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T. Viderman:
"REFINA-An Integrated and Multilevel Approach to Dealing with Land Consumption?";
European Planning Studies, 23 (2014), 3; 550 - 567.

In Germany, land consumption for settlement and transport development amounts to
100 ha/day, thus significantly exceeding the goal set by Germany´s sustainability strategy, which aims at reducing the rate of the expansion of built-up areas to 30 ha/day by the year 2020. Increased orientation of local authorities and stakeholders towards the promotion of economic competitiveness, complex interrelations between actors involved in planning, substantial planning autonomy of Germany´s local administrative units, as well as stronger democratic norms in planning, render a traditional linear planning scheme obsolete. The federal administration and publicly funded research institutions therefore opted for a non-legislative approach aiming at the production of a body of methodologies, which would engage participation processes and deliberative decision-making. The name being a German acronym for "Research for the Reduction of Land Consumption and for Sustainable Land Management", this collaborative national programme gathered a number of planning actors who have framed the complex topic of sustainable land use into a series of manageable, fundable and adjustable projects which take into account multiple spatial and time scales. This paper emphasizes the elements found within REFINA which lead the way towards a strategic communication-based, integrated and multilevel approach to dealing with land consumption.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09654313.2013.878311