Entwicklungsagentur Region Heide

Before the turn of the millennium, the steady growth of the population determined the development policy of the municipalities in Region Heide. Today, in a phase of stagnation and a gradual decline in the number of inhabitants combined with an ageing population, new development strategies must be found. The focus can no longer be on growth only, but also on further factors like the quality of living conditions.

In the knowledge that Region Heide as a whole must become more attractive through the cooperation of the individual municipalities, they decided to strengthen their inter-municipal cooperation. The twelve municipalities - the city of Heide and the eleven municipalities of the department Heider Umland - commissioned the development of an urban-environment concept (SUK) at the end of 2010.

For two years, citizens, politicians and administrators from Heide and the eleven surrounding municipalities worked together with external planning and consulting offices to develop the urban-environment concept. The concept is exemplary for Schleswig-Holstein and forms the basis for the establishment of the Entwicklungsagentur.

The agency's task is to put the urban-environment concept into practice, to supervise and implement projects and to set up its own effective structure.

The administrative board and the CEO act as steering committees. The development agency itself and its team are to promote the core topic of "energy" in the region, act as a networking and settlement agency and also work as an office for the other topics and objectives of the urban-environment concept.

A major milestone in the history of Region Heide is the current large-scale settlement in the municipalities of Lohe-Rickelshof and Norderwöhrden, in which the Entwicklungsagentur played a key role from the site application to the final decision.

"This is a historic step for us that was unforeseeable in this dimension" Dirk Burmeister (CEO)