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The urgency of the energy transition is in conflict with delaying effects and options that are not optimally used in the complex, multi-stage German planning system. This also applies to the law and procedures of spatial planning, as well as the interaction of spatial planning with construction planning and sectoral law. Here, fundamental reform options have not yet been exhausted, despite many current legislative projects. Some procedural steps and options for legislative deviations can be eliminated altogether, the interaction of planning and decision-making levels can be made more effective, and subject-related certain hierarchical levels in the planning system could be omitted on a topic-specific basis. Based on a brief analysis of the initial situation for spatial planning, this paper first provides corresponding general considerations on such far-reaching acceleration options and their consequences. This is followed by the presentation of numerous specific spatial planning-related optimisation options. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the beginning of this decade, society has been confronted with multiple crises that also act as new drivers of spatial development. Based on a literature review and qualitative interviews with housing market actors, this paper presents an interim balance of the lasting influence of the Covid-19 pandemic on housing preferences and location decisions as well as initial empirical knowledge and theses on the effects of the 2022 energy crisis on these decisions. It emerges that the energy crisis already has a greater impact on spatial development today and will probably have a greater impact in the medium and long term than the pandemic. Housing preferences that arose during the pandemic have already shifted again or can no longer be implemented at present. At the same time, the influences of the pandemic can no longer be considered in isolation from the energy crisis. While the pandemic will further intensify spatial deconcentration processes, the effects of the energy crisis are spatially more differentiated. Moreover, in a time of multiple crises, future spatial development will not be shaped by individual crises, but by their interaction - also with long-standing trends such as the ageing of society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]