Spatial planning City of Aachen
Spatial planning, urban land-use planning and specialist planning - from EU strategies to the development plan for a building area.
Housing, commerce, industry, agriculture and forestry, green spaces, nature conservation, transportation, energy generation: There is competition for space between different demands and between different players. At the same time, decisions usually have very long-term effects. A highway, for example, will retain its course for a long time once it has been built. Currently, the controversial discussions surrounding the expansion of renewable energies are a very vivid example of the conflicts between different demands on space.
Important principles: Multi-level, formal and informal instruments, specialized planning, counter-current principle
Spatial planning in Europe and Germany is a complex, multi-level system. It attempts to reconcile the sometimes contradictory demands for the use of space. It is made up of formal and informal instruments. The content and procedures of the formal instruments are defined by statutory regulations. Formal spatial planning at supra-local federal and state level is referred to collectively as spatial planning, and at local level as urban land-use planning. Examples include the NRW state development plan and municipal land use and development plans.
In simple terms, informal instruments are developed voluntarily and without detailed legal regulation. These include development concepts, master plans and framework plans.
At the same time, spatial planning brings together specialist planning such as traffic planning and landscape planning.
The spatial planning of the various levels is linked to the so-called counter-current principle . The large-scale levels should not determine everything for the small-scale levels "from above", but should incorporate their requirements into their plans. On the other hand, the lower levels must take the requirements of the upper levels into account when drawing up their plans and concepts.
From the EU to the city of Aachen
At European level, there are strategies for the spatial development of Europe that focus on economic development. One example is the European Spatial Development Perspective from 1998 (ESDP). For the actual spatial development of Europe, however, the European Union's structural funding and sectoral planning, such as transport networks, are particularly important.
At federal level, the Spatial Planning Act sets out nationwide principles for spatial development. These are supplemented by overarching strategies such as the spatial development guidelines from 2006. However, neither the Spatial Planning Act nor the overarching strategies have any direct legal effect.
The state of North Rhine-Westphalia is governed by the State Planning Act, which contains binding regulations, in particular for the structure of state and regional planning and its procedures. In terms of content, state planning consists of a plan for the entire state(state development plan) and regional plans for the administrative districts and the Ruhr Regional Association. The state development plan contains "objectives" for the lower levels, which are binding, as well as principles that must always be taken into account in planning, but can also be overridden as part of the consideration process.
In North Rhine-Westphalia, regional plans (known as regional development plans until 2005) are drawn up for the areas of the administrative districts and the Ruhr Regional Association on the basis of the state development plan. Like the state development plan, the regional plans contain binding objectives (to be observed) and principles to be taken into account. The regional plan for the administrative district of Cologne - Aachen region section is drawn up by the Cologne district government. It is adopted by the regional council, in which the districts and independent cities belonging to the administrative district of Cologne are represented. Further information
Regional planning is the lowest level of supra-local planning.
The next two stages are municipal, i.e. local, urban land-use planning.