Urban Development | Chemnitz: Neighborhood Work as an Anti-Fascist Project

"Rent freeze" is written on the large plastic fist placed at the entrance to the "Stadtwirtschaft" (city economy). The site in Chemnitz's city center is intended to become a new cultural hotspot in Saxony's third-largest city . This could lead to gentrification and the displacement of people with little money in a neighborhood where many buildings remain unrenovated. This is precisely what the 280 people who gathered at the same Stadtwirtschaft from Thursday to Sunday for the eleventh Right to the City Forum want to prevent.

Since 2015, housing and urban policy activists from across Germany have met once a year in a different city to discuss how to implement the goal of "One City for All." The decision to host Chemnitz in 2025 was made thanks to a small group of activists who call themselves the Bordsteinlobby and focus on solidarity-based urban development.

Octavio and Lisa, who did not want their full names published in the newspaper, are part of this group. "We've been planning this meeting for three years because this year Chemnitz is the European Capital of Culture," Octavio told the "nd" newspaper. The city's marketing department is using this as an opportunity to attract as many visitors as possible to Chemnitz. "We thought: This would be a good opportunity to invite people who are fighting for a city of solidarity," Octavio says.

Participants discussed, for example, the continuation of the "Rent Cap Now" campaign, which was launched in the run-up to the federal election. Activists from the Johannstadt rental community in Dresden, the neighborhood organization from Cottbus, and the Lobeda Solidarisch neighborhood union from Jena presented various forms of neighborhood work – and at the same time, opened the discussion. Self-critical tones were also struck: Why haven't the more than 500,000 homeless people in Germany been a topic of discussion at the annual meetings so far?

This year's key question was: "How do we build a bridge between everyday realities and the vision of a society based on solidarity?" It was discussed during a walk to several Chemnitz garage complexes . Katalin Gennburg, a member of the Bundestag for the Left Party, described them as "symbols of the culture of repair" that held great emotional value for their owners, but which came under massive pressure after reunification: After the land was privatized, many owners had to have their garages demolished at their own expense. This is about much more than just tinkering with cars, says Gennburg: The garages are meeting places for the neighborhood. Quite different from the next stop: a modern garage park with high rents, operated by a real estate company.

The city walk following the trail of the National Socialist Underground (NSU) was also well attended. The three founders of the fascist terrorist group lived for a time in Chemnitz's Fritz-Heckert district. Many participants emphasized that community work is also a form of anti-fascism. Here, people are fighting back against the narrative that one has no choice but to stand helplessly by and watch the capitalist exploitation of the city. The slogan "A City for All" is thus also a clear message against exclusion – regardless of whether it comes from the far right or the so-called centrist parties.