The central challenge was the city’s long-standing disconnection from the Fulda River. Over decades, urban development, major traffic routes, and private ownership along the banks created barriers that limited access and weakened the river’s visibility in everyday life. As a result, the Fulda remained underused as a natural and recreational asset, despite its central position in the city’s landscape. 

Historically, the Fulda had been a vital transport route with connections reaching to the North Sea. When its role in shipping declined, the river lost importance for the city’s economy and was largely ignored in urban development. Kassel expanded without integrating the river into its structure, so that the city grew parallel to, rather than along, the water.

This situation was reinforced by the river’s spatial heterogeneity. The Fulda runs for 14 kilometers through Kassel, but its sections differ widely in character and use. Decisions about its management were made in a fragmented way, leading to a patchwork of measures instead of a coherent approach. The result was a valuable natural and cultural resource that remained disconnected from the city and its residents, leaving much of its potential for recreation, urban resilience and fostering a sense of identity untapped.

The conceptual framework „Kassel deine Fulda“ aims to address these issues through the following key strategies:

• Collaborative Processes: The development of the concept involved a collaborative approach, integrating inputs from diverse groups (residents, local stakeholders, experts, and multiple city departments, coordinated through a dedicated steering committee)

• Interdepartmental coordination: The steering committee facilitated coordination among different departments to align objectives and actions.

• Expert workshops: Internal administrative workshops served to develop a basis regarding content and spatial priorities

• Public Participation: Engaging the public and specific groups like children and youth helped to incorporate a wide range of perspectives and foster community buy-in.

• Strategic planning: Potential projects were categorized into flagship projects (more complex, require interdepartmental coordination, large expexted impact) and starter projects (individual measures, relatively easy and cheap to implement)

The concept, initiated in 2015, remains a planning framework, with measures prioritized by time, content, and cost to guide future implementation.

The concept was published in 2023 and its measures have not been implemented yet, so no conclusions can yet be drawn about possible effects and impacts of the proposed measures. But still, the extensive participation process involving residents, local stakeholders and administration promises a broadly accepted realization.

The aim of creating the concept itself was to bundle the spatial circumstances, the desires and needs of the public and to summarize and extend the individual measures taken to date. This objective was achieved by structuring the measures into bundles and hierarchizing them, as well as ensuring the participation of a diverse range of stakeholders.

Nevertheless, the authors emphasize that the Fulda concept serves mainly as a development perspective without a fixed schedule. Yet the detailed information about funding options (funding organizations, guidelines and quotas) for each set of measures as well as their prioritization in terms of time, content and costs allows for easy implementation. Furthermore, the concept suggests several kickoff measures to initiate the implementation process.