Local economy as core of the urban district work
(North-Rhine Westphalia)
Photography: Marcelo Ruiz
The urban district north of the inner city of Hamm (pop. approx. 181,000) is characterised by a heterogeneous building and social structure. A section consisting of 660 accommodation units, the settlement Schottschleife/Schlagenkamp, however, is a homogenous housing estate built by “Neue Heimat” (new home) in the 1960s. This has been seen as a socially deprived area with vacancies, high fluctuation and lacking attractiveness for a while. The population of the settlement is made up of children and youths, and mainly of resettlers and foreigners. Since the 1990s, errors in the management of the housing stock have been added to this, which led to sequestration in the end. This contributed to the fact that the urban district was included in the integrated measure programme of the Federal State of Nordrhein-Westphalia, “Social City NRW”, in 1994. The settlement was taken over by a new, very committed owner in spring 2001 and was gentrified through an extensive redevelopment.
Source: Netzwerk Radbod, Hamm
In 2001, the focus regarding content was put on the strengthening of an employment market policy network in the “Social and Inhabitant-Oriented Urban Development Concept Hamm-Norden”. Besides measures relating to tenants and the living environment, the local economic projects in the settlement Schottschleife/Schlagenkamp are the central element of this concept. The precursor and roots were the ecological launderette “Waschhaus Konfetti” founded in 1997, and the working group “Urban District-Oriented Employment Promotion“ founded in 1999 by the working team Hamm-Norden with the purpose of including additional executing organisations and aligning the measures. Now, the local-economic concept is being implemented on the basis of a broad cooperation from the workers’ welfare association, Catholic social services, Network Radbod, the Urban District Office and the Society for the Promotion of the Economy Hamm.
With a job meeting point, the ecological launderette and a branch of the urban district office, this approach is based on three facilities that moved their offices and working space into the former housing space of the settlements. In these facilities, different employment and qualification measures are carried out, which lead a broad range of target groups to the 1st labour market with different counselling and measure types. These counselling services include determining potential, language support and vocational orientation. Together with the tenants’ counselling located in the urban district office, minor cleaning and improvement measures have also been carried out since 2001 as part of a “service provision”. The participants take over caretaker tasks and help to improve the social control in the settlement. This is coordinated with the extensive redevelopment and modernisation measures carried out by the owner of the settlement. All executive organisations emphasise that the participants of the different measures come from the settlement or the urban district. Financing takes place not only from public funds from the programme “Social City”. The Society for the Promotion of the Economy Hamm also supports this social-spatial approach of the urban district programme with funds from the community employment market fund.
| Year | Event |
|---|---|
| 1997 | Founding of the local-economic project "Waschhaus Konfetti" (Launderette “Confetti”) |
| 1998 | Setting up the "Jobtreff" (job meeting point) |
| 1998 | Initiating a measure aimed at creating employment - “Project development for and with unemployed people from the area Hamm-Norden” |
| 1999 | Founding of the working group “Urban district related employment promotion“ |
| 2001 | Local-economic focus in the “Social and Inhabitant-oriented Urban District Development Concept Hamm-Norden” |
| 2001 | Establishing the “Service Provision” |
Photography: Marcelo Ruiz
Photography: Marcelo Ruiz
Through a set of local-economic measures, it was possible to stabilise and upgrade this settlement, which was threatened by social segregation. Here, the broad network of private organisations, the Urban Planning Office and Society for the Promotion of the Economy, who took on this social-spatial approach, are to be highlighted especially.
The projekt site ist to be found at postal code: 59065 - town: Hamm - street: Schottschleife.
Record inserted on 01.10.2003 by Lehrstuhl für Planungstheorie und Stadtplanung, RWTH Aachen and updated by theFederal Institute for Research on Building, Urban Affairs and Spatial Development (BBSR) within the Federal Office for Building and Regional Planning (BBR).
Last update: 31.07.2008