Gelsenkirchen, a roughly 270,000-person former coal-and-glass city in the Ruhr, is one of Germany's federally funded "Smart Cities" model projects under its programme "Die vernetzte Stadt". Its GE grünt initiative pairs an environmental sensor network — tracking groundwater, soil moisture, rainfall, temperature and noise — with a €500,000 green citizen budget letting residents propose and vote on neighbourhood greening measures.

The atlas documents 1 project in Gelsenkirchen: 1 still running without a verdict. The entry carries an evidence grade — the strongest here is official (1 entry) — and links its sources.

All 1 project in Gelsenkirchen

✔ Every published entry is checked against the public sources it cites before publication.

Outcome: 1 ongoing — Evidence: 1 official

Closest comparisons

One city the atlas reads next to Gelsenkirchen — the reason first, then the entries it rests on. Chosen by hand from the Gelsenkirchen threads below, not counted out of them.

1. 🇦🇺 Melbourne

   Two very different cities that handed the same job to residents: a public register of every street tree that people can write to, and a block-by-block climate record kept where the people it affects can read it.

   • GE grünt: Environmental Sensors & Green Citizen Budget ↔ Urban Forest Visual & Email-a-Tree
   • GE grünt: Environmental Sensors & Green Citizen Budget ↔ Melbourne's Microclimate Sensor Network

Show 3 further city threadsShow fewer

Every editorial link from Gelsenkirchen's entries into another city, strongest first. Each one is a statement about two projects, not about two cities — the three above are the ones the atlas is willing to make at city level.

• 🇫🇷 Paris: Budget Participatif — Citywide Participatory Budgeting Same propose-and-vote idea, one theme: Paris has voted on ~5% of its budget since 2014; Gelsenkirchen steers a EUR500k greening budget.
• 🇦🇺 Melbourne: Urban Forest Visual & Email-a-Tree Both put greening in residents' hands: Gelsenkirchen votes a green budget; Melbourne opened its tree data for citizens to adopt in 2013.
• 🇩🇪 Berlin: Smart City Strategy “Gemeinsam Digital” Both federally funded German smart-city programmes with resident budgeting: Berlin backs district pilots, Gelsenkirchen a green budget.

Official strategy and sources

📎 Cite this city

1001 Smart Cities (2026). “Smart-city projects in Gelsenkirchen, Germany.” The Smart City Atlas. https://1001smartcities.org/cities/gelsenkirchen/ (last verified 2026-07-18). Data: CC BY 4.0.

The underlying data is free to reuse with attribution — see the open data page.

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