Target Market & Positioning
2.2 Target Market & Positioning
The city of Freiburg has become known for advanced environmental practices and high living standards. It achieved this by passing important milestones, building its first solar apartment building in 1979, constructing the "Heliotrop" which is the first energy plus house in the world in 1994, founding the green city office in 2008, becoming the federal capital for climate change in 2010, refurbishing the world's first passive high rise building in 2011, setting several emissions reduction goals with the latest update in 2019 of 60% CO2 reduction by 2030 and 100% reduction by 2050 being voted in via citizen referendum, as well as many other milestones, giving it the title of "green city" (Green City Freiburg official webpage, n.d.). The "green city" identity and narrative of Freiburg therefore play a role in shaping its context and community, and it is in this context that the Sustainability Hub could be placed. The Sustainability Hub, which is the vision of Solare Zukunft, could be another milestone in advancing Freiburg's environmental practices and could contribute to it being a "green city". Solare Zukunft has already demonstrated to be in line with the vision and views of the city when it comes to environmental policy and ambition, by being members of the Freiburg world forum, as well as being members of the working group on nature and environmental education of Baden-Württemberg (Solare Zukunft e.V. official webpage, n.d.-b) as well as being recognized by the German UNESCO commission (German UNESCO Commission webpage, n.d.). The Sustainability Hub embodies all of these ideals and therefore would be compatible within the context of Freiburg and its community, and could also be a potential new “green city” milestone for Freiburg.
The city of Freiburg has committed to an important goal by setting the goal to reduce CO2 emissions by 60% by 2030 and by 100% completely by 2050 through the result of the citizens' referendum on the matter in 2019 (Freiburg city’s official webpage, n.d.). This shows that the Freiburg community may be interested in environmental and sustainability initiatives. Therefore, the community may be interested in the Sustainability Hub’s educational events and programs which are focused on sustainability and solar energy. Additionally, the effectiveness of environmentally aimed educational programs can be more effective when done in person, as would be offered in the Sustainability Hub. This is demonstrated when comparing a study in Poland, where a door-to-door environmental educational campaign which focused on promoting participation in official recycling schemes, showed promising results in terms of changing people's environmental lifestyle choices (Grodzińska-Jurczak et al., 2006). On the other hand, online environmental educational campaigns may have limited effectiveness at changing lifestyles, as shown in a study which tried to evaluate an educational campaign on YouTube targeting younger audiences (Kaul et al., 2020). The Sustainability Hub would allow Solare Zukunft e.V. to expand access and continue to provide their various engaging and interactive educational programs in a dedicated and accessible space, programs such as a bicycle cinema, solar cooking, workshops, solar art and more (Solare Zukunft e.V. official webpage, n.d.-a). This variety of the educational programs offered by Solare Zukunft are conducted by a motivated and experienced team, are inclusive and are focused at promotion of a more sustainable lifestyle. This in turn would also help the Sustainability Hub to fit into the context of Freiburg and contribute to it being a "green city". The promotion of a sustainable lifestyle may also promote a more healthy lifestyle, and have an effect on various healthcare factors of the Freiburg population. It is by now widely accepted that the CO2 and other emissions are contributing both to climate change as well as to air pollution. The increased concentration of pollutants in the air and environment can lead to adverse health effects for the affected population (Orru et al., 2017). Additionally, as mentioned previously, effective environmental educational programs and environmental educational campaigns can lead to the adoption of more sustainable lifestyle choices. In this regard, the Sustainability Hub by Solare Zukunft could also contribute to improving the health of Freiburg’s population and would promote its high living standards.