A World Cup Without the City
The city of Passau will not be launching its own public viewing for the ongoing football World Cup. Responding to the FDP group’s question during the city council’s question time, Lord Mayor …
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The city of Passau will not be launching its own public viewing for the ongoing football World Cup. Responding to the FDP group’s question during the city council’s question time, Lord Mayor Rother said, in essence, that the city did not need to get involved — enough people were putting a television outside anyway. The FDP group considers this the wrong answer and speaks of a missed opportunity.
“Of course one or two people will put a television in the garden — but that is exactly not the point,” says group chairman Prof. Dr. Holm Putzke. “A lively city doesn’t ask whether something will somehow happen without it. It asks what it can make of it. Other towns in Lower Bavaria show how it’s done: Deggendorf has issued special rules and is organising its own public viewing in front of the Stadthalle. Passau is waving it off. That isn’t thrift, it’s a lack of ideas.”
The FDP group points to the untapped potential of specific locations. “The town hall courtyard would have been ideal — public viewing and, at the same time, a showcase for the city itself,” says Putzke. “With rotating restaurateurs or food trucks, in cooperation with the Eulenspiegel Festival at the Ortspitze, which is showing the semi-finals and the final on a big screen anyway. Or at the ZOB — an urban hotspot that could have been given a positive charge by an event like this and integrated into an image concept. That would have been creative, active urban development.”
Prof. Georg Steiner stresses the location and marketing effect that has been thrown away: “A centrally programmed square isn’t just about football. It brings footfall to the city centre, a stage for local hospitality and an image of Passau that makes an impression beyond the city. The legal options were there with the World Cup noise protection regulation, valid until 19 July. Anyone who doesn’t use this tool is making an active decision against city life.”
Sebastian Frankenberger adds: “This isn’t about a big, expensive city festival. It’s about enabling things and bringing together the initiative that already exists. If the city coordinates the applications already submitted, the result is more than the sum of its parts — for restaurateurs, for clubs, for everyone who wants to experience Passau as a lively city.”
The FDP group will take the issue as an occasion beyond the World Cup and table a motion in the city council. The aim is for the city to take up such opportunities proactively and creatively in future — whether at major sporting events, festivals or in reviving problem spots such as the ZOB — and to actively shape opportunities for city marketing and revitalising the city centre instead of leaving them to chance.
The post WM ohne Stadt first appeared on FDP Fraktion | TEAM Putzke.