City quartet

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The term cities Quartet calls the cooperation of neighboring Lower Saxony Cities Damme , Lohne , Vechta (in the district of Vechta ) and Diepholz (in Diepholz ).

For centuries, the areas of the two districts were separated from one another by pronounced natural , religious and political boundaries . The cooperation founded in 1994 is intended to help overcome this traditional dividing line for mutual benefit.

The city quartet is located in the north-west metropolitan region . It is considered a nationwide model for a city network in rural areas.

Historical background

The sparsely populated Great Moor for a long time prevented any exchange between Damme, Lohne and Vechta in the west and Diepholz in the east. In the Middle Ages, this favored the formation of the territorial border between the Niederstift Münster and the County of Diepholz .

Further political developments increased the distance: During the Reformation , the Münster areas remained Catholic and oriented themselves further to the south-west ( Westphalia ). In 1803 and finally in 1814 the area came to the state of Oldenburg . The County of Diepholz, however, converted to Lutheranism and soon after fell to the Dukes of Braunschweig-Lüneburg . From then on it was ruled from Hanover (as part of the electorate , kingdom and province of the same name).

When Hanover and Oldenburg were dissolved in the common state of Lower Saxony in 1946, the old separation continued to have an effect on site, but it increasingly weakened. In 2004, the previously existing membership in various government districts ( Weser-Ems and Hanover ) ended when these were abolished.

Foundation and organization

The city quartet was founded in 1994. As part of the model project in “Experimental Housing and Urban Development”, the “City Quartet” was selected as one of eleven projects across Germany by the Federal Ministry for Regional Planning, Building and Urban Development .

At the beginning of the project the idea was that the quartet should devote itself to the topics of recreation and tourism, culture, nature and environmental protection, local public transport, economic development and regional marketing, education and health care as well as municipal services and electronic data processing. A “big round”, consisting of the members of the management committees of the four cities, should meet approximately every three months. Four working groups should be formed, each of which should be lead by a city:

  • the AG Recreation and Tourism (Damme)
  • the culture group (Diepholz)
  • the AG Nature and Environmental Protection (Lohne) and
  • the AG ÖPNV (Vechta).

The area of ​​"economic development and regional marketing" should be the responsibility of the mayors and city ​​directors of the four cities.

aims

The city quartet aims to

  • to strengthen the "four of us feeling" in the region, i.e. to create a regional identification within the city quartet, which helps to present the region with its special features and strengths on a national level,
  • to improve, or at least maintain, the quality of administrative services and facilities despite the negative financial development of the municipalities that was already apparent in 1994
  • to establish new projects and institutions, especially in the area of ​​voluntary tasks of the participating cities, e.g. B. in the areas of culture, nature and tourism.

The example of the orientation of the city of Diepholz shows that a kind of “we feeling” is actually developing. The city, which for centuries lay on the edge of the Hanover administrative district, is now characterized on the website of the city quartet as being located in the "city triangle of Bremen , Oldenburg , Osnabrück " (like the three other cities). Various universities of applied sciences have also merged to form the “ Private University of Applied Sciences, Economics and Technology (FHWT) Vechta-Diepholz-Oldenburg ”, which confirms the trend towards reorientation of the Diepholz location towards Oldenburg / Weser-Ems.

Projects

The following institutions funded by the city quartet have established themselves permanently:

Museum route

The “Museum Route” is a specially signposted cycle path connection between the museums of the four member cities and other museum facilities in the region.

Space agency

The "Area Agency" project was recognized by the German Federal Environment Foundation as eligible for funding under the application title "Development of an intermunicipal compensation area pool as a contribution to sustainable regional development " . The foundation sponsored the project from August 1, 1997 to March 6, 2000 and from March 20, 2001 to March 20, 2002. The project was institutionalized through the establishment of the “Area Agency in the City Quartet GmbH”.

The task of this facility is to coordinate the provision of compensation areas for nature conservation measures, which are already required for certain construction projects, across town and district boundaries, in order to achieve larger-scale and more effective nature conservation projects . Numerous renaturation measures were implemented more cost-effectively or with greater effects for the residents and guests of the region than would have been possible if areas had to be designated in the area of ​​the city on which the respective construction measure is carried out.

The compensation area pool of the city quartet covers a total area of ​​300 to 500 ha. There, extensive forms of cultivation are contractually secured with the farmers in the long term. This is intended to secure economic and at the same time ecologically effective compensation areas (areas from 100 ha) in the medium to long term.

City Quartet Cup

Several sports clubs in the region have initiated the invitation to tender for the “City Quartet Cup”, which is awarded at this handball tournament. Every year several hundreds of young people from the member cities take part in the tournament.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Heinz Heineberg : Urban geography . Paderborn. Publisher Ferdinand Schöningh. 3rd edition 2006. p. 86
  2. ↑ Hildegard Zeck: Case study city networks . In: Jakob Maurer / Ernst Heer / Dietmar Scholich (eds.): Planning systems - planning concepts: what next? Zurich. Institute for Local, Regional and State Planning (ORL). ORL reports 101/1996 . Pp. 41-53
  3. ↑ City of Damme:: we, four ... the city quartet ( Memento from September 4, 2012 in the web archive archive.today )
  4. ↑ City Quartet: City of Diepholz - in the city triangle of Bremen, Oldenburg, Osnabrück ( Memento from April 16, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
  5. ↑ FHWT: What is the FHWT? ( Memento from May 23, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
  6. ^ Deutsche Bundesstiftung Umwelt: PDF project information sheet of the Deutsche Bundesstiftung Umwelt 11245 32/2
  7. ↑ Deutsche Bundesstiftung Umwelt: Model for handling early compensatory and substitute measures using the example of the area pool in the city quartet of Damme, Diepholz, Lohne, Vechta - stockpiling of measures - eco-account
  8. ↑ NABU: Compensation area conception in the city quartet of Damme / Diepholz / Lohne / Vechta  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . 2010@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.nabu.de  

Web links