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09/10/2026 | News | Research

Conflicts Surrounding Major Current Urban Expansion Projects — Article on the Development of Suburban Landscapes Published in “Urban Planning”

@Landscape Planning and Communication

Why are large-scale greenfield urban expansion projects regaining importance as a planning tool in growing German cities — even though net-zero land consumption and “compact urban development” have been political goals for years? How are perceptions of suburban open spaces and their planning changing in order to address the resulting conflict of objectives between rising real estate prices and the preservation of green spaces? And in light of numerous protests, how can we explain that precisely those planning approaches — which mask rather than resolve this conflict of objectives — are meeting with particularly broad approval? Svenja Bochinski, together with Markus Leibenath and Nadja Diemunsch, has written an article on this topic, which has now been published in the journal Urban Planning.

Image: HardDisk, 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0

This article was produced as part of the DFG research project “City-regional, participation-oriented landscape policy ‘in the making’” and can be downloaded free of charge via open access: https://doi.org/10.17645/up.12005 

Abstract

The growing populations of many European cities have increased pressure on the housing supply and reignited political support for large-scale urban expansion. As a result, conflicts between housing development and the preservation of green spaces — particularly in suburban landscapes — have intensified. This article analyzes how such conflicts are politically negotiated and rhetorically stabilized in Hamburg and Munich — two major German cities facing a severe housing shortage. Drawing on poststructuralist discourse theories, the study examines political discourses on housing development and green space policy, with a particular focus on how tensions between these areas are negotiated. The analysis draws on political documents, planning documents, media reports, and semi-structured interviews. The findings identify three competing discourses that are articulated in largely similar ways in both cities: “Preservation of all green spaces,” “Deregulation for a housing construction push,” and “Construction should continue, just not everywhere.” While the first two discourses represent coherent but polarized positions and remain marginal, the third discourse has established itself as hegemonic. It claims to reconcile housing development with the preservation of green spaces, but does so by obscuring inherent contradictions through a series of recurring discursive strategies. The article argues that this hegemonic discourse enables a significant political shift: away from prioritizing inner-city development and toward legitimizing large-scale suburban development projects, while formally maintaining established sustainability goals. By demonstrating how growth-oriented rationalities are discursively stabilized, the study reveals the fragility of current policies regarding the suburban development of green spaces.