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Project Summary Project Description Application of Tools Opinion of Tools Decision making process Contact Details

Decision making process

Name der Fallstudie
URBAN I Graz and URBAN II link Graz West: Social and economic renewal of urban districts
URBAN I Graz und URBAN II- link Graz West: soziale und wirtschaftliche Revitalisierungsmaßnahmen in verschiedenen Stadtbezirken

Decision making process
U I:Planning was done top-down at the administration level. Several key project ideas that had existed long before were included as main axes of intervention. Complementary to this, there were calls for single projects, hoping for a snowball effect.

U GW: The main decisions on the project orientation were taken TOP DOWN at the moment of development of the EU proposal (by the community administration). Once the project had been granted by the EU, the community administration presented these general orientation lines and invited stakeholder groups to present concrete projects fitting into these lines. Most infrastructure projects had already been agreed before.

The project trend and intention is to finance and co-finance big single projects (mainly infrastructure) within the framework of the URBAN GW goals. Many of these projects are given basic funding and are expected to be economically viable (or set clear economic impacts) within a few years. Many of these projects had to fulfil clear criteria of economic viability and were selected on the basis of these criteria by the community administration.

The remaining part (25% of the funding) is used to finance mainly social orientated projects and communication with citizens.

The roles in the decision processes are clear: there is a steering committee, composed of the lord mayor and representatives of the province and all elected parties. This steering committee is advised by individual experts and the project manager. The steering committee takes pre-decisions and submits these pre-decisions to the community council for approval.There is also a controlling committee for the work of the steering committee. This controlling committee has to be consulted in case of important project changes.

A so-called micro project fund has been installed. This fund is being co-financed and managed by the three districts themselves. They decide on (and finance) bottom-up projects, that are proposed by citizens. This should result in the stronger identification of the citizens with the whole project via such small concrete measures.

The jury (controlling committee) for micro projects is composed by 4 political representatives of the 4 districts, four ?active citizens?(one per district) and one advisor (representing UGW project management).

There have been 13 micro projects submitted up to date (2005), 8 out of them have been co-financed (16000 EU totally). The overall budget in the first year was 1 EU per habitant (50 cents covered by UGW, 50 cents covered by the districts). Micro-Projects were co-financed up to 50% (300,00-3.000,00EU). Micro-Project duration is one year with option to be extended. Most projects up to date had cultural character.


Name of tool
URBAN Graz procedure

Decision making process - tools in decision-making process
The single tools described above did not clearly influence the decision making process.


Decision making process - how was the information for the dmp disseminated
No information dissemination

Decision making process - how was the public involved
Public only punctually involved by small project financing (UI) and micro project funds (UGW)

Decision making process - was there public discussion over the project
There was no public discussion. Generally, a lack of transparency towards submissions was stated concerning the approval criteria of the single bottom-up project proposals. This was due to the workload of all personnel in charge of URBAN projects (city department and consulting agency).

Welche Tools wurden verwendet, um Nachhaltigkeit zu beurteilen?

URBAN Graz procedure

Weiterführende Informationen (nur auf Englisch):

Für den vollständigen Bericht hier klicken (pdf)