Streets should be renamed after women
More women on Cologne street signs: Cologne politicians want more gender equality – and in the process immediately tackle another, controversial topic.
The street names in Cologne should become more feminine. The council alliance and the opposition are apparently in agreement on this point: the CDU, Greens, Volt, SPD and Left are submitting an application that has exactly that goal. And which should solve two problems in one.
It’s about gender equality. According to the application, street names in Cologne that are named after people are mostly named after men. “However, women do not only make up 51 percent of the population, they are decisive in politics, business and society.” This decisive role should be recognized and the recognizing visibility created in the cityscape.
On the other hand, the applicants are concerned with the colonial heritage of the city of Cologne. The parliamentary groups are of the opinion that this should be dealt with more intensively. Streets have been known “for years whose names continue to heroize or downplay colonial injustice and/or honor people who were colonial criminals and welcomed colonization,” it said.
Cologne: Colonial street names should give way – in favor of women
So the idea behind the application: removing colonial street names from the cityscape and promoting female names at the same time. The applicants propose that this should be done on a case-by-case basis in cooperation with the Cologne name archive.
The management committee is scheduled to decide on the application on April 4th. In view of the large majority of the groups that submitted the motion, approval is not unlikely. So, if approved, the next step would be for the city government to revise the 1999 street naming policy.
The new draft should then be available “in the first half of 2022”, according to the applicants’ proposal. Then the course should be set for the renaming of streets by women. “In our responsible urban society, we do not accept any disparagement or any form of discrimination,” write the Greens, CDU, SPD, the Left and Volt in their application.