Urban land use planning

Urban land use planning is a planning tool for guiding and ordering the urban development of a municipality. It is carried out in two stages in a formal procedure that is comprehensively regulated in the Building Code (BauGB). First, in the preparatory urban land use planning, a land use plan is drawn up for the entire municipality (§§ 5 - 7 BauGB). In the binding urban land use planning, development plans are then drawn up for spatial sub-areas of the municipality (§§ 8 - 10 BauGB).

The municipalities are responsible for drawing up urban land use plans. They are subject to the legal supervision of the higher administrative authorities and the judiciary's control of standards.