertheless, the social divide between Munich’s individual districts is still evident. Steinmüller explained that whilst it is true that the discrepancy between perception and reality is striking in some cases, and Hasenbergl, for example, is actually better than its reputation as a trouble spot suggests, for that, the inconspicuous Ramersdorf is threatening to slump still further. Ude said he is pleased that a large number of prosperous companies and their employees are based in Munich. “But there are terrible displacement processes in which the elderly and underprivileged are being driven away from the areas they grew up in.” He went on to say that the trend towards rising prices for desirable old buildings was, however, unstoppable, and living in the city could thus end up even more costly in 2030. The Lord Mayor will do all in his power to counter this trend: “We will not be following Dresden in selling off municipal housing to investors.”

Munich also faces major challenges where mobility is concerned. Steinmüller is certain that traffic volumes will increase, and that more roads and new technologies such as telematics will not solve the problem. He expects the need for mobility to remain high, but demographic change to force the focus of transport policy towards senior citizens. In his opinion, a good public transport structure is a key component of the solution. In addition, Ude is convinced that increasing prices for energy and commodities will shape future travel policy.

At the end of the event, it was clear why it is so important to obtain a picture of the city in 2030: cities take on the role of future workshops, exposing problems that will only become apparent many years later in society as a whole. Ude’s example: “Munich’s integration programme has been running for 30 years, but the German Federal Government did not convene its integration summit until 2006”. So if we know what Munich will be like in 2030, we will also have a good idea of the challenges globalisation, demographics and migration will create for society.

Concluding the discussions, Thomas Loster, Chairman of the Munich Re Foundation, thanked all the participants for the informative, fascinating and entertaining evening. “We will be taking a closer look at the topics outlined today in the next four dialogue forums”, he announced, giving an outlook for next year. The next dialogue forum, entitled “Munich’s residents: A dying breed?”, will take place on 22 January.