Implementation of law and statutory provisions on industrial immission control in urban planning

• Applicant: Professorin Dr.-Ing. Sabine Baumgart
• Subject Area: City Planning, Spatial Planning, Transportation and Infrastructure Planning, Landscape Planning
• Term: from 2014 to 2017
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 249144863

The research project aims to analyse administrative behaviour of city planning departments concerning the enforcement of planning law in the domain of industrial emission control. Here, urban planners have to consider and adhere to several laws including the Federal Building Code (Baugesetzbuch), Federal Immission Control Act (Bundesimmissionsschutzgesetz) and other statutory provisions. Most influential for the effectiveness of the respective laws are the enforcement practices on the local level as well as differences in local planning culture. The observation of municipal practices reveals considerable disparities in enforcement which can be traced back to locally varying interpretations of the scope of discretion. However, these disparities have not been systematically explored and conceptualised to date. The aim of this research project is to analyse how legal norms on industrial immission control are implemented by stakeholders in urban planning. Hereby we aim to identify and explain different types of administrative behaviour. For this it is necessary to identify core factors influencing the scope of discretion in urban planning. The case studies of industrial immission control will be the prevention of noise and major industrial accidents. These two domains have been selected as they characterise two different types of risk with regard to probability, spatial extent and number of people affected. Furthermore there is an ongoing debate on both topics. In detail four core aims are pursued: Aim 1: to systematically capture the implementation of law and statutory provisions concerning industrial major accidents and industrial noise immission control in urban planning, Aim 2: to identify variables influencing the implementation,Aim 3: to establish a systematic typology of the variables influencing the implementation, Aim 4: to draw conclusions for administrative behaviour of city planning departments concerning the enforcement of planning law in the domain of industrial immission control.The theoretical literature review will result in a categorisation of established variables influencing the implementation of laws and in an analysis of the key requirements for the prevention of noise and major industrial accidents. The empirical research will then follow a mixed methods approach including a quantitative online survey, qualitative expert interviews in case study areas and a Delphi. The theoretical framework of Actor-Centered Institutionalism provides the heuristic model for the research.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants