What is the model project Smart City Dresden?

With the Model Projects Smart Cities (MPSC) funding programme, the German Federal Government supports municipalities in designing strategic digitalisation in the sense of integrated, sustainable and public welfare-oriented urban development. The funding is commissioned by the Federal Ministry of Housing, Urban Development and Building (BMWSB). Currently, the Federal Government is funding 73 Smart Cities model projects, which have been selected in three seasons since 2019 and receive grants amounting to 65 percent of the project and measure costs.

The cooperation between the City of Dresden (project management: Eigenbetrieb IT-Dienstleistungen) and WISSENSARCHITEKTUR - Laboratory of Knowledge Architecture/TU Dresden continues the cooperation in several strategic urban development projects, such as ZUKUNFTSSTADT DRESDEN.

WISSENSARCHITEKTUR has been researching the topic of digital urban development for around 10 years and has developed expertise and technical formats on the topics of participation and co-design in numerous national and international research projects.

Testing and evaluation of the measures in "Smart Districts"

The Dresden city administration, for example the "Smart City" department in the Office for Economic Development, or participants from science, business and civil society had already developed a variety of smart city approaches before the application was submitted. The very good positioning in the smart city ranking of the German industry association Bitkom (2022: rank 3) is an incentive to further develop the potentials of a Smart City Dresden.

WISSENSARCHITEKTUR carried out the sub-project "Strategy Development" in the first phase (January 2022- June 2023) of the Smart City Dresden model project. In workshops with experts from various specialist departments, boundary conditions were clarified, existing SC measures were included and conceptual approaches were formulated. With the help of specialised participation formats created by WISSENSARCHITEKTUR, these approaches were reflected upon and evaluated with relevant actors from civil society, politics, business and science. This resulted in a strategic vision with specific SC measures that are being tested as models in three districts of Dresden, the so-called "IQ - Intelligent Quarters".

In the implementation phase, the researchers will continuously evaluate the strategy together with the project and measure leaders and optimise it with regard to impact and project synthesis. Through the accompanying SC measure "Smart Participation" Feedback from Dresden's civil society will be incorporated into the model project.

Scientific Team

Prof. Dr.-Ing. Jörg Rainer Noennig, Leader
Filipe Mello Rose 
Paul Raphael Stadelhofer
Anja Jannack 
Swati Kulashri

Press and Public Relations

Markus Juengling
Communications Manager WISSENSARCHITEKTUR

Tel. 0351-463 32210

TU Dresden
WISSENSARCHITEKTUR Laboratory of Knowledge Architecture
01062 Dresden
Germany