50 city building councillors and planning department heads call for changes to building legislation

"Düsseldorf Declaration on Urban Development Law".

50 city planning councillors, heads of department and heads of planning offices from over 40 German cities, including Hamburg, Hanover, Munich, Cologne, Bochum, Freiburg, Stuttgart and Frankfurt am Main, have signed the "Düsseldorf Declaration on Urban Planning Law". They are calling for a fundamental amendment of the Building Use Ordinance (BauNVO) and the administrative regulation TA noise, so that in future beautiful and viable urban districts can be planned and do not fail due to outdated planning law restrictions.

The initiators of this declaration Prof. Christoph Mäckler and Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Sonne of the German Institute of Urban Design, Reiner Nagel, Chairman of the Board of the Federal Foundation for Building Culture, Barbara Ettinger-Brinckmann, President of the Federal Chamber of Architects, Prof. Jörn Walter, retired Senior Building Director Hamburg and Prof. Peter Zlonicky, Munich, hereby publish the "Düsseldorf Declaration on Urban Design Law" and present it at a parliamentary breakfast in Berlin on 14 May 2019. The declaration has already been signed by numerous associations, architects and academics.

Some progress has already been made in understanding what actually constitutes a mixed urban quarter as opposed to a settlement. However, building legislation still stands in the way of the realisation of such mixed urban quarters: for example, regulations such as the Building Use Ordinance date back to a time when the aim was to overcome the dense city by building more dispersed settlements. And the Noise Abatement Ordinance also underpins the creation of hitherto purely mono-functional urban quarters. The consequence of this building legislation is that urban quarters, as they have existed for centuries in the European city, function optimally and are extremely popular, paradoxically cannot be built - even though there is a clear social need for this and this was already demanded by the European building ministers in the Leipzig Charter in 2007.

Nothing is done! Reform of urban planning legislation
Düsseldorf Declaration on Urban Development Law

In the "Leipzig Charter on Sustainable European Cities"In 2007, Europe's construction ministers spoke out in favour of strengthening cities in line with the European city model.
As can be seen in the diverse quarters of the European City, there are five prerequisites for successful urban development:

- clear separation of public and private spaces
- good and durable design of houses, streets and squares
- functional variety
- social diversity
- urban density

In the urban quarter designs of our time, these five prerequisites are often missing, as they are found in the urban quarters of the European city and through which the beautiful and viable city develops. There are many reasons for this. One decisive reason lies in the legal provisions on urban development, such as the Building Use Ordinance (BauNVO) with its use catalogues and density ceilings, as well as in the provisions of the Technical Instructions on Noise Protection (TA-Lärm), which work against the demands of the Leipzig Charter because they hinder functional diversity. Therefore, it is now time to support and implement the Leipzig Charter in legislation. Only in this way can these five urban and functional prerequisites for the beauty and viability of the city be fulfilled, as demanded in the Leipzig Charter and elaborated over the past ten years at the Düsseldorf conferences of the German Institute for Urban Design.

The clear separation of public and private spaces

The public space of street and square:
Public space forms the backbone of every urban quarter in the European city. Square and street spaces not only represent the community of cities in a democratic society such as the Federal Republic of Germany, but they are also the spaces in which social exchange, trade, traffic and communication take place. Public space is thus the social space of the European city.

The city's public green space:
The urban park, the street avenue or the city boulevard are public green spaces that not only serve beauty and recreation, but also have a high ecological value for the urban climate.

The private block interior:
In contrast to the public spaces is the private garden and courtyard space, which is located directly adjacent to the houses in the city and is thus available to the house residents as an extended living space with gardens, children's playgrounds, etc.. Only through the clear structural separation from the public space does the courtyard area, as a private space, receive its own functional quality, which has a high value in the urban development of the European city.

The good and durable design of houses, streets and squares

In the European city, squares and streets are usually surrounded by houses, which turn these urban development areas into urban spaces. The beauty of these urban spaces is determined first of all by the proportion, i.e. the ratio of width to height. In addition, the facades of the houses facing the streets and squares are of formative importance for the public space they create with their counterparts. As in urban planning, a distinction must be made in the architecture of the houses between "front" and "back", between "public" and "private". The design of the city requires the conscious use of street and square facades.

The functional and social diversity

A fundamental prerequisite for successful integrative urban development is the facilitation of functional and social diversity. If possible, this should be developed not only on a neighbourhood basis, but also on the individual plot. This requires suitable urban building typologies, as found in the urban design of the European City with its residential and commercial courtyards.

The urban density

The urban district of the European City has a special structural compactness. This is structurally more energy-efficient, reduces land consumption, minimises traffic and is thus climate-friendly due to lower CO2 emissions, increases the efficiency of public transport and promotes walking and bicycle mobility (city of short distances). Furthermore, a high population density is the prerequisite for the best possible supply.
Increased urban density is also in line with our responsibility to meet the special requirements relating to climate change and healthy living in our cities with clean air and peace and quiet. These objectives are an indisputable part of good urban design.
In order to be able to develop socially and functionally diverse urban quarters with appropriate urban density and beautiful urban spaces, it is necessary to fundamentally change some laws, such as the Building Use Ordinance (BauNVO) and the Technical Instructions on Noise (TA-Lärm).

1. social and functional diversity versus building use catalogues BauNVO
The diverse urban quarter must in principle guarantee the social and functional mix. In the sense of this diversity of a neighbourhood, the use catalogues of the building area types of the BauNVO must therefore be fundamentally revised:
- The "Small Settlement Area" and the "Pure Residential Area" are outdated and should be deleted.
- in the "General Residential Area", there is a need for a greater opening up of the catalogue of uses for buildings with residential-compatible trade and modern residential-compatible production for liberal professions as well as for sports facilities.
- There is a need for a general inclusion of residential uses in the designated "core areas".
- In the "commercial and industrial area" (§ 8, § 9 BauNVO), the settlement of uses that contradict the primary character of the area, such as trade, accommodation establishments, etc., must be more effectively prevented. Commercial and industrial areas should only be allocated to uses that are actually fundamentally incompatible with the city.
For the fundamentally necessary functional mix in the urban quarter, it must be possible to bring commercial activity (e.g. modern low-emission production methods) back into the city. This applies not only to accommodation, but also to retail and service businesses, which should be located in the vicinity of residential uses. It should be possible to relate both the diversity of use and the social diversity not only to the neighbourhood but also to the individual plot. Suitable urban house typologies that allow housing in different price ranges and small businesses can already be found in the urban development of the European City with its residential and commercial courtyards.

2. functional diversity versus TA noise
Protection against noise in the functionally mixed city must be explicitly guaranteed. The technical possibilities of active and passive noise protection must also be made possible for commercial uses and leisure noise through amended immission control regulations.
In principle, the permissibility of passive noise protection for the protection of commercial noise emissions is required in order to enable the functional mix in the urban quarter, because the viability of the European city is only made possible by the functional mix and diversity.
Therefore, the overcoming of the two-part noise law for traffic on the one hand and commerce on the other hand, which was established by the Federal Immission Control Act (BlmSchG) with its ordinances, is inevitable in order to enable the functional and also the social mixture in the urban quarter again. With today's economic structure, in which industrial and commercial operations with considerable production noise are the exception, and due to the technical progress of the past decades in soundproof windows, the two-part noise law is obsolete.

3. urban density versus upper density limits of the BauNVO
In principle, protection against overly narrow residential courtyards, such as those produced by the city of industrialization, must be ensured in the diverse urban quarter. However, today's building use ordinance corresponds to an urban design that is based on outdated planning ideas and assumes a fundamental separation of functions in the city (working here/residential there). In the sense of these ideas, the floor area ratio (GFZ) with its upper limits as well as the floor area ratio (GRZ) in the Building Use Ordinance, which was created in the sixties, was comprehensible in order to be able to regulate a mathematical determination of the building masses to be planned. This is understandable from that time; today, however, these upper limits (also with the exception of § 17.2 BauNVO) are absolutely unsuitable for the design of urban quarters in view of growing demands for living space. In purely arithmetical terms, four times as many people lived in the Gründerzeit quarters at the beginning of the 20th century as today, which once again illustrates the outmoded nature of these rules. Although without any significance in terms of urban space, the mathematical ratios of the GFZ and their upper limits in the BauNVO are still a fundamental component of every legally binding land-use plan. With the introduction of the "urban area", the upper density limit with a GRZ of 0.8 and a GFZ of 3.0 has been raised for this quarter, but for all other building areas currently in planning, the upper limits of § 17 BauNVO (general residential areas GFZ 1.2) still exist. This is diametrically opposed to the requirements of the mixed diverse urban quarter of the European City. The density ceilings in § 17 BauNVO of the Building Use Ordinance must therefore be dropped as a matter of principle.

4. summary
A fundamental amendment of the Building Use Ordinance (BauNVO) with its density ceilings and use catalogues as well as the two-part noise law of the Technical Instructions on Noise (TA-Lärm) is required so that in future it will be possible to plan attractive and viable urban districts, as demanded by the Leipzig Charter, and so that they do not fail due to outdated planning law restrictions.

Barbara Ettinger-Brinckmann, President of the Federal Chamber of Architects
Prof. Christoph Mäckler, German Institute for Urban Design
Reiner Nagel, Chairman of the Board of the Federal Foundation for Building Culture
Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Sonne, German Institute for Urban Design
Prof. Jörn Walter, former Chief Building Director of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg
Prof. Peter Zlonicky, urban planner and professor em. TU Dortmund and TU Hamburg-Harburg

51 city planning councillors, department heads and heads of planning departments from 41 cities:
Augsburg, Gerd Merkle, Building Officer Bad Nauheim, Jürgen Patscha, Head of Department Urban Development Bad Tölz, Hannes Strunz, City Architect Berlin Mitte, Ephraim Gothe, Deputy District Mayor and District Councillor Bochum, Dr. Markus Bradtke, City Building Councillor Bochum, Eckart Kröck, Senior Municipal Building Director and Head of Department and Institute Celle, Ulrich Kinder, City Building Councillor Darmstadt, Jochen Partsch, Lord Mayor Dortmund, Ludger Wilde, City Councillor and Councillor for the Environment, Planning and Housing Dresden, Raoul Schmidt-Lamontain, Councillor for Urban Development, Construction, Transport and Real Estate Frankfurt a.M., Mike Josef, City Councillor, Head of Planning and Housing Frankfurt a.M., Martin Hunscher, Head of the City Planning Office Freiburg i.Br., Prof. Dr. Martin Haag, Mayor of Gelsenkirchen, Clemens Arens, Head of Department for Urban Planning Göttingen, Thomas Dienberg, City Planning Officer Halle (Saale), René Rebenstorf, Councillor for Urban Development and the Environment Hamburg, Franz Josef Höing, Chief Planning Director Hanover, Uwe Bodemann, City Planning Officer Heidelberg, Jürgen Odszuck, First Mayor Jena, Dr. Matthias Lerm, City Architect (from May: Head of City Planning Office Magdeburg) Karlsruhe, Daniel Fluhrer, Building Mayor Karlsruhe, Prof. Dr. Anke Karmann-Woessner, Head of the Urban Planning Office Kassel, Christof Nolda, City Planning Councillor Kassel, Volker Mohr, Head of the Urban Planning Office Kiel, Doris Grondke, City Councillor for Urban Development, Building and the Environment Cologne, Markus Greitemann, Councillor for Urban Development, Planning and Building Cologne, Anne Luise Müller, Head of the Urban Planning Office Krefeld , Norbert Hudde, Head of the Urban and Transport Planning Department Leverkusen, Andrea Deppe, Head of Department for Planning and Building Limburg, Annelie Bopp-Simon, Head of Department for Urban Development and Urban Land Use Planning Lindau, Georg Speth, Director of Urban Planning Ludwigshafen, Joachim Magin, Head of Department for Urban Planning Mannheim, Lothar Quast, Mayor of Moers, Thorsten Kamp, Councillor for Urban and Environmental Planning, Building Inspection, Surveying, Roads, Transport Munich, Prof. Dr. Hans-Joachim K., Head of Department for Urban Development and Urban Land Use Planning Munich, Prof. Dr. Hans-Joachim K., Head of Department for Urban Development and Urban Land Use Planning Munich Dr. (I) Elisabeth Merk, City Planning Councillor Munich, Susanne Ritter, City Director, Head of Urban Planning Münster, Siegfried Thielen, Head of Planning and Building Coordination Nördlingen, Hans-Georg Siegel, City Planning Councillor Nordhorn, Thimo Weitemeier, City Planning Councillor Nuremberg, Siegfried Dengler, Head of Urban Planning Office Osnabrück, Frank Otte, Potsdam City Planning Officer, Bernd Rubelt, Potsdam Councillor for Urban Development, Construction, Economics and the Environment, Andreas Goetzmann, Rheinfelden Head of Urban Planning and Urban Renewal, Klaus Eberhardt, Lord Mayor of Schwäbisch Gmünd, Julius Mihm, Mayor of Sonthofen, Dr. Jürgen Rauch, Speyer City Planning Officer, Dr. Jürgen Rauch, Mayor of Speyer, Dr. Jürgen Rauch, Mayor of the University of Stuttgart. Jürgen Rauch, Master Builder Speyer, Kerstin Trojan, Head of Department Urban Planning Stralsund, Ekkehard Wohlgemuth, Head of Office for Planning and Construction Stuttgart, Dr. Detlef Kron, Head of Office for Urban Planning and Housing Ulm, Tim von Winning, Building Mayor Wismar, Michael Berkhahn, Senator, 1st Deputy Mayor
Associations and business: Axel Gedaschko, President GdW Bundesverband deutscher Wohnungs- und Immobilienunternehmen e.V. Andreas Breitner, Director Verband norddeutscher Wohnungsunternehmen e.V. Jürgen Büllesbach, Managing Director Opes Immobilien GmbH

Science: Prof. Dr. Arnold Bartetzky, University of Leipzig Prof. Dr. Georg Ebbing, Rhine-Main University of Applied Sciences Dr. Dankwart Guratzsch, Frankfurt a.M. Prof. Dr. Uta Hohn, Ruhr University Bochum Birgit Roth, German Institute for Urban Design, Frankfurt a.M. Prof. Thomas Will, TU Dresden Prof. Sophie Wolfrum, TU Munich (announced)

Planners: Torsten Becker, TOBE STADT, Frankfurt a.M. Wolfgang Borgards, K9 Architekten, Freiburg i.Br. Klaus Theo Brenner, STADTARCHITEKTUR, Berlin Wulf Daseking, Architekt, Freiburg Prof. Dietrich Fink, Fink+Jocher, Munich Jens Jakob Happ, JJH Architekten, Frankfurt a.M. Joachim Hein, RKW+ Architektur und Städtebau, Düsseldorf Dr. Harald Heinz, HJP Planer, Aachen Prof. Helmut Kleine-Kraneburg, Gruber Kleine-Kraneburg, Frankfurt a.M. Till Schneider, schneider+schumacher, Frankfurt a.M.