Vision2020

Charlotte Jacobi Vision 2020 My City in 2020 - and how it will relate to the world I have three wishes concerning the future improvement of my city Berlin: a)Innovative multi-generation housing. In Berlin nearly half of all households are single households. Looking at the aging society this will cause much loneliness and increasing problems for elderly people. They suffer when they have to leave their apartments of houses and have to go to a home for the elderly being restricted to one room. But also the young mothers suffer from the present form of housing because they can not go to work because they can not afford child care and the grandmothers live elsewhere. In 2020 I will be 34 years old and want to have children. My vision is that new housing complexes should be designed and built or converted where families and singles and single parent families can live together and jointly look after children, and can jointly cook and share other activities such as cleaning the clothes or sharing cars and gymnastic rooms and workshops to repair things. All these things can normally not be afforded by a single family if the decrease in income continues. b)My second concern in environment, education, traffic and spaces for the youth. In general, my city Berlin is quite green with woods and lakes and good public transport. Nevertheless, the car traffic is increasing especially since the wall came down in 1990. I like to go shopping in Hanover where my grandma lives because the inner city is largely free from cars. One proposal to reduce cars in inner city is a larger use of shared cars (stattauto is a big provider in Berlin). Some people could use public transport but there is still a certain distance from the station to their homes. In these cases a call bus (9 seater) could be used that has not a fixed route but goes individually collecting several guests. In the city of Wolfsburg this service is a joint action of Volkswagen donating the cars and the city of Wolfsburg paying for operation costs and information system and unemployed people being the drivers. This I like to see in Berlin banning up to 50% of to days car traffic until 2020. Schools should provide foreign languages from the beginning, and topics such as geography, biology and history should be taught in English all the years. Classes should be limited to 15 pupils for more effective learning. I would like to see younger teachers who have more experience in normal jobs, not only in teaching. Possibly a job rotation of young professionals for six months into schools and teachers working in normal jobs can improve the mutual knowledge. We learn from life and not from school. More playgrounds should be available where also youth in the age of 13-18 likes to go including music rooms and workshops with tools where street workers help to repair things. Separation of garbage, anti smoking campaigns specially for the young and much more renewable energy saving is my wish for 2020. 1000 solar roofs have been created in Britain but this can only be the beginning. When I was a little child my city had a program of “careful renewal of housing blocks” with many advanced ideas of decentralized energy production and water treatments, but this program did not continue. c)My third concern is unemployment. In some parts of my city unemployment rate is up to 22% (Neukolln). There are young people even after school and training as clerks, salesmen or craftsmen without a job. And also skilled people over 45 years or skilled women who had stopped work for some years can’t find a job. Measures against unemployment are not easy but politics can not wait and hope that there will be a general economic growth – this did not happen the last ten years or so. I have two proposals: a)Those who are unemployed should be forced to work in public enterprises if they want to continue to receive financial support (unemployment subsidiary of social welfare). Of course this requires an organization of these work places but by this these people keep up some of their skills and they experience that they contribute to society (Wisconsin model). b)In many countries expert Germany there are many private social initiatives where people help each other and spend time instead of money. Unemployed people in general have no money but time. The needs are the same as every person: housing, food, clothes, furniture, transportation, communication and entertainment. Social enterprises can provide half of these needs and a currency is time units rather than €. (In Berlin is the European center for social enterprises, but most Berliners do not know that this European association exist).