- The economic View on urban Sprawl in decentralised metropolitan Areas and their Hinterland    392 kb by    Engelke, Dirk & Beck, Torsten | engelke@pakora.net    Short Outline The case study will have a look at the different forces of urban sprawl in decentralised metropolitan areas and their hinterland and will focus the economic view on urban sprawl in medium sized cities of the hinterland of these areas. Abstract Decentralised polycentric metropolitan areas are quite common in German spatial planning. The present shape of land- and townscape of these areas is diverging. Urban sprawl and the consumption of land are quite different in the narrow metropolitan or city area and its hinterland. Due to cultural habits, individual convenience and real estate market the number of square metres per inhabitant is significantly higher in the hinterland than in the narrow city area. The shape of urban sprawl in the hinterland can be considered as a typical shape of urban sprawl of medium sized cities. Its shape is different from the well known one in the border zone between the narrow city area and its surroundings. Even the driving forces of urban sprawl are different in these areas. On one hand the structure of investments, their type of investors and their type of investment is diverging. And on the other hand the organisation of (public) services is different. So in the end it’s the question of private and public needs and burden-sharing. Due to the demographic changes in Germany there will be – at least at the medium term – a concentration of population in the metropolitan areas and shrinking in the Hinterland and the countryside. This has an enormous effect on the economics of burden-sharing between private and public and e.g. infrastructure systems. This is especially due to the structure of providers of (public) services. In the metropolitan areas (with many clients) there are mainly privately organised providers and the hinterland (with fewer clients) the services are organised by public providers and in the end paid by the public. The case study will have a look at the different forces of urban sprawl in decentralised metropolitan areas and its hinterland and will focus the economic view on urban sprawl in medium sized cities of the hinterland are in decentralised metropolitan areas. The case study will provide actual results on a research project funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, called FLAIR. Keywords Land Use Management, Urban Sprawl Case Study presented on the ISOCARP Congress 2008: Urban Growth without Sprawl   Click to open the full paper as pdf document   Click to send an email to the author(s) of this paper