The Federal Office for Building and Regional Planning

Urban Development Support

Since the beginning of the 1970's, the Federal Government and Federal States – in the framework of the Federal Government-Federal States programmes – have together been providing financial support for investments in the reformation and development of cities and communities in the framework of programmes for the urban development support. This is to strengthen the function of the cities as economic and living locations. Programmes of urban development support are

  • Urban development and redevelopment measures
  • Social City programme
  • BIWAQ
  • Protection of the urban architectural heritage
  • Urban restructing in the new federal states
  • Urban restructing in the old federal states
  • Active district and neigbourhood centres
  • Investment pact
  • Smaller cities and municipalities

Regulations for carrying out urban development support are defined in Constitutional Law, the Federal Building Code and the administrative agreements between the Federal Government and the Federal States. The Federal Institute for Research on Building, Urban Affairs and Spatial Development (BBSR) supports the Federal Ministry for Housing, Urban Development and Building (BMWSB) in the implementation of the urban development support with its research. Its tasks are:

  • Distribution basis: the BBSR annually calculates the basis on which financial support is paid to the Federal States on behalf of the BMWSB.
  • Monitoring/Programme evaluation: the BMWSB maintains a database, which continuously stores all measures of urban development support with the corresponding Federal financial support (commitment scope). The BBSR regularly evaluates this data in the scope of the execution control and completes them with socio-economic indicators on community level. The importance of programme evaluation is also increasing.
  • Policy advising: the BBSR advises the BMWSB generally on questions of urban development and compiles reports, analyses and forecasts for this and uses the existing information sources such as the urban development grant database for specific questions of the BMWSB.
  • Programme supervision and knowledge transfer: a part of the financial support from the programmes of urban development support (exception: urban planning redevelopment and development measures) are at the disposal for the programme-specific accompanying research. The BMWSB commissioned the BBSR with the programme-specific accompanying research.

Further information about the Urban Development Support programme:
www.staedtebaufoerderung.info

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