From November 4th until December 2nd, the citizens of Hamburg had the opportunity to discuss and develop ideas how to let Hamburg grow - a major political vision for the future of the Hanseatic city. The DEMOS online System was used for this first large-scale experiment in online democracy in Europe. People who might normally never meet pooled their energy and talent in this online debate and shared their ideas and visions about the future of Hamburg.

More than 500 citizens subscribed to DEMOS and posted nearly 4.000 Messages. The professional moderators and the DEMOS team of the Technical University of Hamburg-Harburg summarised the contributions and identified 57 unique ideas. In the end, a jury has selected five outstanding ideas to be recommended for realisation.

Ole von Beust, First Mayor of the City of Hamburg, was impressed by the results: "I have never seen such a creative discussion that generated so many interesting ideas." The complexity and constructivism of the ideas generated in the online debate surpassed the expectations of the political representatives. In fact the participants made extensive use of the features of the DEMOS platform to move forward the debate and to collaboratively reach innovative results.

You can have a look at the debate at www.wachsende-stadt.hamburg.de

Please also read the documentation of the German press coverage of the use of Demos in Hamburg.

Please also check the latest news about the presentation of DEMOS, the 1rst prototype testing, the second development phase, our new partner UID and our scientific publications.