- Cooperation between federal States in Land Use Management – a successful framework for sustainable metropolitan development in Germany?    526 kb by    Weith, Thomas | weith@uni-potsdam.de    Short Outline The aim of this paper is to analyse current forms of cooperation in land use management between federal states in Germany, and to discuss options for enhancing cooperation to target sustainable metropolitan development. Abstract The aim of this paper is to analyse current forms of cooperation in land use management between federal states, and to discuss options for enhancing cooperation to target sustainable metropolitan development. Main questions to answer are what types of cooperation currently exist, how successful these cooperation are and in which way governance structures and instruments could be evolved. The findings bases on results of projects dealing with land use management, financed by several German Ministries, realized by the author. Cooperation is an overall accepted way for solving problems in spatial development and land use. By definition cooperation means collaboration in a complex way by developing and implementing common visions, targets, projects and establishing information and participation networks. In Germany cooperative interaction between federal states in land use management comprises first and foremost established activities in spatial and environmental planning. Additionally during the last few years new ways of debating political and administrative strategies and interacting in research networks has been established. At first sight formalized forms of cooperation in comprehensive spatial planning like in the Berlin-Brandenburg region are successful solutions. But on closer inspection in these areas growth of settlement areas is not significant under average. New ways of debating strategies in land use between federal states by organizing innovative working groups (e.g. “land use management in regions of transition”) or cooperating in a new research networks seems to open up more successful discussion processes about adequate targets, projects and networking. Although comparative comprehensive results are to be elaborated, the (second) more perspective and strategic approach seems to be more effective for reducing urban sprawl and settlement development. Based on a further elaborated comparison of cooperation activities, it is to be discussed which way of cooperation will be a successful model in future. Keywords land use management, cooperation, metropolitan governance 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