What’s next in the region around the Lützerath opencast mine? Planners have now presented their ideas for how the region could look in the future. Now it’s the citizen’s turn.
Erkelenz (dpa/lnw) – The city of Erkelenz wants to develop visions for the time after brown coal mining. On Thursday evening, the city of 47,000 residents launched online citizen participation. For six weeks until mid-March, citizens can evaluate several scenarios and develop their own visions.
Due to the early end of lignite mining in 2030, five villages between the city center of Erkelenz and the Garzweiler opencast mine will remain. The ideas of the citizens are then to be evaluated, and in the middle of the year the city wants to decide what a vision for the future could look like.
90 percent of the original residents have already moved away from the villages in question, and most of the houses are empty. They mostly belong to the energy group RWE. Only 200 of the original 1500 residents remain. In addition, there are currently 300 refugees from Ukraine who live in houses. At the beginning of January, the village of Lützerath, which also belongs to Erkelenz, was evacuated.
According to Mayor Stephan Muckel (CDU), the area to be designed is 20 square kilometers. It’s about developing ideas and visions. There are no concrete plans for this yet, said Muckel in front of more than 200 citizens who came to the presentation of a Cologne planning office in the Stadthalle on Thursday evening. “We are glad that such a large area of ??our urban area will be preserved.”
The future models include the existing buildings in the villages to varying degrees. “Land der Alleen”, for example, takes up the many tree-lined streets in the area – surrounded by hiking, horseback riding and bicycle paths, the village areas would all be preserved in this model.
The future vision “Golden Fields” is based on large-scale agricultural use of the region. The road system would be used primarily for agricultural purposes. In the villages, the historic buildings, streets and squares would be preserved, while other parts would be dismantled and made available for agricultural use.
The third future model is called “Neustadt am See”. The villages could become the core of a new city. In the vision, the lake plays a role, which is to be created in the large open-pit mine in several decades.
At the beginning of March, a participation specifically for the resettlers and the remaining residents of the villages is planned. The small towns are quite different. Keyenberg, for example, has a small center with a church and farmsteads. Other villages are street villages.
