Bitburg's city center: More quality of life, more profile

Customer: City of Bitburg

Project period: 2024 – 2025

The project in brief

What does Bitburg’s city center stand for? What are its strengths, weaknesses and potential? Together with the town of Bitburg, the local population and stakeholders, we developed concrete answers to these questions.

The core elements of the project were: a large-scale survey and diverse citizen participation. The findings from these were incorporated into our brand and marketing concept for the city center, as were the results of numerous workshops and analyses. Bitburg’s advantage: the city center has already been redeveloped and the establishment of new businesses has been initiated. A place marketing and city center development concept complements this head start.

The aim of the project: to increase the quality of life and future viability of Bitburg’s city center – with a focus on a lively center with a strong commercial structure and attractive offers.

Task and background

What makes a city centre fit for the future? Many cities are currently facing this challenge – including the city of Bitburg in Rhineland-Palatinate. Of course, there are parallels between cities, such as structural change, the consequences of corona and rising vacancy rates. At the same time, there are at least as many differences and city characteristics that play a role.

This is precisely why we view every city or municipality as an entity – as a clearly defined and definable unit in the competition between cities. Our task as place branding and urban development experts is to work out the strengths and profile of a city or, in the case of Bitburg, the strengths of a city center and to develop individual ideas and impulses for its positioning.

We developed a marketing concept with recommendations and measures for profiling Bitburg’s city center – based on the strengths and voices of the city.

Workshop zur Innenstadtprofilierung in Bitburg

Trusting and listening: Laura Ebeling (2nd from left) from Stadtmanufaktur at a workshop with stakeholders in Bitburg

Our way of working

Strengths analysis and survey

Our view from the outside and the view from the inside – from society, business and politics – ideally combine to create a strong city center profile for the future. This is why we are also focusing on the following project modules for Bitburg:

Analysis of strengths – through a comprehensive online survey of citizens
Citizens’ forum with approx. 100 participants – as a discussion and participation format
Involvement of city-relevant stakeholders – through personal addresses and workshops
Detailed analyses – on service quality and visibility of offers in the city centre

Participation and results of the online survey

The lively participation in the online survey proves the population’s interest in the future of their city: 800 citizens from Bitburg shared their opinions on the strengths and weaknesses of Bitburg’s city center.

A surprising result: many citizens praise the cleanliness of the city center. “We monitor many cities and cleanliness is actually always a major problem rather than a point that is explicitly praised,” says Stadtmanufaktur project manager Laura Ebeling.

Citizens’ forum in Bitburg

Following the survey, we hosted a citizens’ forum. Around 100 participants discussed potential with us – based on personas. Specific ideas emerged, such as a house for senior citizens and more events for young people.

In addition to such insights into the strengths of the city, the survey has another important effect: surveys, workshops, stakeholder management and reporting on all aspects of city center profiling raise awareness of a sharp profile – and a strong location.

The Konrad-Adenauer-Anlage in Bitburg – one of several green lungs in the city center

Strategy and measures

Of course, the city cannot do everything itself. Part of the concept development was therefore also to examine what lies in the hands of the city and where other stakeholders need to be motivated and activated.

The analyses and considerations resulted in a marketing concept for Bitburg’s city center – with the following components:

Coherent, holistic strategy
concrete recommendations
Fields of action
Matrix of measures for implementation
Control and implementation structure
Budget requirements

The result: all Bitburgers benefit from a strong location

Bitburg has the best prerequisites for developing its own city center for the future – and the entire city society benefits from this. This understanding of the benefits of profiling the town center is a key success of the project. The result: broad support from the city’s decision-makers and citizens.

For the town of Bitburg itself, the following applies: the analyses opened up the view for the wishes and ideas from the town’s society – and the marketing concept provides clarity in terms of strategy and scope for action.