Working Group on ‘The protection and development of open space in spatial planning: innovative approaches in the context of sustainable development of settlement and transport areas’

The protection and development of open space is of fundamental importance for the future and is attracting considerable attention among researchers, planners, and policymakers. Sustainable Development Goal 15 notes the need to protect and restore terrestrial ecosystems and promote their sustainable use. This goal must be implementable at national and regional levels. It is also an issue that plays a significant role in society. Against the backdrop of climate change, extinctions, biodiversity loss, increasing land take and pollution, a key concern of spatial science and planning practice is to anchor the protection and development of open space in spatial planning much more comprehensively and firmly than before.
The issue of the protection and development of open space is controversial, and thus far both an in-depth analysis of the lines of argument invoked in land-use policy and purposeful proposals for specific instruments to safeguard open spaces and use less land have been lacking.

The Working Group will contribute to focusing political and social discussion on the issue and contribute to the development of integrated land-use policies. Among the questions it will focus on are: How can the protection and development of open space be established via formal and informal planning processes? Who will the key actors be in the protection and development of open space in the future, and on what models will land-use decisions be based? Where do we need to think about changed or new instruments for the protection and development of open space, and what other avenues could be pursued? And what experiences have other central European countries had with the protection and development of open space, and what can be learned from them?

The Working Group is headed by Univ.-Prof. Dr.-Ing. Christian Jacoby (University of the Bundeswehr Munich), Walter Kufeld (Regional Government of Upper Bavaria), and Prof. Dr. Hans-Jörg Domhardt (formerly TU Kaiserslautern).

Header image by  Ales Krivec from Unsplash