The Settlement Border in South Tyrol
Master Thesis Georg Dissertori
Supervisor Univ.Prof. Dipl.-Ing. Dr.techn. Arthur Kanonier
Technical University of Vienna
This practice-oriented research subject relates to the new spatial planning law in South Tyrol, which came into force on 1 July 2020. Through the almost completely rethought spatial planning, among other things the instrument of a settlement boundary, in future the "open landscape", is to protect against further urban sprawl. In the meantime, the undeveloped landscape in South Tyrol has not only attracted the interest of nature conservationists. Numerous representatives of agriculture, the tourism sector and politics have taken up the growing problem of the increasingly scarce permanent settlement area in South Tyrol, which is due in particular to the development of tourism, which has been progressing for decades.
WHERE CAN WE STILL GROW?
WHERE DO WE STILL WANT TO GROW?
WHY DO WE STILL WANT TO GROW?
South Tyrol interprets the settlement boundary not only as a task to contain urban sprawl, but also as a new administrative boundary between municipality and province, within which the municipality not only plans, but also decides. In addition, this boundary is not defined on a supra-regional level, but by the municipality and the citizens themselves.
In order to be able to define such an important boundary, extensive basic research is required of the municipalities in the new so-called Land Law for Spatial and Landscape. With the information gathered and as a result of a participatory process, the demarcation of the settlement area is to take place in the municipal development program for space and landscape, which is subsequently approved by the provincial government.
In the diagram visible below, all of the approximately 570 built-up village centres in South Tyrol are shown as a point in terms of the ratio of built-up to unbuilt-up area. A building density with the value "7" means that for the gross floor area of a building, an unbuilt area can be counted 7 times until the next building follows. This is an acceptable building density in peripherally located areas, as the proportion of private gardens, parking spaces for any agricultural machinery, etc. is significantly higher than in more urban areas.
For values of "10" or more, a closer look must be taken at the areas and built-up town centers, as the delimitation of the built-up town center may have been too generous, there may be errors in the data, or there may in fact be a large share of densification potential exists. The urban areas in South Tyrol have a building density around the value "4". These include Brixen, Bozen and Leifers. Densities around the value of "5" are more open, loosely built-up but still urban settlement structures.
[...] For it is precisely this protecting and preserving on the one hand and allowing change on the other that inevitably goes hand in hand with the settlement boundary. How large the settlement area ultimately is and where the boundary runs is, after all, at the same time an understanding of what one wants to protect. The task of the planner in a participatory process, and this is certainly a point in favour of local definition, is to try to build consensus with those who live there.
