Running alongside current issues, there are also slow burners that are regularly discussed at our university - such as the layout of our campus. New cafés, renovated buildings and modern research laboratories - the campus is ever changing. Things are being modernized and new buildings are going up all over the place. But is that enough? Or could our campus be even more attractive, if, for example, we were to stop cars from driving and parking here? Or if we were to set up more spaced for people to meet? What is possible, and how these changes could be implemented without putting rules in place is the subject of today's discussion between Ina Götze and Professor Oliver Speck, who as one of a group of dedicated interested parties is concerned with that very subject.

Our guest today

In the fifth edition of our podcast, our visitor is Oliver Speck. He is Professor of Physics in the Faculty of Natural Sciences and is conducting research into biomedical magnetic resonance. In addition to this role, he is also a member of the “Campus Design” working group and in this capacity is committed to working towards a car-free campus.

*the audio file is only available in German

The Podcast to Read

Intro voiceover: In die Uni reingehört. Der Podcast zur Arbeitswelt an der OVGU.

Ina Götze: And so a very warm welcome to what is now the 5th edition of “Listening to the University”. My name is Ina Götze and I work in the Press Office as a web editor. A lot has happened on our campus in recent decades. Some of you will certainly have noticed: new buildings have gone up, old ones have been renovated, new cafés have opened and currently, for example, Building 12 is being licked into shape and our campus is expanding to take in the Science Port. And so it is natural to ask, where will the journey take us? And one of the people who are concerned with this is Professor Oliver Speck. He is Professor of Physics and a member of the newly-established “Campus Design” working group. The group is developing a strategy for our campus for 2030. Today he is here as our guest and will take a little bit of a look towards the future with us, namely to the year 2030. Welcome!

Oliver Speck: Ms Götze, thank you very much for giving me the opportunity to introduce myself to the university here and talk a bit about one of the topics that is most important to me. As you said, my name is Oliver Speck, I am a physicist by background, studied and obtained my doctorate at the University of Freiburg, then returned to Germany after several years in the United States and since 2006 have occupied the chair of “Biomedical Magnetic Resonance” here in the Faculty of Natural Sciences. Essentially I am interested in the subject of Magnetic Resonance. We look inside the body without having to cut it open, particularly in the brain, so neuroscientific applications are especially important to us. In addition, for three years I have been the Dean of the Faculty of Natural Sciences and in this way have also gained a little more insight into the administrative and managerial structures of the university and perhaps also will be able to use a little of the knowledge and opportunities that I have to help shape the future.

Götze: Why, then, does our campus need a strategy for the year 2030? As I have already said, there is a lot going on, our campus has changed a great deal. It has already cast its shabby feathers. Why does it need to be even better?

Speck: In my view, we have a terrific campus. We are a campus university, which is not always the case. It gives OVGU an identity, and helps the employees, students and members of the university to identify with it. However, in my opinion, the potential that this campus offers is far from being fully utilized. We often discuss what the future of the campus might be. The state makes funding available, and as an institution we have to draw up plans about how we will invest this funding. That is a relatively long-term project. At present, a plan of this nature is being drawn up for the next 10 years. The initial idea here of keeping the buildings that have already been renovated in tip-top condition does, in my opinion, perhaps fall a little short and we should instead look to see how in future we could make our campus a bit more visionary, let’s say, more viable in the future. This also involves the necessity of ensuring that the campus has a new energy supply, and so the energy policy is also currently under discussion, and since in this connection larger-scale building work would be needed anyway, we can, perhaps, think about how we can make use of this creative leeway to bring ourselves into the future in a cost-effective way.

Götze: So killing two birds with one stone? A working group has been set up now. How did this come about, and who else is involved in the group?

Speck: Perhaps “working group” is a little bit exaggerated. In fact there is no formal institution at the university that deals with this topic. Rather, an interest group has been formed by people who, based on the opportunities that the plans offer us in the coming years, have thought about how the future might look. It is a group of around 10, essentially made up of professors. We have set ourselves the objective of starting an exchange of ideas throughout the university and initiating the process of helping our university to progress.

Götze: One area of focus is mobility, in other words, making our campus car-free, or at least reducing the number of cars. Can that possibly work, and if so, how?

Speck: Yes, mobility is an important topic, and not just at this university. It is a topic of sociopolitical importance. In my view there is a social consensus, and also a far-reaching political consensus, that not only do we need an energy transformation, but also a transport transformation and in this connection we should ask ourselves as a university what mobility should look like in future on our site. At the present time our mobility is dominated by the car. We can also see that the campus itself is essentially a very large car park and from our point of view it is absolutely necessary, not only to talk about it, to want to bring about a transport transformation, but also to actively shape this. Efforts should not come to a halt on the threshold of the university campus. For this reason we are convinced that with the right stimuli and the right accompanying measures, we will be able to convince employees, students and also visitors to the university that perhaps they might use their cars a little less often.

Götze: We notice this big car park especially whenever we want to take photos for advertising purposes or whatever, and there are always cars in the background or even the foreground. It is actually very, very difficult to photograph the campus without cars. In our pre-recording chat you also said that on Google Maps, for example, the campus looks extremely green from above. But that is the trees, right?

Speck: Exactly. Our campus is a lovely, self-contained area, but the overwhelming majority of the empty spaces are used as parking areas. There are often trees there that shade the parking areas and make it appear green from above. But we do allow cars a great deal of room on campus. In my view it should be a university for people and employees and students, not for cars.

Götze: But it is also true that, of course, a car-free campus and being green sounds absolutely great. But some employees are reliant on coming here by car because they live out of town or because, perhaps, they have to bring their kids to kindergarten. Where should they park if we no longer have car parks?

Speck: That is absolutely right. There are, of course, plenty of employees and students who cannot immediately make the switch to other forms of transport. It is true that the public transport system in the state is not the most exemplary by national comparison and for this reason, nobody in the working group, that’s what I’m going to call it now, is so radical as to say that we should forbid cars from coming to campus or completely ban them. Of course everyone that needs to, be it because they have to bring their children to kindergarten, because they need to transport heavy things, or perhaps because they themselves have mobility problems, should continue to be able to use the car if it is necessary. We are just of the opinion that it is not absolutely necessary to promote the car above other forms of transport as, we believe, is currently the case. As an example, a member of staff who travels to work by public transport must pay for it themselves, whilst somebody who comes by car does of course pay for their car expenses but is given the parking space for free by the university. In our view that does, perhaps, provide send the wrong message and we should make it more attractive to travel to the university using alternative forms of transport, be it public transport or the bicycle, and perhaps make it a little less attractive to use the car. That does not mean that there shouldn’t be parking spaces anymore, but it would be nice if perhaps we could make a core area of the campus car-free. It might be possible to create parking spaces in a parking garage on the edge of the campus so that there would be certainly no shortage and, of course, no rules should be enforced. People should continue to decide for themselves how they make their way to work.

Götze: Speaking of deciding for oneself, hand on heart: did you come to work by bicycle today? ...After all, it is raining outside.

Speck: Yes, it rained quite heavily this morning. But I am a passionate cyclist and when I am in the city I go almost everywhere by bike. And this morning too - properly dressed in waterproof trousers and jacket - I came to campus by bike. I would say that 99 times out of 100 I use my bike to go everywhere. I have several workplaces: I have offices on the medical campus, I have offices here on the main campus, and I also have offices at the Science Port. And often I have to travel between these sites several times a day and since it can take 20 minutes from the medical campus to the main campus, I enjoy it as an active break during which I am not, especially if I take the Elbe cycle path, stuck in traffic and I can let my mind wander and think about other things. So I see it as a benefit, as time that I am gaining and not as time that I would lose driving a car.

Götze: Very commendable! If we look at the bicycle stands, they are always full. It is true that many students and employees already come to university by bike. If even more say to themselves now, “I think that’s a good idea, I’ll do it too!”, where will they all go?

Speck: In my opinion that problem can be solved very easily. We have a very large number of parking spaces on campus. One parking space takes up between 13 and 15 square meters. If only one person no longer traveled by car, then we could certainly accommodate 10 or more bicycles on the vacated parking space. In my opinion it would be very nice too if we could make the cycle racks, let us say, a bit more attractive and perhaps also more secure. I myself have had a bicycle stolen from campus and that is not a very nice thing to discover when you come out of a lecture. However there are models that have been very successfully implemented at other universities, for example, let me say, bicycle cages that are actually secure cycle parking places, that are only accessible to a small group of people. If, in future, we were to aim to make a charge for parking spaces, if we possibly had to pay a small contribution for them, then I think it would be absolutely appropriate if someone who wanted to park their bicycle securely and protected from the weather might also be expected to pay a small contribution - I know of other universities that charge five euros per month for a secure bicycle parking spot and cannot build them fast enough because the demand is so high. I could certainly imagine something like that. Overall we would save space in comparison with cars.

Götze: I think that paying five euros to ensure that you can be certain of not having to walk home is absolutely acceptable. In principle, we are perfectly suited to developing new mobility concepts here, since one of our focal areas for research is the mobility campus. This also includes our autonomous cargo bicycle. Would that be a safe and worthwhile addition for us?

Speck: I think that the concept is extremely interesting and also inspiring. Of course it isn’t a solution for every challenge that we face in the area of mobility, but, for example, for the ongoing expansion of our campus, especially towards the Science Port, I believe that it is a really meaningful alternative. After all, there are plans, in addition to the renovations and new buildings in the Science Port, to create a new transport connection in the form of a bridge to the Science Port. In a car-free space I can well imagine that the connection to the Science Port could be improved by autonomous cargo bicycles like this. But it shouldn’t stop there. Overall I am of the opinion that electromobility, about which we talk very often in urban spaces, need not necessarily be a two-ton SUV, as is increasingly touted at present, but instead electromobility could, for example, be provided by electric bicycles - much more sustainable, lighter, and which would reduce traffic and save space. In this respect, the cargo bike fits in extremely well.

Götze: In any case, parking an SUV in the city is not all that easy. Incidentally, for all those who are not yet familiar with our autonomous cargo bike: we also have a science podcast called “Learn When You Want To” in which Junior Professor Schmidt took part and introduced the bike, explaining what it is, what it can do, even what it should be - you’re welcome to give it a listen. The podcast is also on our website and on the usual streaming services such as Spotify, Apple and Ancour FM Give it a listen!

You have already said that there shouldn’t be any rules, any bans - are there any ideas in the strategy concerning how employees will be nudged to make the switch?

Speck: Yes, in my personal opinion, we should consider two options. One thing is that we should create incentives to use public transport, bicycles and perhaps other future concepts too. This might include a discounted “jobticket”, a discount card for use when traveling to work. We have taken some initial steps towards this at the university, but we could, perhaps, adopt a plan from a university that we looked at very closely, TU Darmstadt, which has introduced parking charges at a very low rate of 20 euros per month. At the same time everyone who pays for a parking space is also entitled to a “jobticket” travel pass, and conversely everyone who has a “jobticket” can, for the same price of only 20 euros per month – everyone who has one of these is also entitled to park if he or she sometimes needs to use their car. It has been extremely successful there and I could imagine incentives of this kind here too. Of course it demands a lot of coordination and meetings with the local authorities, with the providers of public transport and also the Chancellor of the university, since it does have to be financed somehow. Others have actually managed to do it so that it is cost neutral. I could also imagine making cycling more attractive in the sense of providing support for cyclists. In addition to the cycle racks that we have already discussed, in many places and in other cities too, there already are bicycle workshops where it is possible to repair defects and the usual flat tires. The third possibility for creating incentives would be a bike sharing scheme which has also already been used successfully in other places. Here, our university management has been actively looking at this for several months now, and discussions are already underway with possible providers. The basic idea is to enable anyone to use the bicycles free of charge for a very low semesterly contribution.

Götze: Yes, ok.

Speck: At least to a certain extent, for example the first hour of every rental would be free of charge. There would also be no need to pay a basic fee. In particular, in a situation where we were to have not only one campus, but several sites throughout the city, that would be a possibility for making transport between the different campuses more friendly and sustainable.

The second part of the incentive system, as I would like to call it, would perhaps be making the car a little bit less convenient. In my view it is not necessary for there to be a parking space a very short distance from every office, but instead parking spaces could perhaps be provided on the edge of campus to motivate people in this respect. In collaboration with the city authorities, there are also a whole host of possibilities for improving matters. Shockingly - and I was not aware of this until just recently, because I live in the city - in Magdeburg there is not one single park and ride scheme in existence. I find this shocking because naturally, if there was one, employees who come from the surrounding areas and whom it is difficult to motivate, could perhaps complete just one part of their journey by car and then manage the particularly challenging part, which often involves traffic jams, into the city, by tram, for example. So, there are all kinds of possibilities, I believe, of making the journey to work overall perhaps a little more pleasant, especially if people want to dispense with their cars.

Götze: Another important point in the campus plan is the layout. Do you have an ideal image of how our campus should look?

Speck: Yes, we do, since, as a special interest group, we called ourselves “Campus Design”, naturally we have not only thought about mobility. In future, the campus should, in our view, be even more actively integrated in the life of the city. We would like to see the city - and ultimately every citizen of Magdeburg - identifying significantly more strongly with the university and university campus, and conversely, we would like the students to identify more closely with their campus and the city. I would say that at present it is not yet as good as it could be. I very often see that there is a lot of life on our campus, however mainly in connection with lectures and during semester-time. Although we have a large number of students who live in the immediate vicinity of the campus, and all of the student halls of residence are nearby, it is often very quiet on the campus after lectures have finished. In other countries, in particular, in my view we see very positive examples of how a university campus can actually be part of the urban social student life, through the integration of everyday things. Be it only a cash machine - we already have some cafeterias - but the majority of people, if they don’t want to eat in the refectory, still go towards Breiter Weg or Universitätsplatz. I could certainly imagine a whole host of other offerings on campus, to actually make it an attractive part of the city even after hours and so help the city and university grow together.

Götze: Our cafeterias close relatively early. From a certain time they are no longer even open so that people could stay there after their lectures. One thing that occurs to me is that in front of Building 18, in summer there is always the tent, where there are the benches under cover, some of which can be moved to suit groups. In summer, for example, it is extremely popular, and there are even barbecues where students can meet. Do you mean something like that, where people can meet out of hours too?

Speck: Exactly. One thing is, so to speak, to create meeting places within the working environment. You have already mentioned the area between buildings 18 and 16. That is one of the few green spaces that we make available to the employees and students as a meeting place. In my opinion that could be massively expanded. We are a venue for creative work, for design. That has to be how a university sees itself. To support this as well as possible, in my view, we need to create the external conditions that enable people, not only to sit in the laboratory, the office or in front of a computer screen during the day, but also to share ideas with other members of staff, with students and other departments, with people from different areas of expertise and at the same time perhaps find space for peace and quiet, so that they are able to reflect more intensely on their work and research. There are a few such areas for which we generally have individual initiatives to thank. For example, the Faculty of Mathematics has created a kind of think tank to which people can retreat in order to think. In the Faculty of Computer Science there are also spaces. There are individual departments that have set up creative seating areas. When I pass places like this, I often see that people are interacting with one another very actively and very animatedly. Offering something like this, perhaps on a more institutional level and in more locations, would, in my opinion, make the university a more friendly place and perhaps also give the employees greater motivation.

Götze: Perhaps at this point it would be interesting to talk about the spaces that already exist, because not everyone actually knows about them. People perhaps don’t necessarily head into the Computer Science Faculty as a general rule and check out every room, so perhaps they don’t even know what’s there. If, of course, they are available to be used by everyone, then we could all perhaps benefit from being told about them! But do these meeting places distract us from our work too?

Speck: You could see it that way if you had a job and viewed your work as, “I work on the tasks that are given to me until they are finished at the end of the day.” However, I think that in our modern world of work, we have other expectations and also every employee should have different expectations of themselves and their workplace and for this reason must be given opportunities to develop their workplace and themselves, meaning that something like this should be encouraged. It doesn’t have to be every day, but as I said, having the opportunity to interact with other colleagues, fellow students, with people who one otherwise would not meet every day in the workplace, from my point of view that is a great asset. The second aspect is, as we said, we are a venue for creativity. That is how we want to be, and the university seeks to put this into practice. To be creative, one also has to create the space to be able to engage.

Götze: I’d be glad to! So, I always find it really exciting too, what is going on in other departments, in my role in particular, we aim to find out about new things. If, of course, there was a possibility to just find out over a coffee what is actually going on campus, then I think that would be an asset for everyone. These changes that you are advocating, is that your personal gut feeling, or do you already know what the employees need?

Speck: As I already said at the beginning: ultimately we are a group of interested lay people, committed colleagues who as far as that is concerned do not have a scientific background relating to the matters that we have been talking about. However, it isn’t true that we have simply grabbed everything from out the air. We have looked around at other universities. I’ve already mentioned TU Darmstadt. About a month and a half ago we had a meeting of the so-called academic circle of professors, where over 50 colleagues were specifically and actively involved in the subject of the “Future design of the campus” and where we had representatives from the University of Darmstadt on site, who have been dealing with campus design and mobility policy for around 10 years now. Very extensive surveys were carried out there before and after changes were made, so I do not think that we are working completely in a vacuum here. Certainly the conditions differ between different cities and universities, but the underlying aims, problems and solutions, I can imagine, are definitely transferable. Some of the suggestions that we are beginning to work on now are also based on the very, very successful implementations, especially at that university, that have even been so successful such as the aforementioned mobility ticket, as they call it, i.e. a combination of travel pass and parking space, that the state of Hesse now gives to every public service employee in the state, known as the “state ticket”, which allows every employee at any time to use all forms of public transport throughout the state free of charge and even with their whole family at the weekend.

Götze: No!

Speck: That is a vision, a wish, that we would entertain for Saxony-Anhalt too, of course. It is a long way off, naturally, but we must of course begin the process and perhaps here too set a positive example in order to motivate our politicians to at least consider it.

Götze: TU Darmstadt is a great example; you have mentioned it often. The “jobticket” especially, you said in our pre-recording chat, resulted in 30 per cent fewer people traveling to campus by car. They have obviously been working on this for quite a while. What do you think? How long will we need?

Speck: The aforementioned TU Darmstadt has been actively involved in this process for around 10 to 15 years, including structurally with a department for mobility management, and did, as you say, succeed within one year of introducing these measures in reducing the number of employees traveling to work by car by around 30 per cent and increasing the number of people using public transport by as much as 50 per cent. In my opinion that is a huge success and is also an example for others - in my view, a very positive example. We are unlikely to be able to achieve such great changes within a short space of time. However, I think that for this reason we should begin this process sooner rather than later and certainly begin with individual measures. It could be the bike sharing that we have already touched upon, which is already on the way. It could be introducing parking charges. Something that for sure not everyone is pleased to hear, but in my view it cannot be the case that we favor individual modes of transport over others, rather we should ensure fairness. That includes, if a lot of space is required on campus, compensating for that as far as possible. The final point should act as an incentive to use public transport more, especially for those who live in the catchment area. To do so, we should be striving to achieve medium-term goals, since as a university we cannot, of course, do it all alone.

Götze: What are the next steps to enable the objective to come closer to being achieved?

Speck: It is all still only early days, I would say. A few committed colleagues and staff members are now involved. The next step is to bring together all stakeholders on all levels. That includes representatives from the different departments, the faculties, the different status groups, beginning with the students and all employees up to management level. We would also like to involve university bodies such as the Academic Development and Financial Planning committee. We would like to involve the student union. In a few moments I have an appointment in the Sustainability Office two floors up from here. The city of Magdeburg was also actively involved and committed to our first meeting. The faculty student bodies can certainly also take part, and so on. The most important thing is first of all to start a dialog in order to involve all participants, to discover and take into account the wishes of all concerned, so that we can develop a plan together that we can hopefully implement in greater breadth and perhaps also kindle a certain excitement for, since we want all of us to identify with our university and be proud of what we have already achieved and still can achieve.

Götze: Excitement is a nice buzzword. If any employees out there, having heard this podcast, say to themselves that they would like to get involved, how can they do that?

Speck: Unfortunately, we don’t yet have a central point of contact. This working group that we have mentioned often has not yet been formalized, meaning that I cannot give you a telephone number, website address or, I don't know, Facebook page. At the moment we are reliant on the representatives of the institutions that I just mentioned, be it employee representatives, faculty student bodies, the student union and so on, that perhaps at present they will act as mediators. I would advise everyone to contact the relevant representative for them, in order to bring it to the right committees where in future we will certainly be able to discuss the topic more often.

Götze: We are almost done. To end with, we have our popular section, “Long story short”. I will give you the beginning of three sentences, and you will complete them concisely in one or two phrases. Are you ready?

Speck: Yes, I’m a bit nervous, but yes!

Götze: [laughs] My favorite place on campus is...

Speck: ...the laboratories. For me, so far, they have been places to meet people, innovate and also where sometimes perhaps peace and quiet can be found. I really enjoy interacting closely with colleagues and students.

Götze: For me, what is lacking on campus is...

Speck: ...the life outside of studying that we have already mentioned. In my opinion it would be great if we could change this.

Götze: In the next 10 years the campus will...

Speck: ...hopefully be largely freed of the burden of a lot of the cars that crowd into it now.

Götze: I think that they are all good prospects. Thank you very much indeed for coming. Thank you for being so dedicated to this issue too. We have to say that a lot has already been achieved. Our campus has become a lot snazzier. But it could, of course, be even better. And when we all get involved, we can make it happen.

Thank you for listening. You should know by now what you need to do if you would like to participate.

If you have an idea for a subject, feedback, praise, criticism about this podcast or in general, please feel free to contact The next edition will be in May, as in April we will have another science podcast on the subject of “How Sunflowers are Turned into Detergent”. So please feel free to tune in. Until then: goodbye!

Speck: Thank you very much from me too!

Intro voiceover: In die Uni reingehört. Der Podcast zur Arbeitswelt an der OVGU.