As a result of changes in climate, energy policy and demography, the demands on the extent and complexity of planning have highly increased. Therefore, municipal planning authorities depend on reliable and manageable methods and planning tools (with or without IT) to prepare professional and well-founded decisions regarding future settlement development. 

The project aims to support cities and municipalities to actively design and implement a climate-adapted and land-saving settlement development by using informal and formal planning processes. To offer guidance and information in the fields of land-saving, climate protection and climate adaptation, an action guideline shall be provided to central stakeholders on municipal level and other important stakeholders (e.g., planners, architects, etc.).

Various selected case studies shall be contributed to test, validate and if necessary qualify planning tools and methods. Additionally, it shall be examined whether there is need for further development of informal or formal testing and planning instruments, including their methods, as well as the existing funding instruments of Germany's federal and state governments. On the basis of identified instrumental deficits and other obstacles, approaches and proposals shall be provided to solve them. 

Within this project, the Wuppertal Institute is working in particular on the topic of climate adaptation and undertakes the following tasks:

• Clarifications and definition of research questions in the topic of land-saving land use management as well as adaptation of urban settlements and infrastructures to climate change
• Inventory of all relevant instruments and methods (lead)
• Assistance to analyse, assess and choose appropriate methods, tools, and instruments according to their appropriateness to solve the different research questions
• Assistance to test and qualify selected planning tools on the basis of municipal case studies which represent typical German settlement structures as well as typical demographical, climate-related, and land affecting problems
• Assistance to summarise research, analyses, and assessments of planning methods and tools, as well as the results of the selected case studies and good practice examples; afterwards assistance to prepare a practicable guidance and decision tool in form of an action guideline for municipalities