Impact measurement for Mönchengladbach’s Smart City

By 2025, German cities and municipalities will have taken on a total of around 32 billion euros in new debt. Many urban administrations are facing financial difficulties. Funding under the Smart Cities Model Projects programme is coming to an end, meaning that the financial scope for sustaining these initiatives is becoming increasingly limited.

At the same time, cities are facing major challenges: they must adapt to climate change, digitise their administration, become more resilient and provide liveable places for their citizens. This is precisely what smart city projects contribute to.

DEMONSTRATING THEIR OWN IMPACT, SUSTAINING THE SMART CITY

In Mönchengladbach, the smart city team is therefore taking the approach of systematically measuring its own impact and communicating the results to the mayor and the executive board. This impact measurement builds on the existing strategic management framework established in recent years by the Strategic Development Unit of the City of Mönchengladbach: strategic projects are based on the focus areas of the city’s overall strategy, on which reports are submitted to the executive board.

Dr Lucía Wright and Kira Brings from the City of Mönchengladbach describe how the impact measurement process works and what experiences the project participants have gained in developing the measurement procedure in their joint blog post for Smart City Dialog.

This success story does not merely go into detail about what is important when measuring the impact of smart city activities. In the post, the two authors explain, above all, step by step, how the collaboration was structured and what lessons can be drawn from the project.

You can find the full blog post in German on the Smart City Dialog website.