Legal Perspectives on New Urban Quarters in Germany: Living the Dream of the Compact City?

Exploring the legal framework and planning policies for high-density developments in practice

Abstract

The ‘leitmotif’ of the compact city has become a widely embraced template for sustainable urban development. Particularly infill and redevelopment areas, as well as many planned new settlements, have been built following the planning principles of urban compaction. Numerous positive effects are attributed to high-density settlements such as more efficient use of infrastructure and less reliance on automobile travel. Planning law and policies, in Germany as well as other countries around the world, regularly strive to advance high-density developments, but it is by no means clear whether the prescribed densities in planning policies actually lead to vibrant and healthy places which fulfill the expectations of their inhabitants with regards to their quality of life. The study aims to analyze the relation between binding land-use plans in Germany and individual perceptions of urban density through a case study-based survey. This paper contributes to providing new information on achieving compact urban form and quality of life in new urban quarters by analyzing the change of densities over the past three decades in ‘large’ urban developments across Germany, by an in-depth assessment of planned and built densities within an archetypal urban extension and finally by contrasting these ‘objective’ figures and findings with the ‘subjective’ feelings of inhabitants. For sources of information, this paper draws from literature, surveys and empirical analyses as well as desktop-studies.