The Future Initiative for Urban Districts supports the implementation of integrated, locally targeted development concepts to regenerate neighbourhoods experiencing social or urban development problems. It also aims to help areas adapt to changing demographics and economic conditions and meet the challenges these present.
The Future Initiative for Urban Districts is one of the programmes targeting integrated urban development in the 2007-2013 funding period of the EU Structural Funds.
The measure aims to foster long-term stabilisation and sustainable development in urban districts where an accumulation of economic, social, urban-development and infrastructural problems seriously impairs living and working conditions, residents’ ability to compete in the job market, and their opportunities to participate on an equal footing in economic, social and political life.
The Future Initiative for Urban Districts is implemented through the following sub-programmes:
- Socially Integrative City
- Urban Renewal (redevelopment)
- Urban Regeneration West/East
- Neighbourhood Education
- Community Centres
The Senate Department for Urban Development in Berlin has a department dedicated to the Socially Integrative City sub-programme. It works with the boroughs to coordinate the implementation of the programme in the neighbourhood and district-management areas.
The role of the Programme Service Centre (PSS) is to support the Senate Department for Urban Development in Berlin, the Senate Department for Labour, Integration and Women, and other funding bodies in implementing the sub-programmes.
As such, the PSS is mainly concerned with ensuring that the approval, expenditure and accounting of the funds provided by the State of Berlin, the federal government and the European Union are carried out properly and as intended.
The services provided by the PSS can be roughly grouped as follows:
- Reviewing projects
- Consulting
- Reporting
In particular, the PSS provides the following services to the respective funding bodies:
- Reviewing applications; allocating file numbers; forwarding to funding bodies
- Reviewing payments; forwarding to funding bodies
- Reviewing reports on expenditure of funds; forwarding to funding bodies
- Conducting on-site inspections of the schemes receiving funding
- Providing legal advice to those receiving funding, e.g. producing a leaflet on allocation regulations
- Compiling and maintaining data
The PSS manages funding via ProDaBa.NET, an online database-supported system that has reduced processing times by streamlining project workflows.
The ERDF has allocated a total of €290.5 million in funding to Berlin for the period 2007-2013, to be used to implement measures that promote sustainable urban development.
The ARGE Programmservicestelle GbR (gsub GmbH in collaboration with Stiftung SPI) acts as a service provider for the Senate Department for Urban Development, the Senate Department for Labour, Integration and Women and for the Berlin boroughs.
Financing is provided by the State of Berlin, by the European Regional Development Fund (EDRF) as part of the Integrated Urban Development and Environment priority axis of the State of Berlin’s “Operational Programme for the European Regional Development Fund in the Funding Period 2007-2013”, and by the federal government pursuant to the “Administrative Agreement on the Granting of Financial Assistance by the Federal Government to the States” according to Article 104b of the Basic Law on Promoting Urban Development Measures (VV Städtebauförderung).
The ERDF provides up to 50 percent of the funding for the individual projects.
Contact partners:
Michael Reher, Project Manager
Phone: +49 (0) 30-284 09-520
E-mail: michael.reher@gsub.de
