On 09 March 2017, the Bundestag passed the amendment to the Urban Development Act. The bill has been adopted with some modifying resolution recommendations of the Environment Committee.

We do not yet have a consolidated version of the text. The law is to come into force the day after promulgation, the date for which is not yet known to us. The bill will now be referred once again to the Bundesrat. This is expected to finally deal with the law on 31.03.2017. The law is not subject to approval.

The points of the urban planning law reform that are particularly relevant for landscape architects are:

The new building area category "Urban Areas" in the Building Use Ordinance has been adopted. A supplementary resolution of the Bundestag refers to the TA noise reform running in parallel.

The new § 13b BauGB has also been adopted ('inclusion of outdoor areas in the accelerated procedure'). Unfortunately, not even an orientation towards areas with an actual housing shortage, which had been proposed and discussed, was adopted. However, a provision was added to § 13b on the maximum time "course" of the § 13b procedures. The second sentence of § 13b now states: "The procedure for drawing up a development plan in accordance with sentence 1 can only be formally initiated by 31 December 2019; the resolution to adopt a statute in accordance with § 10(1) must be adopted by 31 December 2021. The municipalities thus have `only' 4.5 years.

In § 1 (6) No. 7 BauGB the word area was inserted, which corresponds to the EU Directive to be implemented. So in the future, both soil and surface area are to be taken into account as environmental protection concerns.

For further reading:

• Draft bill and the adopted resolution recommendation of the BT Environment Committee.
• Simulation game on the urban development law amendment 2016/2017 (Download).
• § 13b BauGB: SRL and bdla reject new building planning law

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