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Mak­ing the city of to­mor­row the con­ver­sa­tion of today

01.10.2021, Re­searched :

The fact that our communication has been fundamentally changed by digitalization is nothing new. However, it is seldom realized that communication itself acts as a decisive driver of digital transformation and that the change must be accompanied by communication. This makes well thought-out and sustainable communication concepts all the more important - as is the case in the "City of the Future Ulm 2030" project, in which communication plays an essential role in many respects. Neu-Ulm University of Applied Sciences is providing scientific support for the project and researching communication needs and solutions for the city of the future.
 

Fu­ture-proof com­mu­nic­a­tion for the pro­ject "Zukun­ftsstadt Ulm 2030" (City of the Fu­ture Ulm 2030)

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Big Data, AI and the Transformation of Communication 

Innovative technologies, dispersed target groups on a growing number of channels, and an increasing relevance of Big Data and AI: digitization has ushered in a new era of communication. Never before has it been so easy to overcome spatial and temporal boundaries in human interaction, and at the same time never before has it been so difficult to get all stakeholders around the same table.

For those responsible for communications in science, business, politics and society, this offers an exciting green field on the one hand, but on the other hand it also proves to be a veritable challenge: Needs must be analyzed, concepts must be created, key data must be collected and strategies must be adapted again and again - and in doing so, it is not just a matter of providing pure information, but of initiating and anchoring the digital transformation through communications.

About the City of the Fu­ture 

The "City of the Future 2030" project, funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and supported by DLR (opens in a new window), brings together teams from citizens, science, local politics, business and administration to jointly find innovative, digital solutions for sustainable urban development. Ulm is one of eight German "cities of the future" that are being supported in the third project phase in implementing sustainable concepts for digital life in the areas of education, mobility, age/health and administration. The aim is to make it possible to experience a forward-looking everyday life in which digital technology provides sustainable support for daily life.

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Working together for sustainable, digital urban development: The "City of the Future Ulm 2030".

"Digital is better": what the German indie band Tocotronic knew back in 1995 has become a guiding principle today more than ever, and one that also characterizes the "Future City Ulm 2030" project. In this project, the future is being thought and made - and collaboratively, because the sustainable, digital urban development that the project is establishing is being created in cooperation between Ulmer:innen and partners from science, business, as well as the city, administration and politics.

In 2015, Ulm was selected in a first phase as one of 51 municipalities in the "City of the Future 2030" competition and encouraged to address the potential of digital transformation as a city and society. The city on the Danube was also selected for the second project phase and fleshed out its guiding question - "How can the city of Ulm become more livable and sustainable by digital means?" - in six thematic areas and various prototype concepts. The third phase of the project is currently underway, for which Ulm qualified along with seven other cities and which has been anchored at the Digital Agenda office since 2017. Under the motto "Helping to shape sustainability digitally - Internet of Things for everyone", everything since then has revolved around anchoring the digital ideas developed in the previous phases together with citizens in the areas of education, mobility, age/health and administration. The goal is to make the Internet of Things applicable to society as a whole.

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A key to successful participation: the right communication strategy

It is obvious that communication plays a fundamental role in this project. After all, in order for sustainable change to encompass all stakeholders and also succeed in the behavior of citizens, specific measures are needed that go beyond the classic public relations work of a municipality. The target groups should not merely be kept up to date; rather, the aim is to generate acceptance, commitment and, above all, participation. Change needs to be prepared, accompanied and decided in a narrative way; visions need to be communicated narratively ("storytelling").

Innovation and change communication is therefore the key to successful change, and Neu-Ulm University, as a project partner, ensures that this change can be implemented in all locks as part of its transdisciplinary scientific research.
 

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Accompanying scientific research at HNU

Innovation or change communication is thus the key to successful change, and Neu-Ulm University, as a project partner, ensures that this can fit all the locks as part of its transdisciplinary accompanying scientific research.

Prof. Dr. Julia Kormann, Vice President of HNU and Professor of Corporate Communication, Jens Boscheinen, Research Associate for Sustainability and Digital Communication, and Carolin Moser, Research Associate for Science Communication in the Future City project, are conducting research in this framework on how successful communication can succeed in the regional transformation process of the Future City of Ulm. They are designing the communications framework for the project as a whole and the individual topic areas in both owned and earned media, supporting the various communication events and the dissemination and anchoring of sustainability goals, and conducting impact analyses.

In addition to communication about the project, communication within the project is, of course, not to be missed: The measures are equally aimed at defining coordination processes among the participating actors and stakeholders in joint workshops and optimizing them through communication plans.

Con­tact per­sons of the ac­com­pa­ny­ing re­search in com­mu­nic­a­tion sci­ence

Prof. Dr. Ju­lia Kor­mann

Vice President for Teaching and Learning, Sustainability

Profile (opens in a new window)

 

Jens Boscheinen

Research Assistant for Sustainability and Digital Communication

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Car­olin Moser

Research Assistant for Science Communiation  „Zukunftsstadt Ulm 2030 – Phase 3 – Kommunikation“

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Communication tailored to the target group: "Bait the hook to suit the fish, not the fisherman"

The most important question before any planned change process is: Who should actually be spoken to and how? With this question in mind, the HNU experts finalized a concept for the communication of Zukunftsstadt in the second project phase, which served as a decision-making aid for the selection of stakeholders, the visual image, content development and the use of communication channels and media, and was continuously evaluated and adapted.

Especially when a project intends such a comprehensive transformation and involves so many different stakeholders, as the Future City does, it needs not only target knowledge (the target state) but also system knowledge (the actual state) about all potential target groups  – and the most differentiated understanding possible of how situational, cultural or social conditions and contexts can influence the messages that the Future City sends out to its inhabitants. Finally, it is a matter of being able to record, change or establish knowledge, values, opinions and so-called behavioral dispositions (i.e., the ability or possibility to exhibit a certain behavior)  – "bait the hook to suit the fish, not the fisherman". 

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For the communicative design of a sustainable future

This analysis was based on socio-demographic data from Ulm and New Ulm: The HNU team defined stakeholders from science, business, the city and politics and identified target groups such as the citizens of Ulm, new citizens or "part-time Ulmers" or tourists. Based on sinus milieus, the internal differentiation also made it possible to experience different lifeworlds and lifestyles - the focus was not only on the future and innovative milieus in which digital natives will determine communication in the coming years, but also on people who might be skeptical about the project. This target group in particular should be explicitly considered in the communication. Using methods such as the St. Galler management model, it was possible to link individual stakeholder groups with one another and make holistic interdependencies visible. After all, communication is not just the classic dialog between two people, but takes place primarily in networks. A correspondingly created communication network visualized the individual interaction relationships. By means of self-image and external image analysis (Where do we stand? How are we seen? Where do we want to go?), the HNU scientists, together with all project participants, sharpened the communicative goals and paths of the city of the future.

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Bringing the city of the future to the campfire: Stoking Dialogues, Igniting Ideas

In the current third phase of the accompanying research, the communicative campfire is the guiding metaphor: The topics of the Future City are already being talked about - scattered at several, often virtual locations ("campfires"), which need to be identified and attended in order to make the Future City itself the topic of conversation at the campfires. 

The linchpin of participation in processes of change in civil and urban society is a "sense of belonging" that is to be created through emotional identification. In concrete terms, this means that Future City communication aims to provide all participants with a similar level of information, transfer knowledge about technologies and social innovations, create incentives for participation, and establish a continuous dialog between the city, science, and citizens – wherever the changes are to take place, i.e., in both physical and digital space. This is made possible, among other things, by cross-media participatory formats. There are platforms for civil society dialog, for example in the "pit stop," which offers a meeting place at regular intervals in the middle of the city for citizens who want to talk about urban development and digitization or develop digital solutions. Volunteer digital mentors support citizens with questions about digital communication in on-site consultation hours. The Intercultural Communication Space (ICS) helps overcome language barriers, facilitates multilingual communication and promotes the exchange of people with different cultural and linguistic backgrounds.

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Outlook

By the end of the project, further workshops based on the Design Thinking method will be held in order to finally model the communication in the implementation phase. Both in the individual fields of action and in the overall communication, the HNU team will work together with the actors to identify relevant campfires, stoke dialogs and ignite ideas – so that the idea of the innovative, digital and livable future city of Ulm by 2022 has not only arrived in the public space, but also in the minds of the people.