Country Profile - Germany

Introduction

Planning has a long tradition in Germany due to strong government machinery, the tradition of a decentralised state (federalism), an important public sector and self-governing local authorities. The division of planning into different hierarchical levels is rooted in this tradition. Though the national level has very little influence on comprehensive planning and the main actors are the federal entities, the Länder which usually represent the so-called NUTS-2-regions of the EU. Regional planning is understood in Germany as a level between Länder and local planning; however, there exist different administrative means to subdivide the Länder for different purposes.

The municipal level has a strong responsibility, the current reform of municipal administration is enlarging the territories of municipalities (e.g. fusion of towns and their catchment areas), thus the understanding of a municipality in Germany may differ slightly from Land to Land, depending on the constitutive "municipal ordinance" [Gemeindeordnung], but the principles of municipal planning are unitary throughout Germany. The main regulations for planning are the national building law [BauGB], environmental laws, the laws on spatial ordinance, laws of the Länder [Landesplanungsgesetze] and also the building ordinances of the Länder [Landesbauordnung]. The formal means of planning are enhanced by a number of informal planning procedures including Regional Development Concepts (REK) and Integrated Urban Development Concepts (ISEK), dedicated to confronting the challenges of spatial transition.

All in all the legal concept of German planning is based on a principle of "counter-current flows" (Gegenstromprinzip), which describes the hierarchic interlinking of the different levels: a subordinate planning level must not contradict plans of the level above but at the same time the higher level must respect the concerns of the lower one.

1  National planning and building

The most relevant instrument of national planning is the National Building Law [BauGB]. It is divided into the General Urban Building Law, the Special Urban Building Law and further regulations. The General Urban Building law mainly deals with land-use, thus the Preparatory Land-Use Plan (FNP), the Binding Land-Use Plan (B-Plan), regulations about opening of new development areas [Erschließung] and the interlinkages between building and nature protection, e.g. the rules of compensation and the necessity to undertake Strategic Environmental Impact Assessment [Strategische Umweltprüfung] for every land-use plan. The Special Urban Building Law contains regulations for the following topics: urban renewal [Städtebauliche Sanierung], urban development [Städtebauliche Entwicklungsmaßnahme], urban transition [Stadtumbau], social measures of planning [Soziale Stadt] and conservation planning [Erhaltungssatzung] below the level of cultural heritage. The law defines criteria for expression of urban grievance, controls the process of certain measures to address grievances and regulates popular participation. The relevant planning regulations are enhanced by a national environmental law (BNatschG), which defines the main goals and principles of nature protection landscape development, which have to be respected in every spatial and building measure. There is no national environmental law comparable to the one for building, which means that European and Länder regulations lead to a dissipation of responsibilities. Further important sectors of planning (e.g. transport, communication) belong to the responsibility of the respective ministries.

Link to the Building and Planning Law (BauGB): bundesrecht.juris.de/bbaug/index.html
Link to the Environmental Law (BNatschG): http://bundesrecht.juris.de/bnatschg_2002/index.html

2  National Spatial Development

Spatial planning at the national level only formulates general objectives. It preserves the National Frame of Spatial Ordinance Policies [Raumordnungspolitischer Handlungsrahmen] and controls the common means of otherwise Länder-regulated spatial ordinance in the respective national law [Raumordnungsgesetz]. The national level supervises the achievement of the equality of living conditions in all parts of the country, which is a constitutionally anchored goal. This means to develop the overall structure of the Federal Republic in such a way as to further personal freedom, to ensure the protection, care and development of the natural environment and to keep open possible long-term land use options. The responsible national ministry is assisted by a Standing Conference of the Planning Ministers of the Länder [MKRO] and by a Federal Office for Building and Regional Planning [BBR] whose main task is to give a regular Report on the Spatial Development of Germany [Raumordnungsbericht], to formulate the main principles of spatial development and to give further advice.

Link to the National Agency: www.bbr.bund.de/english/index.htm
Link to the Law on Spatial Ordinance (ROG): http://www.bbr.bund.de/infosite/download/ro_gesetz.pdf

3  Regional Planning and Spatial Ordinance

The Länder have the responsibility for regional planning and its formal expression, the Spatial Ordinance Plan (SOP) (or Programme, as it is called in several Länder). Spatial Ordinance refers to an intersectoral and supra-local tier of planning aimed to achieve spatial order. Formal regional planning in Germany is thus of a comprehensive kind. A typical SOP incorporates also the planning targets of different sectors.

The SOPs cover the entire territory of a Land and set out the principles to underlie the future spatial structure and development derived from Goals and Principles of Spatial Ordinance. Goals of Spatial Ordinance are binding on municipal plans and Principles of Spatial Ordinance have to be considered by the municipality. On a regional level subdividing a land, the sometimes rough visualisations are set out in detail by regional planning agencies, which are either an association of the municipalities of the region or a subdivision of the responsible Land authority.

To enhance the efficiency of regional planning the formal ordinance instruments are accompanied by informal development instruments, among them regional policy and Regional Development Concepts (RDC) are the most famous. While the first is less a matter of planning authorities than of the authorities responsible for socioeconomic matters and often leads to joint responsibilities of the Länder, the national level and the European Union bringing up special development projects, the latter is targeted to bring the various regional protagonists together to mobilise the region's endogenous potentials. The informal character of the RDC entails also means of the implementation of planning.

Further web information has to be taken from the 16 Länder web-präsentations, thus a single link cannot be given here.

4  Municipal Planning 1: Preparatory Land-Use Plan (FNP)

The Preparatory Land-Use Plan (PLUP) is the general municipal instrument to create the prerequisite planning procedures for the local development. The adoption of a PLUP is obligatory for all municipalities. The PLUP, which is approved and adopted by the municipal council representatives (according to the respective municipality constitution) and has no direct external impact, but it binds the municipality especially when it determines Binding Land-Use plans, that have to follow the PLUP's scheme. The PLUP is supplemented by a Landscape Programme dealing with environmental and recreational issues. As an outline development plan, the PLUP provides the framework for subsequent, more detailed plans of a formal or informal nature and guides all planning decisions to be made by the local authority or other public bodies. The contents of a PLUP consist of the proposed distribution of different land uses including housing, industry or other urban land uses and which areas are to be reserved as open spaces. The visualisation and form of the plan is regulated by a land-use ordinance by the respective national ministry [BauNVO]. The main transportation network and the locations of public services and facilities are also inserted into the PLUP. Depending on the geographic scale of the municipality a PLUP can reach different grades of specificity. In drawing up the plan, the local authority takes the foreseeable demands of the community as well as political objectives of city development into account. It aims to achieve a strategic balance between different public and private interests relating to the limited area of land within the city boundaries.

Link to the land-use-ordinance (BauNVO): http://bundesrecht.juris.de/baunvo/index.html

5  Municipal Planning 2: Binding Land-Use Plan (B-Plan)

Binding Land-Use Plans (BLUP) are the core of the municipal planning autonomy. They contain regulations on land uses and building densities for relatively small areas of the city (e.g. one city block or a new housing scheme). They are developed in conformance to the PLUP. BLUPs separate building land from land for public uses such as traffic or open space. Form and visualisation follow the national (BauNVO) and respective Länder ordinances (Bauordnung). They usually contain site-specific regulations concerning land use and building density and determine which parts of a site may be built upon. All building proposals within the planning area are required by law to comply with the rules laid down in the plan. Other regulations e.g. on building design and landscaping or on environmental protection measures can be included as well. On the other hand, the plans can be limited to a few simple regulations. They constitute a legally binding background for development proposals of individual land owners or investors.

For areas, that are not regulated by a BLUP, special regulations of the Building Law (§§ 34 and 35) are essential to decisions concerning the building permit.

Link to the sample building ordinance (Muster-BO): http://www.is-argebau.de/lbo/VTMB100.pdf

6  A crossing of formal and informal planning: the IUDC

The recent spatial development of the east of Germany has been the subject of a special programme of the federal government which enhanced systematically the German planning instruments in this part of the country. It will be presented as an example to depict the flexibility of the planning system and to show, how formal and informal planning instruments can work hand in hand. The "Stadtumbau" program was established to counteract the problem of too much empty housing and money from the programme is also spent on measures to renew demographically challenged areas including tearing down apartment houses no longer occupied because of the population decrease. There are 1,1 million empty apartments in East Germany. The funding is only possible if a municipality uses the instrument of an Integrated Urban Development Concepts (IUDC), which are a crossing between formal development respectively zoning plans and informal bottom-up development concepts. As a prerequisite for a donation of subsidies the municipalities must present their demographic and economic forecast up to 2015 or 2020 and name areas of preservation, urgent transformation and long-term transformation. This classification of the urban structures is a new understanding of preparatory zoning, because it is not based anymore on the prognosis of continuous growth (as are the PLUPs). The category of areas in transition (or "restructured areas") leads to problematic neighbourhoods with high shares of emptiness. Stadtumbau measures will reduce the number of empty houses and thus transform urban neighbourhoods.

Link to the "Stadtumbau" phenomenon: www.stadtumbau-ost.de
Link to the legal foundation of an IUDC (Verwaltungsvereinbarung Stadtumbau-Ost): www.stadtumbau-ost.info/programm/VV-Staedtebaufoerderung-20051.pdf

Sources:
www.stadtentwicklung.berlin.de/index_en.shtml
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hauptseite

Case Studies

1  Regional Development Concepts (Regionales Entwicklungskonzept - REK)

In Germany currently a mechanism has been introduced such that a kind of sketch plan can be made for ad hoc regions - intended especially for rural areas where traditional development instruments, especially the ones of a formal kind, are not working effectively. These are known as Regional Development Concepts. They roots in regional conferences held during the competition Regions of the Future, organised by the national agency of building and spatial planning (BBR). Among the successful participants of this competition were the Mecklenburg Lake District (Mecklenburgische Seenplatte), the Regional Development Concepts for which should stand as an example for the enhancement of formal spatial ordinance by informal regional planning methods.

The Mecklenburg Lake District, 150-200 km north of Berlin and 200-250 km west of Hamburg is a peripheral rural area in East Germany with a high natural value (44% of the area is protected, including Lake Müritz National Park) but at the same time suffering economic stagnation (a 2004 unemployment rate of almost 25% being the second-highest in Germany). The rurality is characterised by a low density (58 people/km2, in some parts only 23 people/km2) and small settlement units (only four towns with populations above 10,000, 51% of the settlements with less than 50 inhabitants, among them many fragmented small settlements.

The Regional Development Concepts is built of two parts - a SWOT analysis of the region and a joint implementation strategy. The SWOT analysis, carried out together by the important actors of the region, becomes the basis for numbers of projects that should be implemented one by one under a common umbrella: the development of the endogenous potentials of the region. The projects are established consensually by the region's actors. This cooperation encourages governance structures and ensures a more likely implementation of the plan because if the involvement of the necessary actors.

The potentials and action plans are grouped in the Mecklenburg Lake Districts as follows:

The Regional Conference (the forum of the regional actors to assemble) and its double function as a strategic pattern and activator of implementation

2  East German transition and the Integrated Development Concepts
    (examples: Leipzig and Schwedt)

The East German transition process is managed with the help of an Integrated Urban Development Concept [Integriertes Stadtentwicklungskonzept – ISEK], which was created on behalf of the national stadtumbau programme as a new type of planning, the combination of formal and informal patterns. stadtumbau literally means the transition [Umbau] of towns [Stadt], but combined it became a synonym for the characteristic demographic change in East Germany. The programme donates between 2001 and 2009 2.7 billion € to 259 towns and 10 SMT-adequate areas in East Berlin in form of a competition. The first half of the money should be spent for measures to renew demographically challenged areas, and the other half of the budget is used to tear down apartment houses not necessary anymore because of the population decrease. There are 1,1 million empty apartments in East Germany.

The stadtumbau program forces the municipalities to work out Integrated Urban Development Concepts, which are a crossing between forma development respectively zoning plans and informal bottom-up development concepts. As a prerequisite for a donation of subsidies the municipalities must present their demographic and economic forecast up to 2015 or 2020 and name areas of preservation, urgent transformation necessity and long-term transformation necessity. This spatial division was first executed in Leipzig and turned into a best practice of stadtumbau. Leipzig's urban development agency divided the town into basically 3 types of quarters: preservation areas, consolidated areas and areas in transition (or: restructural areas). In the latter areas, characterised by high shares of emptiness local stadtumbau measures will reduce the number of empty houses and thus transform the quarter urbanely. The urban form of the future will create a tension between new spaces available with additional attractiveness and tooth gaps in the urban structure finalized in the “perforated city ” leitmotiv. Leipzig's way of thinking in urban structures of transition inspired the national stadtumbau competition. Within the Integrated Urban Development Concepts there must be a detailed statement on the most urgent neighbourhoods, where action of destruction and renewal must be located. Renewal with relevance for the whole municipality is possible everywhere. Destruction means not only the physical demolition of apartment buildings (except to the 10 sites in Berlin only housing is possible to be pulled down) but a so a tenant-oriented social work to help the people living in the condemned houses to move somewhere else. Renewal measures, based on traditional renewal and revitalisation concepts should improve the whole neighbourhood, to keep it alive. Generally it is not planned to tear down complete neighbourhoods, therefore it is absolutely necessary to attract people to stay there a though several buildings and maybe even “the own one” (where there has been the rented apartment) will not exist any further.

Schwedt is a remarkable small-town-example of stadtumbau. Their motto of stadtumbau is to “breathe out ”; they make neighbourhoods at the edge of town physically disappear, as 60% of the population has already outmigrated from these neighbourhoods. The historical inner city and other more consolidated plattenbau neighbourhoods will be renewed and they alone will definitely serve the future housing needs of Schwedt.

The current urban structure consists of its old town, some adjacent elderly neighbourhoods, and several plattenbau settlements in the West and large-scale industrial locations in the north; completed by some remote village-like settlements within the municipal borders. While the elder parts experienced a population loss of 5%the decrease of inhabitants in the plattenbau areas in the west reached 20%. The neighbourhood Am-Waldrand (literally: At the Woodside) at the edge of the town shrank from 13500 inhabitants in 1993 to just 4500 in 2003. It is the outstanding plattenbau neighbourhood at the edge will be radically ”reduced”. In terms of Am-Waldrand this means the deterioration of 3500 of the 4300 apartments. Complete blocks are deconstructed. The remaining parts in the middle of the neighbourhood are renewed and transformed, so that the local devices (shopping, social infrastructure etc.) can be consolidated and strengthened. Separated programs and renewal strategies accompany this process of temporary living. On the other hand 20 ha of Am-Waldrand become forest again. Stadtumbau in Schwedt is thus a so the turn from renewal into renaturisation.

By the way, Schwedt was the first town to demolish a plattenbau apartment block with 748 apartments in 1998 – before the stadtumbau programme. Maybe they have a fair degree of radicalty, because the “punctual surgery ” in other towns does not necessarily solve the estate problem. 350000 apartments should be torn down until 2009. This is ¼ of the empty ones of today. If the economic growth keeps passing by East Germany and the population decrease continues one can easily predict that the 1,3 million empty apartments of 2001 will be again 1,3 million empty ones in 2009.

3  Neighbourhood Management

The city of Berlin has developed an informal approach of renewal to overcome the limits of traditional formal renewal procedures according to the "Special Urban Law" [Besonderes Städtebaurecht] of the Building Law Code [BauGB]. Its deficit became the leitmotiv of the neighbourhood management: to replace the investment into the buildings by investments into the people. The integrated operational approach of neighbourhood management has an explicitly social dimension. By a combination of urban development, housing, social, and economic policy instruments a network of public, private, and business protagonists should be created (1).

Berlin's neighbourhood management is mainly incorporated in the national Socially Integrated City's programme (17 areas, an 18th area is part of EU's Urban II programme). This means also a shift from government to governance. The state no longer calls the shots but inspires, mobilizes and motivates, fosters communication and cooperation and strives for consensus, otherwise relying on society's inherent potential. (2)

• In practice areas in Berlin that contain certain characteristic will now be rewarded this planning and subsidy programme of neighbourhood management (1)
• deficits in urban development, construction, and ecology
• deficits in infrastructure
• economic stagnation on a low level
• turmoil in or sudden and severe reduction of economic activities
• unbalanced vital statistics
• high rate of unemployment
• high degree of dependency on social welfare
• immigrants form a large proportion of the population, especially among children
• and young people
• high degree of migration, especially of families, employees, and the upper classes
• increasing social and cultural segregation and exclusion
• increasing delinquency in public areas

Until now, neighbourhood management is carried out in a large amount of areas, differentiated by the level of the impulse: as part of the national "Socially integrated city" in 17 areas and the EU "Urban II" area, which is represented by this case study. One of the most interesting collaboration instruments developed in these areas is the neighbourhood fund which will be presented here as an example of governance-oriented planning in Germany:
A neighbourhood fund (NF) has been made available to every area as a pilot scheme. An Allocation Committee consisting of local residents and protagonists decides independently on it's allocation. In preparation for a suitable allocation procedure, a good deal of thought was spent on how to ensure that as many people in the neighbourhoods as possible can participate directly in the improvement of their environment. These considerations led to the implementation of allocation committees that consist mainly (at least 51 %) of local residents drawn by lot from the register of residents. The rest of the committee (no more than 49 %) consist of representatives of already existing groups and institutions. Local residents and other people interested in the neighbourhoods can put forward proposals for the NF. The 'On-Site Office' of the NM team will then pre-process them for the meetings of the allocation committee. The committee members decide independently and without regard to bureaucratic restraints or external interference, judging only from their immediate perspective as local residents. The mood among the committee members was predominantly positive. At first, they had been astonished that 'the state' was really giving them money they could freely spent for projects in their neighbourhood. ..." (1)

Sources and at the same time interesting weblinks:
(1) www.stadtentwicklung.berlin.de/wohnen/quartiersmanagement
(2) www.sozialestadt.de

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