The number of young people in Bochum’s urban society has decreased significantly and with it their importance. While the needs of the elderly are often in the foreground of city politics, the concerns of the young are given far too little attention.
In 1980, 21.3% of those from Bochum and Wattenscheid were younger than 19 years, since 2010 it has only been just over 15% (2010; 15.2%), in 2019 it was 15.7% again (Age structure of the population in NRW from 1980 to 2019).
With schools, mobility and in times of the Corona crisis, it has been shown that the city has neglected the infrastructure that is important for young people for decades. In the areas of debt and the environment, it becomes clear that the older generations have long lived at the expense of the following generations. That was and is possible because the young generation is still underrepresented in politics and hardly has the opportunity to make their concerns heard.
schools – The structural condition of the schools and their equipment shows how much value is attached to children and young people and their education in a city. Despite increased efforts in the last 6 years, the school landscape in Bochum still gives an overall sad picture. The condition and equipment of the Bochum schools are still far from what is common, for example, in Scandinavian countries, but also in Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg. The education and training of the young generation continues to have a significantly higher priority in these countries than in our country.
Educational success is still too often passed on in Bochum, too; schools do not allow many students to exhaust their potential. Correspondingly, the proportion of children who only have a recommendation for secondary school or a limited recommendation for secondary school after elementary school remains high and does not decrease significantly.
Especially in times when the city was financially bad, savings were made at the expense of the younger generation. Schools were closed, the maintenance of the school buildings systematically neglected and equipment saved. Due to the lack of fiber optic connections and the corresponding equipment, digital lessons are still only possible at a few schools in Bochum, and regularly only with restrictions.
poverty – Every fourth child in Bochum grows up in a family that receives unemployment benefits or social assistance. That is around 12,500 children and young people. Single parents and families with more than three children are particularly affected (WAZ from 07/10/2020).
In the city, however, there have been hardly any initiatives aimed at stopping the inheritance of poverty. Almost all measures are limited to alleviating poverty, not addressing the causes. A lack of prospects determines the life of many young people in Bochum, they lack the belief that they can improve their social and economic situation sustainably through their own efforts. Children in Bochum see how their parents deal with their social situation. This is how children learn whether it is realistic to overcome a problem. In this way, poverty is inherited through social learning (Poverty is inherited through social learning, the job market 11/2010).
To this day, the city lacks an action plan as to how the causes of the inheritance of poverty should be tackled; the creation of more all-day schools and daycare centers alone is not enough.
mobility – Even in transport, the mobility of children and adolescents is still not a focus of politics. Safe ways to school are still not a relevant topic today. Only a few schools have plans to get to school. School administrators still forbid or unequivocally advise pupils and their parents not to cycle to school because it is too unsafe.
The mobility needs of people without a driver’s license, including children and adolescents up to the age of 18, have remained unnoticed in the city for decades. Enabling young people to move around the city independently and safely without the help of others, especially without having to call on their parents, is still not a priority goal in urban transport policy. It still has the needs of adults in particular in mind and is preferably geared towards how people can get from A to B quickly and comfortably by car.
In terms of land use, too, the use of street space for parked cars in residential areas continues to be seen as more important than, for example, use as leeway. Play streets in Bochum are regularly parked, and use for “playing”, as the name actually suggests, is almost never possible. The establishment of such streets regularly serves to organize the parking not to allow children to play.
environment – The efforts of the city to leave a city in an intact environment for future generations have so far been inadequate. The current climate target of reducing the city’s CO2 emissions to 80% by 2050 compared to 1990 levels is too unambitious. If this goal were pursued, both locally and globally, our children and grandchildren would have to struggle with the massive negative consequences of climate change, which the generations who are still responsible today would leave them with.
After all, there seems to be a turning point in this area, the currently still valid climate protection target is to be changed, Bochum is to become climate-neutral by 2035. The environment should no longer be damaged at the expense of future generations.
Debt – The city has accumulated 1.8 billion debts in the last few decades, which children and grandchildren have to pay off. This is a difficult legacy for the younger generation. It limits the financial leeway of future generations to a minimum. The debts left behind by parents and grandparents will continue to determine the future of the city in the coming decades and will severely limit the scope of action of future generations.
For a long time the city lived at the expense of children and grandchildren, whose interests were also subordinated to their own when it came to city finances. Generations have lived beyond their means, were not prepared to limit themselves and instead took on debts at the expense of future generations.
In the meantime, politicians have become convinced that the city cannot go into debt and spend more than it earns outside of times of serious crisis, but that does not change the mountain of debts that has already accumulated and that is inherited by young people.
Corona-Krise – In addition to the old and sick, it is especially the young people who are particularly affected by the Corona crisis. Schools are particularly hit by the consequences of a lack of digitization. Digital lessons fail due to a lack of equipment, a lack of willingness and a lack of training of school staff as well as the school bureaucracy, which continues to act at a snail’s pace. The consequence of the omissions of the past decades and the lack of consideration of the needs of young people in urban society are particularly clearly visible in the magnifying glass of the Corona crisis.
The needs of young people to meet with one another meets with little understanding among many, as the social discussion about the meeting places of the young generation at the theater and music forum has shown. The Corona crisis, however, takes away almost all leisure activities for young people. The pub, the club, the sports club. everything is closed. The community in particular plays a completely different role among young people than among older generations. A year in adolescence has a completely different relevance to the personal development of young people than a year in adulthood. During puberty, meeting people of the same age, breaking away from the parental home and making first love are extremely important. But these experiences can only be difficult for young people during the Corona period. The age group of young people feels abandoned.
So far, the city has not been ready to set up an aid program for the younger generation. For the city center or for artists, that was a matter of course, for the young people nothing noteworthy happened.
Urban spaces – In our society, youthful life is increasingly perceived as disturbing, too loud, too impulsive and too colorful. Children and young people are directed to rooms where they do not disturb anyone, playgrounds, youth houses and places where they cannot be seen or heard. The youngsters are marginalized. For example, the entire city center is primarily geared towards the needs of older people.
The young people should also move back to the center of the city and be prominently visible there. When designing public spaces, their needs must be brought back into focus and taken into account.
Political participation – So far, young people in Bochum have only been marginally involved in political decision-making processes. There is no youth parliament, no youth advisory board, only the child and youth welfare committee, which deals with child and youth issues, but in which young people are not represented, but only council members and people with experience in youth welfare. Nowhere do the young people sit at the table themselves. So far there has only been the youth survey organized by the Kinder- und Jugendring, as well as children’s and youth forums, at which some youths and young adults can present their ideas and wishes for the development of the districts to the politicians of the districts and discuss them with them.
There is currently no committee in which young people and young adults can discuss the issues that affect them before a decision is made in the city council and where young people can contribute their own ideas and suggestions. Accordingly, the needs of children and young people are too seldom heard in urban politics and are far too often neglected. Accordingly, subjects that are important to young people receive little attention in Bochum.
More attention needs to be paid to the needs of young people
There are significantly more younger people represented in the new city council than in the council, which determined the fate of the city until October 2020. It is to be hoped that as a result children and young people will gain more importance again in the future. But that alone will not be enough to pay attention to the needs of children, adolescents and young adults, as older generations have so far naturally experienced. So that the young generation can be better involved in politics, politicians have to sit at a table with young people much more often, listen to them and give them more opportunities to help shape the future of the city. This also includes the establishment of online channels through which the younger generation can contribute their suggestions, ideas and opinions directly to city politics.
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