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Journal of Land Use Science 95
5.3. Germany’s urban sprawl landscape
The final product of our work is the urban sprawl map presented in Figure 7, using the
clusters described above. The map shows that compact metropolitan structures (black) are
concentrated around the core urban areas of the large cities and the urban compound of
the Rhine-Ruhr area. Suburban sprawl (grey) reaches outwards from the metropolitan
structures, with differing extents. The Stuttgart, Rhine-Main and Rhein-Ruhr areas, as
well as the southern parts of Saxony have the largest suburban sprawl expansions, followed
by the immediate surrounds of the major cities (Munich, Nuremberg, Berlin, Hanover,
Bremen, Hamburg). Suburban sprawl also appears without metropolitan areas in the centre,
for example, in and around medium-sized cities. Exurban sprawl is then shown in a small dot
texture. It can be found in vast areas of the western German states, in Thuringia and Saxony
indicating the characteristic expansion of urbanisation into rural areas. Exurban sprawl is
usually present in all regions that are not part of conservation areas or very remote from
urban agglomerations. Finally, shrinkage sprawl (large dotted texture) dominates in large
parts of peripheral Brandenburg, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, and Saxony-Anhalt, in small
occurrences also in some parts of Saxony, Bavaria and Lower Saxony.
6. Towards a political implementation of sprawl monitoring in Germany
In the recent past, the German federal and state governments have further improved their spatial
and environmental monitoring capacities. This includes both, the development of new GIS
based data sources on land use integrated digital data on cadastral and topographic information
and environmental resources as well as the establishment of enhanced indicator systems. In
2004, the Conference of the State Environment Ministers (‘Umweltministerkonferenz’) passed
a sustainability indicator concept (‘LIKI-Indikatoren’) that covers a broad range of sustainability
related issues including land consumption for urban purposes and landscape fragmentation
(Umweltministerkonferenz 2004). However, there is still a lack of sophisticated
measures by which a thorough indication of affected areas and an assessment of sprawl’s
impacts could be undertaken. As mentioned above, simple indicators like the daily conversion
of non-urban to urban land uses still dominate the political and public view on land use change.
Against this background, our work could help to foster the scope and spatial
refinement of monitoring, reporting and evaluation approaches on federal, state and
regional levels. An improved urban land use monitoring supports the identification of
problem areas, the derivation of sprawl-type specific strategies, policy targets and
measures as well as the evaluation of anti-sprawl measures implemented in state,
regional and local policies.
As shown in Section 3 of this article, our measurement concept addresses different
types of urban sprawl in Germany and their spatial coverage (see Figure 7). We
differentiate compact urban structures that can be found in the metropolitan core areas,
suburban and exurban types of sprawl. For each of these types a specific profile of
environmental and economic problems can be expected. Taking this into account, typespecific
anti-sprawl strategies and instruments should be implemented. Therefore, an
effective sprawl monitoring can overcome the ‘spatial fuzziness’ of current land use
policies.
Furthermore, our work is relevant for the evaluation of federal, state and local land use
policies. We offer methodological ways to measure progress towards a more environmentally
friendly and economically efficient urban development. As an example, the relatively
low average values for indicator 7 (openness index) exhibit serious shortcomings of regional