Deutscher Städtetag: Brochure on planning practice and planning culture in German cities
Published
The planning practice and planning culture of German cities are the focus of a comprehensive handout produced with the cooperation of the German Association of Cities and Towns and the Federal Institute for Research on Building, Urban Affairs and Spatial Development. The brochure brings together 55 projects from 34 cities that show how multifaceted municipal planning practice is implemented in Germany. The documentation of successful projects and exemplary Planning Processes offers a rich fund of ideas and is intended to encourage new approaches. It covers a broad spectrum of good practice and innovative solutions on strategic concepts, citizen participation, housing, urban design, urban renewal, neighbourhood management or mobility. The brochure, published in April 2016, is addressed to representatives of local politics, administration and civil society initiatives in cities, but also offers inspiring practical examples for research and teaching.
The current developments through the 2016 US elections reminded me of a serious but overall visionary lecture by Ernest Callenbach in Freiburg in 2005, which is still available on YouTube. His talk is more relevant than ever. 11 years later, one can say he was right on many points... But he does not lose sight of a positive, desirable, more sustainable world.
Back in 2005, Ernest Callenbach described how America has passed the peak of its world power, what forces have weakened it, and what would be needed to build a more sustainable world.
Environment Minister Ursula Heinen-Esser presents this year's NRW Forest Condition Report: "Our forests are in a worrying condition. This is because the combined effect of storms in the spring, followed by extreme summer drought and then heavy bark beetle infestation in the coniferous forests means that the damage this year is considerable."
Thus, 39 percent of the trees surveyed show clear crown thinning and another 39 percent show weak crown thinning, i.e. leaf loss. This leaves only 22 percent without crown defoliation. Since the field surveys on crown condition had to be completed in August for methodological reasons and the evaluations on the full extent of bark beetle damage are still ongoing, the actual forest damage is likely to be even greater.
2018: First storm, then drought, finally bark beetle
North Rhine-Westphalia was particularly hard hit by Hurricane Friederike in January. 2.5 million solid cubic metres of "storm wood" were produced. The months of April to August were the warmest and sunniest and at the same time the months with the least precipitation since the German Meteorological Service began keeping records in 1881. The bark beetle species "spruce bark beetle" and "copper bark beetle" proliferated in the spruce forests due to the wood that had accumulated as a result of the storm and the summer drought, which severely weakened the trees' defences. Spruce forests cover about one third of the forest area in North Rhine-Westphalia. The current state of the surveys suggests that this is the largest bark beetle calamity in several decades.
Task Force "Bark Beetle
In order to cope with the current difficult situation for the North Rhine-Westphalian forestry sector, Minister Heinen-Esser recently set up a "bark beetle" task force. This task force will primarily work to ensure that the damaged wood is removed from the forest as quickly as possible and that a further mass reproduction of bark beetles next year can be contained as far as possible.
Requirements due to climate change
Minister Heinen-Esser: "In addition to the acute measures, however, it is also important for the state government to develop forests that are more stable and resistant to climate change in the longer term. To this end, the new silviculture concept for North Rhine-Westphalia and other supporting instruments for forest owners will be presented shortly. Important information for forest management will soon be offered in a modern and user-friendly way via the new internet portal 'Waldinfo.NRW'."
Background to the State of the Forest Report:
The vitality of forest trees is recorded annually according to a uniform nationwide method. For this purpose, the condition of the tree crowns of about 10,000 trees is assessed by forestry experts for North Rhine-Westphalia and other factors are also taken into account. The forest condition has deteriorated since the beginning of the survey in 1984. Since about 2000, the damage measure has remained at a roughly constant high level with annual fluctuations. The annual forest condition report also includes supplementary technical information that is not represented by the method in the narrower sense (z. B. this year statements on amounts of damaged wood).
The new instruments for forest management in climate change are part of the climate adaptation strategy for forests and forest management in North Rhine-Westphalia. Important implementation projects are the new silviculture concept NRW, the state-wide forest location map and the new forest information system NRW (here especially the new internet portal Waldinfo.NRW). Also relevant here are the forest-relevant specialist information systems on climate change.
Thuringia is making six million euros available this year for investments in municipal climate protection. The funding comes from the state's "Climate Invest" program, which has already kick-started more than 15.5 million euros in investments in municipalities since the start of 2018, the Environment Ministry announced in Erfurt on Thursday. 312 funding applications have been approved.
At the same time, Siegesmund encouraged Thuringian municipalities to take part in the nationwide "Climate Active Municipality 2020" competition. The Federal Ministry for the Environment has started a new round in the competition of ideas for climate protection. Cities, counties and municipalities are called upon to submit exemplary ideas. Prize money totalling 25,000 euros awaits the winners.
Parliamentary State Secretary Rita Schwarzelühr-Sutter of the BMUB (3rd from left) hands over the grant notification for 10.4 million euros to SWLB. On the photo: Ursula Keck (Deputy Chairman of the Supervisory Board of SWLB and Mayor of Kornwestheim, left), Werner Spec (Chairman of the Supervisory Board of SWLB and Mayor of the City of Ludwigsburg, 2nd from left), Managing Director of SWLB, Bodo Skaletz (3rd from right), Steffen Bilger (Member of the Bundestag, 2nd from right), Jürgen Walter (Member of the Bundestag, right).
Stadtwerke Ludwigsburg-Kornwestheim is building one of the largest solar thermal plants in Germany with a collector area of over 10,000 m². The way is clear for another forward-looking project in Ludwigsburg: Stadtwerke Ludwigsburg-Kornwestheim GmbH (SWLB) has won the funding call for municipal climate protection model projects as part of the national climate protection initiative of the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety in Berlin.
Their funding application for the SolarHeatGrid model project for the 'construction and connection of one of the largest solar thermal plants in Germany to an optimised heating network', in which the City of Ludwigsburg is involved as a cooperation partner, was approved. The official handover of the Municipal Climate Protection Model Project grant to Bodo Skaletz, Managing Director of SWLB, took place on 12 May 2017 by Rita Schwarzelühr-Sutter, Parliamentary State Secretary of the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety, in the presence of the Lord Mayor of the City of Ludwigsburg and Chairman of the Supervisory Board of SWLB, Werner Spec, and the Lord Mayor of the City of Kornwestheim and Deputy Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Stadtwerke.
"In terms of the amount of funding, our solar thermal project is the front-runner in the ranking of the seven projects that were also approved. The federal government is contributing 10.4 million euros to the realisation of Ludwigsburg's large-scale project, which should inspire imitation throughout Germany," says a delighted Bodo Skaletz, Managing Director of SWLB.
"This renewal of the district heating network with solar heat is particularly forward-looking with regard to the feasibility of municipal heat supply with renewable energies. Swapping fossil for renewable - it works. I congratulate Ludwigsburg on this major high-tech piece of the puzzle, also in terms of CO2 savings and improved energy efficiency," confirms Parliamentary State Secretary Rita Schwarzelühr-Sutter.
"The 'SolarHeatGrid' is an important building block in the implementation of our overall energy concept for Ludwigsburg," explains Mayor Werner Spec. "We are thus significantly expanding our heat supply on a renewable basis and linking it across municipal boundaries. This is entirely in the spirit of sustainable settlement development: as cities, we must continue to commit ourselves locally with all our strength to environmental and climate protection."
The official start of this lighthouse project is 1 June 2017. The model project is scheduled to take a total of three years. As part of the project, the existing Ludwigsburg district heating network, which already provides heat for large parts of the city using mainly renewable raw materials, will be merged with the Rotbäumlesfeld, Technische Dienste Ludwigsburg (Gänsfußallee 21) and Kornwestheim-Nord networks, which are currently still supplied with fossil fuels. The construction of the solar thermal plant in connection with a large heat storage tank, which is to be built at the location of the CHP plant, will additionally feed high-quality, regeneratively generated heat into the expanded interconnected grid. This will further increase the amount of heat from renewable energies. With the help of the heat storage facility, the energy generated will also be available when there is little or no solar radiation.
The base load heat of the fossil-fuelled heating centres of the individual grids can thus be replaced by the largely regeneratively generated heat of the expanded interconnected grid. Approximately five kilometres of new district heating pipes will be laid over the next three years to connect the solar thermal system and the interconnected grid. In addition to the CO2 savings that will be achieved through the growing share of renewable energies in the expanded district heating network, the declared goal of the large-scale project is to increase energy efficiency. "In order to ensure that energy is used as efficiently as possible, it is not only the heat generation and distribution by SWLB that is decisive, but also the consumer side," Skaletz explains and adds: "As part of the network interconnection, measures are therefore to be implemented to reduce the so-called return temperatures, on which the performance of our district heating network depends to a large extent."
SWLB submitted the funding application in November 2016. The project aims to increase the share of renewable energies in the district heating network and to actively promote local climate protection and the energy transition at the local level by reducing CO2 emissions. More information on the municipal climate protection model project at: www.swlb.de/solar-heat-grid
PM of the Stadtwerke Ludwigsburg-Kornwestheim from 12.05.2017
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