City study Jena on the attractiveness of the city centre
Retail, accessibility and the design of the city centre are central elements of an attractive city centre for both citizens and visitors to the city of Jena. These are the results of the city study conducted by the Department of Economic Geography at the Friedrich Schiller University of Jena in coordination with the Department of Urban Development and Environment. They are based on a survey of 1,342 people in the Jena city area.
The long-term study, conducted since 1991 and for the last time in 2016 by Professor Günter Meyer of the Department of Geography at the University of Mainz, was first supervised in 2019 by the Chair of Economic Geography of the Friedrich Schiller University of Jena. The study design and content remained largely unchanged in order to ensure the comparability of the results. Of interest to the researchers were, among other things, the questions of how visitors perceive Jena's inner city, how the retail trade is evaluated and how often the interviewees visit surrounding cities for shopping.
The results showed that the city centre of Jena is rated as attractive to very attractive by the people questioned - at least about three quarters of the passers-by agreed with this statement. Prof. Dr. Sebastian Henn, project manager of the city study and holder of the chair for economic geography at the Friedrich Schiller University of Jena, also follows this basically positive assessment: "The results of the survey show that the city centre is still perceived predominantly positively despite a slightly negative trend since 2008. 76 percent of those taking part in the survey are definitely a very good value here". At the same time, the study's authors also name 15 recommendations for action to meet the needs of the population and guests in the future. Particular attention is paid to the areas of retail and transport as well as design aspects.
Recommendation for retail trade
A central recommendation is to strengthen the stationary retail trade in Jena's city centre by using multi- and cross-channeling - i.e. distribution via several sales channels, ideally linked with each other, and by networking analogue and digital services. "The long time series allows us to observe that the target group of people over 65 years of age, often also perceived as an analog age group, is increasingly shopping online. The retail trade has to adjust to this fact even more than before", says Anika Zorn, staff member at the Chair of Economic Geography, who was in charge of conducting the study together with her colleagues Björn Braunschweig and Matthias Hannemann.
To further promote the development of alternatives to motorised private transport and to further promote the so-called multimodality in the inner city area also corresponds to central sustainability issues of the city of Jena. These include the intelligent parking guidance system that has already been implemented, solutions for a regionally coordinated P+R strategy and an improvement in inner city accessibility from the region. In the more than 2,000 suggestions for improvement named by the persons interviewed, a large part of them is directed towards the area of "design". The most frequently requested fields of action here are, in particular, increasing the quality of stay in the inner city, the expansion of recreational opportunities, green spaces, gastronomy and the creation of meeting places or the increase in cultural offerings.
Christian Gerlitz, Mayor and Head of Department for Urban Development and the Environment, sees the results of the city study as confirmation and incentive to continue the activities and developments already begun in the inner city area. "The commissioning of the parking guidance system has already enabled a significant component to be implemented to relieve inner-city traffic and the first recommendations of the study have been followed. The development of the Eichplatz area with the New City Garden also meets the citizens' desire for more recreational opportunities, green spaces and meeting places in the city centre.
Significance for future planning decisions
However, Christian Gerlitz does not see it as a disadvantage that the surveys were carried out well before the developments in the wake of the Corona pandemic, which were particularly drastic for the retail and catering trade. "It is precisely the long-term character of the city study that enables us to make statements about trends in the behaviour and perception of passers-by during their visit to Jena city centre and to react accordingly. The corona pandemic will pose great challenges for the future development of the city centre, so the statements are of great importance for future planning decisions - to ensure that Jena remains attractive".
The results of the Jena City Study will be incorporated into the updating of the retail trade concept of the city of Jena. The currently valid retail trade concept dates from 2015 and the update is to be started next year.