Future concept for the city center - vision for Offenbach's city center

Station Mitte goes far beyond the function of a library. It is a public space where education and social interaction take place around books, digital media and culture. It is a place to work, learn and exchange ideas. But it is also a place to eat together, spend the day, play and lose track of time. Station Mitte is also a cultural center that hosts lectures and concerts and where associations, educational institutions and initiatives from the region pool their activities.

With its flexible learning environment, its diverse program and its location in the city centre, Station Mitte appeals to many new target groups compared to the former city library in Herrnstraße.

The models for this new highlight in the city center are the reopened district library in Cologne-Kalk and the modern Scandinavian libraries of today, which since the turn of the millennium have been developing the old library building type more and more in the direction of cultural and community centers.

The Kosmopolis department store is a social and cultural meeting place that combines Offenbach's regional and international influences in an extraordinary way.

This place is a shop window, store, stage and culinary oasis in the middle of the city center.

Here you will find an enormous variety of products from Offenbach and the region, such as special foods, handicrafts and homemade goods of all kinds. Traders - and those who want to become one - can rent a shelf, a showcase or an entire sales stand and offer their products or services - also online in the associated Kosmopolis webshop. This gives the many creative producers a stage both offline and online and thus the chance to become known without the risk of running their own business.

However, this small oasis offers much more than just a wide variety of products. Following the example of street food markets in other major cities, there are cookshops and street restaurants serving freshly prepared dishes from all over the world. Lounge areas and seating niches invite you to linger, chat and watch the hustle and bustle. If you particularly like the jam at the coffee canteen's breakfast menu, you can buy two jars for your own larder next door.

The overall concept is rounded off by an accompanying cultural program. Concerts, jazz breakfasts, cookery courses and lectures take place regularly in the adjoining event area.

With the involvement of the IHK, the HfG and other regional players, a public showroom of the Designpark Offenbach is being created in the city center and thus a prominent showcase for the many creative energies for which Offenbach is known throughout Germany.

The Made.of is a colorful mixture of workshop, start-up center, exhibition house, conference venue and hotel based on the "Unperfekthaus" project in Essen and the "Think Space" project in Helsinki. In this house, everything revolves around design and creation at the interface of technology, society and culture. The focus is on a wide range of workspaces, an open workshop with modern production equipment such as 3D printers, laser cutters etc. and a shared exhibition space. The entire building is open to visitors. They can move through the various areas and gain exciting insights into the creation of the projects. What's more, they are involved in the creation and development of the projects, making them an important part of the overall concept.

Equally important is the aspect of temporary living in the form of studio and student apartments as well as the integrated hotel. These residential modules ensure a permanent background noise of activity and a constant stream of new influences.

Picnicking, playing, gardening and much more - the range of outdoor activities is being considerably expanded. Starting from the Büsingpark, a continuous area of green squares, green facades and colorful areas will make its way through the city center along the Platz der Deutschen Einheit via the Hugenottenplatz to the Marktplatz.

Depending on the season, there is the opportunity to harvest fruit in the city, pick your own flowers or carve pumpkins. The inner city green space not only contributes to the urban climate, but also offers numerous attractions especially for children and families with a variety of play and exercise options. This is because Offenbach's young residents in particular have so far been neglected in the city center.

The "City Center Green" project is not created within a year - trees and plants need some time to grow. For this reason, the first raised beds are being built selectively and with simple means, which are literally germ cells for a future urban jungle. In order to make the emerging green spaces tangible at different levels, roof landscapes and facades will be included and new pathways will be created in the form of green "bridges" to the surrounding urban areas.

The foyer of Offenbach Town Hall, with its galleries and open staircases, has always been a place that invites public use. With the redesign and conversion to the Zukunftsfoyer, this place is now fully exploiting its basic talent.

With the Zukunftsfoyer, an urban information center has been created in the city center that publicly documents Offenbach's exciting development. Whether school classes, politicians, business delegations or guests of the city: numerous people from near and far take the opportunity to find out about Offenbach's plans and projects and the transformation of the city center through exhibitions, presentations or guided tours. The highlights are the impressive and interactive urban planning model and the Offenbach Open showroom, where the world of data and sensors can be experienced. The small bistro with its excellent coffee is also very popular.

The Future Foyer is connected to the Urban Planning department, but not only functions as a one-way communication channel, but also as an interface for feedback from citizens.

With the help of workshops, discussions and evening events, the Foyer plays a key role in participation processes for urban change in the city.

Street is a spatial network of areas for innovative and experimental concepts in the areas of retail, gastronomy and urban production.

The core of the project is the Test Space Scholarship, which is unique in Germany and is awarded every two years and specifically brings start-ups to Offenbach for this period. These young companies are provided with space in a prime city center location to test their ideas under real conditions and experience the advantages of stationary retail and the integration of intuitive, digital technologies. The test spaces form an exciting mile for new shopping experiences and thus also become magnets for Offenbach residents who have rarely or never been to the city center.

The Test Space Academy offers various training and exchange opportunities so that not only start-ups, but also established and local companies in particular can benefit from the retail experiments.

The "reprogramming" of Frankfurter Strasse is an ambitious project - but one that is made possible by strategic cooperation between retailers and technology companies and in conjunction with a real-world laboratory program from the state of Hesse.

Although the city centre is one of the most densely built-up areas in the city, exciting projects are also being realized here in niches, courtyards or gaps between buildings, on leftover land or in parking lots. Whether temporary or permanent - pocket parks or gardening projects make visible ecological and social contributions to city life here. The architectural concepts for micro-houses in particular bring completely new "splashes of color" and a touch of Tokyo to Offenbach.

The Gap Filler program is as diverse as the ideas of the various (interim) users. Offenbach's previously barely visible players become visible through the creative appropriation of leftover space in the city center. In this way, they influence urban events and initiate transformation processes that often last far beyond the period in which the gaps are filled.

The architecture of the basic gap filler module responds to the various needs arising from the respective niche and intended use. Flexibly expandable, each module is planned with resources in mind. The energy concept and origin of the building materials are given special attention during the planning process.

Offenbach's city center has new magnets. These places attract visitors not only with good coffee, but also with particularly pleasant spatial experiences. Almost a handful of accessible roof terraces, roof gardens, public sun staircases and city balconies now provide great panoramic views, and in good weather you can see as far as Frankfurt and the Taunus mountains.

The lively life between the houses in the city center is particularly easy to observe from a bird's eye view. The change of perspective and the many options for relaxing afternoons and spectacular sunsets are also appealing to the Uroffenbach residents.

Offenbach is following a trend that has long been present elsewhere with the development of rooftops in buildings.

Rooftop uses in any form are vibrant places of urban life, especially if the public traffic is not kept exclusive by overly expensive gastronomy concepts. The diversity of Offenbach's urban society is particularly noticeable in these places - because the rooftop landscape of the future is barrier-free and offers places and niches to sit, lie down and get together in consumption-free zones.

Every two years, the city center is transformed into an El Dorado for creatives who change the city in unusual ways. As part of the Offenbach Urban Art Biennale, international artists are invited to Offenbach to occupy niches throughout the city center for four months, staging hidden places, repurposing empty spaces and designing public spaces in a colorful and unconventional way.

The diverse Biennale projects initially change the usual perception of urban space. They emphasize places that previously had little presence in the consciousness of Offenbach residents. As artistic interventions in the city, the projects always carry a symbolic level with them. Depending on the project, this can result in an instruction for action or a message that leads to real change in the city center.

The festival sees itself as a sister project to the popular Offenbach Kunstansichten Festival and is also accompanied by a colorful supporting program with concerts, parties and culinary delights.

Here too, studios, workshops and exhibition spaces open their doors and various tours through the urban space provide insights into the city's cultural network. The Urban Art Biennale and Kunstansichten-Festival alternate on a regular basis. The content and spatial focus of both events enrich the art and culture scene in Offenbach and the region.

They provide additional revitalization and new atmospheres in the city centre: a series of specifically developed projects have given rise to new forms of communal living in the heart of the city centre. At selected locations, office and retail properties are being partially converted or supplemented with housing.

At some locations, building cooperatives are using participatory processes to develop new housing typologies with flexible floor plans and communal areas that are adapted to future living models and residents' needs. On the first floors, the houses open up to the surrounding public spaces. In addition, two new high-rise residential buildings are being built which, with their apartment types for different generations, their vertical gardens, gallery floors and also public first floors, prove that urban high-rise living does not necessarily have to mean high prices and exclusivity.

This development is based on a targeted activation and marketing strategy for the city center as a location for special residential projects.

This will bring the owners of identified properties together with suitable project developers.

Clear qualitative criteria for projects and a well-established set of legal control instruments (concept awards, investor competitions, urban development contracts, etc.) create a basis for special project developments that contribute to the objectives of the future concept and enrich the city center in the long term.

Strolling, enjoying, experiencing, celebrating - thousands of cheerful visitors are visible proof that the city center is able to attract and inspire people and create community like hardly any other place in Offenbach.

Thanks to an expanded program of high-quality, original and identity-forming events in the areas of gastronomy, culture and sport, the city centre is once again more firmly anchored in people's leisure activities. In addition to large and established city festivals such as the Festival of Lights and Mainuferfest, smaller and larger events such as the Christmas market, a street food festival, an ice championship, a revised beer festival, Offenbach Week and a few others also contribute to this.

The festival program is implemented both through the city's own events and through the targeted acquisition of high-quality event formats from private and commercial players. To achieve this, the expertise of Stadtwerke
Offenbach and the Offenbacher-Stadtinformations-Gesellschaft (OSG) are bundled in a new "Event Marketing" business area, which networks various players from the city group, the economy, the trade fair, culture and many other organizations in order to jointly organize or support high-quality events.

The urban space offensive provides Offenbach's city center with a tactical toolbox for increasing the quality of stay in public spaces through color, light and street furniture.

The project thus supplements and expands Offenbach's existing design manual.

The latter primarily serves as an orientation aid for catering and retail businesses. The design manual focuses on special uses of public spaces (market stalls, clothes stands, advertising displays), outdoor catering (parasols, platforms, greenery) and other advertising media. The urban space offensive picks up on these elements, develops them further and underlines Offenbach's visual identity.

The core elements of the urban space offensive are therefore a corporate design that defines a basic design approach typical of Offenbach; a cost-conscious and very flexible toolbox that can be used by urban stakeholders and companies alike; a city guide that provides committed people in Offenbach with practical assistance in actively shaping their public space, for example through gardens, events or urban art.

Thanks to the urban space offensive, those involved in the city center will know better in future how and where urban space and, in particular, square design can succeed with little money and simple materials. Above all, the result is colorful, unconventional and highly recognizable.

More visitors, more residents, more interesting stores and more reasons to visit: with its reinvigorated role as a social hub, the city center is confronted with a significant increase in traffic and goods flows. Offenbach has therefore developed a city center mobility system in which various components interact and interlock.

A dedicated, efficient delivery network consisting of cargo bikes and vans ensures that the stores in the city center can easily keep up with online stores in terms of speed.

In addition, several micro-depots as collection points for parcel shipments simplify the work of the delivery services. Some of the depots can also be rented by private individuals - they can use lockers here during or after their shopping trip or receive shipments directly.

In order to improve accessibility to the city center, so-called multimodal transfer hubs have been set up at strategic points.

At these locations, parking and rental facilities for various modes of transport such as bicycles, cargo bikes, e-scooters and e-cars are offered and linked to public transport transfer options. A flexible change of means of transport is thus possible more quickly and much more conveniently than before. To encourage even more Offenbach residents to switch to bicycles, covered bicycle parking spaces and a central bicycle parking garage provide additional incentives.

To ensure that the diversity of the new services can be fully exploited, there is an overarching management system that focuses on customer satisfaction and usability as well as the utilization and efficiency of the system.

The simultaneous development of a public Wi-Fi system, a low-energy system consisting of Internet of Things (IoT) transmitters and sensors and a platform for open data (OpenData) will lay the foundations for a powerful and independent digital infrastructure in the city center.

This infrastructure creates the technical prerequisites for stronger networking of physical and virtual elements of the city, from which new services, new store concepts and completely new urban experiences will ultimately emerge and become possible. Such an infrastructure - provided it is secure and owned by the city and its citizens - offers enormous cultural, participatory and also economic added value for urban society.

The strategic development of Offenbach Open is seen as a task for society as a whole and is being driven forward collaboratively with citizens and partners from business and science in a digitalization network. The results can be experienced not only online, but also in the foyer of the town hall.