Greens rely on the "15-minute city" of Hamburg

The Greens want Hamburg to become a sustainable “15-minute city”. The general assembly on Saturday unanimously approved a corresponding motion by the state board entitled “Your city, your district – Hamburg worth living in for everyone”. It stipulates that everything you need to live - shopping, health care, leisure activities, educational institutions - can be reached within 15 minutes - "anywhere in the city," emphasized Deputy State Chairman Leon Alam.

In addition, the party conference in the community center in Wilhelmsburg decided to enshrine a dual leadership in the statutes and to set up an election campaign commission for the district assembly elections in the coming year.

The central anchor of urban development must be lively district centers, also on the outskirts, said Alam. Because even there it must be possible to get by without a car. Because there are often no buses or trains in outlying locations, on-demand offers for connection to the HVV network would have to be expanded nationwide and offered free of charge "where there are no alternatives".

In addition, the Greens want to take action against rent increases, align “housing policy even more with the common good” and ensure that landlords can only “pass on” lower costs and investments to tenants. "Because one thing is clear: the rents have to go down," said Alam. At least half of the new apartments should be subsidized and thus built at “low prices”. "We also want to put more money into social housing."

With an amendment that provided for the socialization of profit-oriented housing groups, the green youth could not prevail.

A good year before the European and district assembly elections, the state assembly set up an election campaign commission. It should start work in April and ensure a uniformly green election campaign across the district borders.

At the last district assembly elections in 2019, the Greens left the SPD behind as the strongest force in the city for the first time. In two districts they provide the district office management. "We would like to have more, and we'll manage to do that next time," said Deputy Mayor and Science Senator Katharina Fegebank.

With the necessary two-thirds majority, an amendment to the statutes to establish dual leadership in the state executive board was also passed. According to the application, a "modern understanding of leadership based on cooperation and power sharing" was also implemented in Hamburg - as the last state association. The regulation will be used for the first time in the election of the state board in June, in which state chair Maryam Blumenthal and her deputy Alam want to compete as a team.

The state general meeting began with an appeal for solidarity and cohesion. "For 366 days there has been war in the middle of Europe," said Blumenthal. More than 30,000 people from Ukraine had sought protection from the Russian war of aggression in Hamburg. The war shows "how fragile life actually is". She also remembered the victims of war and displacement from Syria and Afghanistan, the Iranian women fighting the "murdering terror regime" in Tehran and the people in the earthquake regions in Turkey and Syria.

A speech by the federal chairman Omid Nouripour, who called for greater efforts to protect the climate in the transport sector with sharp attacks on the coalition partners in the federal government, caused a lot of applause. "The transport sector is the sector that has to do the most." Despite the rejection of the FDP, everything must be done "that there is a speed limit". He also doesn't understand why more motorways have to be built.

Unlike the SPD, the Greens recognized early on "that dependence on Russian fossils can lead to dependence and that we want to reduce it," he said. "The SPD simply did not manage to distance itself from Gerhard Schröder's legacy in time" and thus contributed to the current energy crisis.

The fact that the Greens agreed to LNG terminals and the stretching operation of nuclear power plants was not easy and happened in view of the current needs. It was a "commandment of responsibility", "because we play in the Champions League," said Nouripour. Nevertheless, even as a large party, the Greens had not lost sight of their goals. "We never gave up the compass."