PLANNING FOUNDATIONS
2.1.2 Building law

§ 1 (Scope, Definition and Principles of Urban Land-Use Planning) of the Federal Building Code (Baugesetzbuch/BauGB) stipulates that preparatory and legally binding land-use plans "shall contribute to securing a more humane environment and to protecting and developing the basic conditions for natural life". According to § 1 para. 6 of the Federal Building Code, what has to be especially considered is the "general requirement for living and working conditions which are conducive to good health" as well as environmental concerns.

Urban land-use planning treats especially the following noise-relevant problems:

• Confirming the inventory of consistent mixed uses and allocating new consistent uses aiming at traffic avoidance ("Municipality/City of short distances"; densification of settlements near public transport stops)
• Enlarging/conserving/protecting large-scale cohesive recreation areas
• Determining the location of new uses in accordance with the need for noise protection or with emission characteristics
• Relocating the fringe zones of emission-intensive uses due to immission conflicts with uses in need of noise protection
• Changing designated noise-intensive uses
• Representing areas with use restrictions etc.

Noise protection within urban land-use planning includes the following general recommendations:

• Polycentric city or municipality structures and a consistent mix of uses shall be encouraged in order to prevent traffic.
• The reduction of emissions at their source has priority over measures at the place of immission.
• New building areas/commercial areas shall preferably only be built in connection with public transport and rail etc.

§ 9 (Content of the Legally Binding Land-Use Plan) gives important noise protection planning measures by listing possible designations on urban-planning grounds.

According to § 9 para. 1 no. 24, the legally binding land-use plan can define "protected areas to be kept free from development with their uses, spaces for specific installations and measures to provide protection against harmful environmental impact within the meaning of the Federal Immission Control Act, and the provisions to be made, including building and other technical measures, to provide protection against such impact or to prevent or reduce such impact".

According to § 9 para. 5 no. 1, the binding land-use plan shall indicate "spaces which, on development, will require special physical provisions to counter external forces".

According to § 2 para. 4 of the Federal Building Code, environmental concerns – and this includes noise abatement – must be considered when drawing up urban development plans by carrying out an environmental impact assessment. Its purpose is to determine, describe and assess the presumed significant environmental impacts by applying Appendix 1 of the Federal Building Code. The municipalities are responsible for defining the required scope and degree of specification for the determination of the particular concerns. The results of the environmental impact assessment shall be taken into account by the authorities when weighing the concerns and taking their decision.

An environmental impact assessment can be dispensed with under certain conditions if legally binding land-use plans are drawn up in a simplified or accelerated procedure according to §§ 13 and 13a of the Federal Building Code. The major condition is that there is no justified permissibility of development projects which are subject to an obligatory environmental impact assessment according to the Environmental Impact Assessment Act (Gesetz über die Umweltverträglichkeitsprüfung/UVPG) or to Land law. No. 18 of Annex 1 to the Environmental Impact Assessment Act lists such building projects, like holiday villages, hotel complexes, leisure parks, car parks, industrial zones, shopping centres or urban development projects.

Noise protection often plays an important role in the decision on the permissibility of individual projects. This is especially true for:

• exceptions to and dispensations from the designations contained in the legally binding land-use plan according to § 31 of the Federal Building Code (para. 2: "... after taking due account of the interests of neighbours, deviation is compatible with public interests")
• the assessment of the permissibility of development projects within built-up areas according to § 34 of the Federal Building Code (para. 1: "The requirements of healthy living and working conditions must be satisfied; the overall appearance of the locality may not be impaired.")
• projects in the undesignated outlying area according to § 35 of the Federal Building Code (para. 3 sentence 3: "A conflict with public interests exists in particular where the development project may give rise to or is exposed to harmful environmental impact".)

The "Ordinance on the Utilization of Land for Building" (Federal Land Utilization Ordinance; Baunutzungsverordnung/BauNVO) contains a pollution control ranking corresponding to the purpose of the specific area by classifying the types of building zones according to §§ 2 to 9. The classification concerns both emissivity and immission sensitivity of the authorized uses. This is why the classification of the areas according to the Federal Land Utilization Ordinance (e.g. industrial areas, commercial areas, core areas, mixed areas, village areas, general residential areas, purely residential areas, small housing estates) can also be largely found in the context of the definition of immission guide values in the technical regulations on noise abatement (see section 2.6). Noise abatement issues are not only significant in the context of planning industrial uses (GI areas (= commercial areas) and GE areas (= industrial areas) as sound emitters) but they also represent a particular problem when defining other "special areas" according to § 11 of the Federal Land Utilization Ordinance. Noise abatement must also be considered in the planning of noise-sensitive areas. This not only includes external sound sources; significant sources of noise can also be found within such areas (e.g. entrances and exits of large underground parking lots, large parking lots for permitted or exceptionally permitted retail trade and traffic induced by the area itself).

What counts in practice is the possibility according to § 1 para. 4 of the Federal Land Utilization Ordinance to structure a building area (e.g. a commercial area) according to the type of permitted uses as well as the type of enterprises and installations and their particular needs and characteristics. And, above all, an area-related sound power level for noise immissions can be defined according to this ordinance (see section 7.3.2 on Sound allocation).

Other significant noise protection provisions can be found in § 15 of the Federal Land Utilization Ordinance on general conditions for the permissibility of constructional and other installations: These are inadmissible when they can produce nuisances and disturbances which are unacceptable in the building area itself or in its environment according to the type of building area or if they are exposed to such nuisances and disturbances (para. 1).

Another interesting point is paragraph 3, according to which the permissibility of installations in building areas shall not only be assessed within the meaning of the procedural classifications of the Federal Immission Control Act and the provisions made on the basis of this act. This makes clear that an "installation subject to licensing" in the context of pollution control may not exclusively be placed in an industrial area.

The consideration of immission control in building procedures is ensured by the general clause of § 3 of the Federal State Building Code of Baden-Württemberg (Landesbauordnung/LBO, 2010) and the general requirements defined therein: It determines that "installations ... are to be arranged, constructed and maintained in such a way that public safety and public policy, especially people's life, health and natural living conditions, are not in danger and that the installations can be used according to their purposes and without deficits. The same applies to the demolition of installations".

The provisions on the operation of building sites (§ 12 of Baden-Württemberg's Federal State Building Code) as well as on the protection from vibrations and noise (§ 14) have to be considered in particular. The provisions on service plants (§§ 29 to 33) shall prevent among others the sound transmission to adjacent rooms. If dwellings are shielded from a noisy environment by constructional sound insulation measures, the aspect of interior noise produced by service plants becomes more and more important. The particular requirements, also for the sound insulation of exterior building components, are elaborated in DIN 4109 (Sound insulation in buildings).