Download - Fachgebietes Ökonomie des Planens und Bauens ...

Summary
11
Summary
Urban Development Grants as a part of the system of
urban regeneration in Germany have been a flexible
instrument for several decades that was able to create
multiple leverage effects and to stimulate private
investment. The measures and funding in the program
of “Städtebauliche Sanierungsmaßnahmen” building
on area-based regeneration has been completed in
numerous areas, and one may ask if the funding areas
were able to return to “normality”. The Federal Institute
for Research on Building, Urban Affairs and Spatial
Development therefore launched a case study based research
project that was supposed to analyze long-term
effects and to give recommendations for a possible
increase in effectiveness of the program.
The methodology of the study had to face the enormous
range of different types of regeneration strategies that
reflects the great flexibility of the program. It had to
include a number of areas in which the regeneration
process has not yet been completed to be able to cover
East Germany where the program was invented only
after 1990. As a result, the study confirmed earlier
studies that stressed the high flexibility and appropriateness
of the program to upgrade neighbourhoods
with multiple development constraints and symptoms
of urban blight. The main types of neighbourhoods that
are covered by the program are historic cores of small
and middle-sized towns on the one hand and compact
inner city neighbourhoods from the late 19th and early
20th centuries. Besides, the program covers various
other types of neighbourhoods such as reconstructed
inner cities, the regeneration of abandoned industrial
or military sites and workers’ villages to name but a
few. The main goal of the local strategies is a careful
regeneration that tries to keep and to modernize as
much of the old housing and building stock as possible.
The regeneration process is to contribute to liveability,
social cohesion and economic attractiveness of the
neighbourhoods. Main approaches are the improvement
of public spaces and social infrastructure and the
preservation of monuments.
Urban regeneration poses a high bureaucratic challenge.
The complexity, the high number of stakeholders
and the long-term orientation of regeneration procedures
require the establishment of powerful organizational
structure within and transcending the city hall.
An analysis of the procedures shows that the interdepartmental
cooperation is usually well organized.
Many cities make use of trustees or agents that are able
to cope with the complex procedural needs. However,
many smaller towns try to control the implementation
themselves and to avoid the costs of agents. In bigger
cities the procedures are very complex, and the cities
need to care for making regeneration a high priority
policy issue and to integrate the departments constructively
so as to be able to complete the regeneration
process speedily. After sometimes very conflictive
first years, the cities mostly managed to establish civic
regeneration councils and to get civil society initiatives
involved and thus substantially improved their communication
and participatory tools. However, in some
cities the standard of participation is still modest.
There are two groups of cities when it comes to analyzing
the regeneration strategies, one focussing mostly on
infrastructural measures and the other on construction
measures. The first group consists mainly of small and
medium-sized towns that try to functionally upgrade
their cores. The second group is dominated by bigger
cities where upgrading the housing stock is particularly
important. Both strategies can be successful if they
care for a consistent allocation of resources throughout
the regeneration process and if they avoid lopsided
concentrations. Infrastructural measures contribute to
a stimulation of private investment especially in small
and medium-sized towns. In bigger cities this strategy
is applied nowadays, too, but historically trustees or
public housing companies were stronger in developing
the housing stock themselves. While poorer municipalities
have problems bringing up their co-funding,
many cities and towns are able to actively bundle additional
funding from other programs, especially when
they integrate their regeneration strategy into the
Langzeitwirkungen und Effektivierung der Städtebauförderung