Do Administrative Incentives for the Containment of Cities Work? An Analysis of the Accelerated Procedure for Binding Land-Use Plans for Inner Urban Development in Germany

In order to reduce land conversion for settlement and traffic purposes, the German government introduced in 2002 the 30 ha per day objective and since then established a number of policies and projects in order to achieve this goal in 2030. On 1 January 2007, an amendment of the Federal Building Code came into force, which introduced an accelerated procedure for binding land-use plans for inner urban development (section 13a). The aim of this amendment was to simplify and accelerate the planning law for projects to support inner urban development. This paper seeks to answer the question of whether or not the accelerated procedure contributes to increased inner urban development by providing incentives for the reuse of vacant developed land, which are often contaminated sites. Based on the example of the city of Stralsund in the rural region of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, we explore the quantitative land development in the inner and outer area from 1990 to 2018 and calculate costs savings for developers and public authorities. The results reveal that, although the accelerated procedure has been widely applied in the city of Stralsund since 2007, its effect on increased inner urban development has been very limited. The magnitude of the cost advantage is rather small, so that the accelerated procedure is often not regarded as decisive for the decision of inner versus outer development. The accelerated procedure has reduced the administrative burden for developers and public administration; however, in order to reach the 30 ha per day objective, more tailored policy instruments are needed.