Der Flächennutzungsplan als kommunales Steuerungsinstrument. Eine Analyse der Wirkungsmöglichkeiten und Grenzen.

In the land-use plan, the long-term planning objectives are presented. As a key municipal controlling instrument, it has the task of guiding building and land use in the municipality during a period of 10 to 15 years and setting the binding framework within which it takes place. This happens principally by way of a programming function that the land-use plan assumes vis-à-vis more concrete and smaller-scale local plans. Nonetheless, a whole series of factors influence the municipal planning objectives.
The phenomenal knowledge interest of this study concerns the question of whether these influences on the planning objectives restrict the programming function of the land-use plan and thereby its controlling effect. The causal knowledge interest consists of the question of where, as a result, there is a need for change. An up-to-date empirical analysis of the controlling effect is hitherto lacking in the scholarly literature. Up to now, the problematic has been chiefly considered from a legal point of view, not, however, from a social scientific one.
Since no already formulated hypotheses are available, the following falsifiable correlation hypothesis is developed: “The land-use plan is suitable as a municipal controlling instrument.” The testing takes place with the content analysis using the data for Bavaria's 25 urban districts, which are not associated to a county, for the period from 2007 to 2016.
The results of the investigation show that the hypothesis cannot be falsified with complete certainty. Nonetheless, a large number of new findings on the controlling effect are obtained.
Thus, the land-use plan does not entirely fulfil its function as a binding program for planning and does not have the significance that the legislator intended for it. The smaller the municipality, the more limited too the suitability of the land-use plan as a municipal controlling instrument. The current influences that are most responsible for restricting the planning-binding function of the land-use plan are population development, economic development, and the shift to alternative sources of energy. The empirical investigation and analysis does not provide support for the dominant view in the scholarly literature, according to which a new land-use plan must be drawn up after a period of between 10 and 15 years.
Thanks to these findings, the academic void is closed and the current state of research is, for the first time, extended to include social scientific findings. The new findings on the temporal horizon of the land-use plan could lead to the conclusion among municipalities that the latter should first be replaced following a planning horizon of 30 to 35 years. In this way, less costs are created, without the controlling function being weakened.