bdla: Eight recommendations for climate adaptation in urban development

In accordance with the current coalition agreement, the German government is aiming to amend the German Building Code (BauGB). In this context, the legal anchoring of climate protection and adaptation in urban planning law is a burning issue. The Association of German Landscape Architects (bdla) has therefore made eight specific recommendations to the federal government. You can find out what they are here.

The bdla deals with the foundations for a good climate adaptation policy in urban landscapes. To this end, it formulated “Eight recommendations for the appropriate consideration of climate adaptation in urban planning law” at the end of 2022. These are intended to help create an adapted legal framework. After all, we can only meet the challenges of climate change with climate-resilient urban development. We present the eight recommendations below.

In the BauGB, a clear distinction must be made between the terms climate protection and climate adaptation, as these concepts require different approaches. It is also advisable to include the terms green-blue infrastructure and water management as important building blocks. The guiding principle here would be threefold inner development: building, green, mobility. With the help of this approach, the potential of open and green spaces can be used effectively through an integrated approach.

The bdla proposes the introduction of a green space factor (GFF) in the BauNVO. This would be comparable to known urban planning parameters such as GFZ, GRZ or BMZ. This would allow the proportion of green, biodiversity and climate-effective areas in municipal urban land-use planning to be bindingly defined for the respective planning area. The GFF is implemented with the help of a predefined catalog of measures. This catalog then includes aspects such as roof and façade greening or infiltration. The introduction of a GFF would also have the advantage that a minimum level of greening and ecosystem services could be established. This would allow a clearly defined ecological standard to be achieved. These binding key figures would be particularly useful for smaller municipalities with their arguments.

The BauGB strives for an appropriate provision of green and open spaces. In order to quantify this, however, binding orientation values are needed as guidelines. Orientation values help to promote the improvement of urban green spaces in a binding manner. They could, for example, be listed as “target” guidelines in an annex to the BauGB. In addition, the awarding of subsidies should be tied to compliance with these orientation values.

Resilient urban development requires development plans for green-blue infrastructure at various scales. Such integrated open space development concepts are an optimal overarching strategy for integratively bringing together different open space requirements. Examples would be climate adaptation and sponge city concepts or municipal health programs.

Urban development must not cause a deterioration in the climatic situation and the supply of open spaces. Therefore, interventions that impair the supply and accessibility of open spaces and their structures must be avoided or compensated for on site. A ban on the deterioration of urban open space quality and the urban climate should therefore be enshrined in urban land use planning standards. At the same time, a requirement for unsealing should be specified in the BauGB and simplified in a practice-oriented manner.

The bdla expects the federal government to optimize the intervention regulation under building law in favour of climate adaptation. To this end, compensation under building law must be specified in the BauGB. There needs to be a de facto obligation for climate-positive compensation in urban planning. Accordingly, the sequence of avoidance – compensation – compensation money should be regulated in building law. An unavoidable compensation deficit must therefore be reduced by a compensation payment standardized in building law to finance specific replacement (climate adaptation) measures.

The federal government should enshrine the standardization of the open space design plan (FGP) in building law, especially with regard to the reform of building law. In particular, the model building regulations should be supplemented. This is because the FGP, in its bundling function, ensures high-quality open space development and climate-related added value.

The bdla considers it necessary to specify urban redevelopment law for sufficient green space provision and climate measures and to develop it further in the BauGB. For example, the idea of climate remediation areas should be pursued further.

For some time now, the bdla executive committee has had two new assessors. Find out more here.