Berlin - Affordable and high-quality housing construction is currently more important than ever. For more than three decades, outstanding housing projects have been awarded the German Building Award every two years. This year's edition of the competition has now been announced.

The aim of the award, which is sponsored by the Federal Ministry of Housing, Urban Development and Construction, is to recognise the responsible efforts of developers to create affordable housing and neighbourhoods in "High Quality at Affordable Cost".

The Special price on the topic "Urban development revisited: Prices - Practice - Perspectives" was given to the project Urban development area Stuttgarter Straße, French Quarter in Tübingen. The special prize, which is awarded in parallel to the urban development prize, serves to highlight particularly urgent fields of action in urban development and urban planning. It was awarded on 23.4.2021 on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the German Urban Development Prize to contributions that had already been recognised with prizes and awards between 1980 and 2010. The judging of the special prize was very complex, as it had to cover a span of 30 years, i.e. a generation, of the achievements of German urban development that were considered outstanding at the time, and, in retrospect, it had to be based on robust, objective criteria that could adequately reflect the complexity of 30 years of urban development history and 30 years of urban development models.

The EU's plan to become involved in the area of public housing promotion within the framework of the new "InvestEU" fund was critically assessed. The Federal Government was therefore called upon to advocate a modification of the programme so that subsidies are only granted if the provisions of regional, national or federal subsidy regimes are observed, in particular if a rent and occupancy obligation is provided for. The Chairman of the Conference of Building Ministers, Thuringia's Infrastructure Minister Benjamin-Immanuel Hoff, said: "It remains an important task to create affordable housing in Germany. The federal government must continue to provide at least the same level of funding. To make faster progress, we would need more money in the system. The EU's commitment is therefore to be welcomed in principle. But we must ensure that the money also reaches social housing, and we agree that this can best be done through the established funding programmes of the Länder."