Volume 59 (2001): Edition 2-3 (March 2001)

Concerning the question which requirements future landscapes will have to fulfil, basic landscape functions such as regenerating a moderate climate, clear water, fertile soil etc. are to be emphasized to be the essential “wing-unit“ of society. An understanding of the interactions of the energy, water and material flows within the landscape thereby can serve as a system – oriented planning and design tool. The concept of a “Sustainable Quality Management of Landscape“ based on a model of landscape dynamics offers an integrative field of action for spatial planning to be performed in water catchment areas.

Sustainable development of landscape as material basis of society is determined by two limitations: minimisation of high irreversible losses of base cations and nutrients and the increasing need to use regenerative energy sources. Twelve management rules are derived. There are specified by suggested management modules. Chances to realise a sustainable development result from changing frame conditions for the land cultivators (farmers and foresters). Thereupon the role of planning should be changed.

What will the landscape and the countryside of the future look like? Who will use it and who will value it? From where we are today it is impossible to foresee the answers to these questions. Nonetheless, spatial planning, which in its very essence and function is anticipatory, is duty bound to seek approaches which will allow it successfully to act within, and to interact with, the future landscape. The following text explores one of these potential approaches as it reflects on the possibilities for spatial planning which may be inherent in an approach which interprets the landscape as a ”service for service-providers”.

This article deals with the conservation and development of the aesthetic qualities of the largely man-made landscapes of the Rhine-Neckar-Palatinate conurbation. Proceeding through a series of stages of intensive analysis, the authors develop a number of innovative concepts for restoring to the landscape of this area some sense of identity as a means of enhancing the living and working environment experienced by the people who live there. Landscape quality is steadily gaining in importance as a soft locational factor. The present study puts forward a number of approaches suitable for giving this trend the recognition it warrants, for example within the framework of a Regional Landscape Park; it also underscores the need for immediate action in order to secure what open spaces still exist within this conurbation and to develop them in a manner which is aesthetically pleasing.

The patents system provides a suitable instrument for monitoring and analysing developments both of a technological/scientific and of an economic nature. It also lends itself for application in connection with the analysis of the spatial distribution of inventiveness. The common aim of the studies reported on in this article is to gain a greater understanding of the spatial structure of patenting activity, of the R&D activities associated with this, and of the innovative potential which it lays bear. An even greater insight can be gleaned if the patent data is considered in a more discriminatory fashion, distinguishing for example between spatial units, patent-claimant registration categories, technical categories and periods of observation, and if this data is linked to further data on such matters as population, type of employment, and research and development activity. The findings of these studies reveal the spatial distribution and the substantive structure of inventiveness — and the fruits it bears — to be quite specific in character and to be patterned by a variety of determining factors.

Information- and communication technology (ICT) enterprises act in dynamic, international markets. However, the existence of regional ICT-clusters proposes that firms are regionally embedded and demand specific conditions. The paper presents results from a case-study in the ‘TechnologieRegion Karlsruhe’. The firms show a considerable degree of regional co-operation, but young and small enterprises tend to be not sufficiently integrated within regional networks. The study also shows that ICT-firms do not differ significantly from other “traditional” sectors regarding co-operation.

The spatial consequences of the new information and communication technologies are manifest through their integration in social processes. Empirically found spatial qualities of the production of internet content point towards a current reconfiguration of the spatial-functional structures of cities. This means that urban planning needs to adapt its aims and instruments. It is of surmount importance, though, that not a technical but a social vision is guiding this process.

This article considers spatial planning registers as a suitable vehicle for demonstrating the introduction of a GIS for the purposes of comprehensive spatial planning at Land (state) level. It starts with an explanation of the spatial planning registers now required to be maintained by all of Germany’s Länder (except for the city-states) and goes on to describe in detail the kinds of modifications which will have to be made to such registers as they come to be converted into digital form. Taking for purposes of demonstration a GIS application currently in use in a number of German states, the authors outline the requirements such systems need to meet and propose possible technical solutions using standard software. The final section looks in greater detail at the necessary modifications to spatial planning registers associated with conversion to digital form, including possible changes to the way registers are organised and new ways of using the data.

Co-operation has become a buzzword of our times, but it is both costly and conditioned. Based on empirical studies in Baden-Württemberg, Brandenburg, North Rhine-Westphalia and Saxony, it can be shown that regional planners run into difficulties with co-operative approaches: frequently they have to stage-manage co-operation, they are restricted in their selection to those topics which hold the prospect of win-win solutions, can muster only very few co-operands, are ill-equipped to take on the role of initiator, and more often than not are confronted with competing regional actors harnessing the regional willingness to co-operate. From the findings presented, conclusions are drawn as to how planners should improve the situation they find themselves in.

In the context of the striving to achieve sustainable transport and settlement development, a heated debate is currently taking place both within spatial planning circles and in spatial research on the manner and extent to which such models for settlement structure as the currently preferred paradigm of polycentric concentration might be capable of suppressing future traffic growth, without however unduly restricting the freedom of people to participate in the life of society or the exchange of goods and services. Taking as its point of departure current trends in settlement structure in the areas around metropolitan centres, and focusing on their significance for the structure and efficiency of functional linkages, this article looks in quite concrete terms into ways of fleshing out the settlement-structure strategy which envisages a region of “short distances”, and characterised by unusually low levels of private car use, in order to render it capable of contributing towards achieving a sustainable pattern of mobility in metropolitan regions.

The measures taken by local authorities in the field of climate protection contribute not only to curbing the man-made greenhouse effect. In some cases, these measures also have impacts on the local labour market, on local air quality, or on price stability and the possibility of guaranteeing supply in the energy sector. This article analyses “secondary effects” of this kind and their relevance for the climate-protection policies of local authorities.

The states of Berlin and Brandenburg, for centuries component parts of one common state, sought co-operation immediately after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and in a very short time they were able to formulate initial common foundations for planning. While the two sides were able to reach a speedy and lasting agreement on content (general guidelines and aims for regional policy and joint spatial development), the search for a suitable institutional form for co-operation developed into something of a ”march through the institutions”. In the end, the political will to unify both states solved the problem of institutional form: as a ”partial merger”, the amalgamation of the planning authorities of both states to create the Joint Spatial Development Department was intended to serve as an example of what could be achieved in the run-up to the referendum on ”full merger” in May 1996. Berlin’s accretion of competences in the Joint Spatial Development Department has settled the controversy about the extension and the cut of sub-regional planning areas (a planning association for Berlin and its hinterland (Berlin) versus the so-called ”pie-slice model” (Brandenburg)).

In 1998 a study was conducted on behalf of the Free State of Thuringia with the aim of determining priority areas to provide sites for major commercial and industrial enterprises planning to locate in the state. Unlike the so-called ”commercial space potential model” in use in the Saarland, which in order to safeguard the supply of land for business premises constantly scans all sites becoming available with regard to their suitability for commercial use, the key feature of this study, which is based on a number of clearly defined areas, lay in the account it took of specific requirements placed on sites, and specifically of the abundance of sites available at the time of the study (over-supply of already serviced or designated commercial sites and of previously used commercial sites).