Updating the guidelines for municipal landscape planning in Saxony
Client:
Sächsisches Staatsministerium für Energie, Klimaschutz, Umwelt und Landwirtschaft (SMEKUL)
Runtime:
10/2024 – 06/2025
Project team:
TU Dresden (Prof. Dr. C. Schmidt, Professur für Landschaftsplanung)
Project description
The „Gesetz zum Schutz der Insektenvielfalt in Deutschland und zur Änderung weiterer Vorschriften“ of August 2021 led to numerous changes in the Federal Nature Conservation Act (BNatSchG). The decisive factor for the research project is the obligation introduced in Section 11 (4) BNatSchG 2022, which now requires a review at least every 10 years to determine whether and to what extent municipal landscape plans need to be updated. According to Section 11 para. 2 BNatSchG 2022, the necessity is given if "significant changes to nature and landscape in the planning area have occurred, are planned or are to be expected".
The SMEKUL assumes that there is a need for action for the majority of Saxon municipalities in this respect and because municipal activities to draw up landscape plans declined sharply when the "Municipal Landscape Planning" funding programme expired in 2003. Because a comparable funding programme cannot be relaunched nationwide and at short notice, SMEKUL sees a guideline for municipal landscape planning as a central instrument for supporting municipalities on the one hand and for controlling the quality of landscape planning on the other.
Since the publication of the first Saxon guideline on landscape planning in 1999 and its last update in 2004, numerous legal frameworks have changed, many of which are an expression and consequence of changed social and political requirements. The diverse challenges of our time range from climate change and the energy transition to the biodiversity crisis and the generally increased demands on green spaces and structures in terms of recreational provision. They must be reflected in the concept or draft of the landscape plan. At the same time, the references to environmental assessments and the importance of the landscape plan as a decisive basis for their implementation must be made clear.
In view of the above, there is currently no summarised, compact and up-to-date documentation of the principles, content and presentation requirements of municipal landscape planning in Saxony. In this respect, the Saxon municipalities, which the State Ministry sees as facing the challenge of updating their landscape planning, lack a centralised instrument for preparation, tendering, awarding and quality control and ultimately also an orientation aid for planning practice. This gap is to be filled with the development of an updated guideline for municipal landscape planning.
Aims of the research project:
- structuring the content of the guide and underpinning the bullet points with explanatory texts, taking into account all current legal, technical and procedural requirements
- user-friendly and practice-orientated graphic presentation of the steps in the planning and preparation process described in terms of content using illustrations and diagrams to support the informative value of the text modules as well as suggestions and recommendations for specific representations of landscape planning content in plans
- combination of textual and graphic content in a compact and up-to-date documentation of the principles, content and presentation requirements of municipal landscape planning
Project manager::
© Sven Ellger
Research assistant; Erasmus department coordinator
NameMs Dr.-Ing. Kathrin Seidler
Send encrypted email via the SecureMail portal (for TUD external users only).