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On the occasion of the meeting of the EU Ministers for Urban Development and Territorial Cohesion on the "New Leipzig Charter", Daniela Wagner, Spokesperson for Urban Development of the Alliance 90/The Greens in the German Bundestag, explains:

We welcome the "New Leipzig Charter". Without the transformational power of cities and the ideas and energy of their inhabitants, we will not be able to meet the challenges of the climate crisis. Nevertheless, the Charter contains considerable gaps. The guiding principle of the resilient city is missing. The development of robust and resilient cities is important in order to better assess risks and to be able to recognise and prevent dangers in good time. Nor is the model of the healthy city mentioned - despite the heat waves caused by the climate crisis, a never-ending stream of air pollutants from fossil combustion engines and the current challenge of a global pandemic.

In addition, there is a huge gap between the claims of the "New Leipzig Charter" and the actions of the Federal Government, which after all helped to develop the Charter. It would be nice if the content of the Charter were reflected to some extent in the policies of the Federal Government. For example, it is hard to understand why the paper talks about reducing land consumption, but the Federal Government does the exact opposite and reintroduces the land-grabbing paragraph 13b in the Building Code, which is highly questionable in terms of environmental and housing policy, or pushes through the construction of age-old plans from the Federal Transport Infrastructure Plan.

If the federal government is serious about affordable and well-designed housing being fundamental to urban development policy, then it should finally provide more affordable housing, double federal funding for social housing construction and introduce the New Housing Community Benefit. The energy turnaround in existing buildings should finally be advanced. With the "Fair Heat" action plan, we have presented a package of measures that financially incentivises investments in energy modernisation of housing with energy savings and the switch to renewable heat and significantly lowers the hurdles for the investments.

The statement in the Charter that urban transport and mobility systems should be efficient, climate-neutral and multimodal is also correct. Unfortunately, there is a considerable lack of implementation of the transport turnaround. What the federal government has done so far in terms of strengthening bus and rail pales in comparison to the billions in subsidies for the automotive industry. At the same time, the federal government is putting the brakes on the expansion of electromobility and has parked the topic of charging stations on the hard shoulder.

Source: PM of BÜNDNIS 90/DIE GRÜNEN in the German Bundestag from 30.11.2020

Keywords:
Soil & land consumption, DE-News, Mix of uses, Resource efficiency, SDG 2030, City, Environmental policy, Housing policy