When drawing up land utilisation or development plans, municipalities must also publish drafts for urban development contracts. This is the result of a ruling by the Higher Administrative Court of Berlin-Brandenburg, to which Rechtsanwalt Prof. Dr Matthias Dombert referred at an event organised by the Federal Association for Housing and Urban Development in Berlin (Ref.: 2 A 8.11 dated 22 September 2015). In this judgement, the Senate stated that the regulation of a sales area limit in an urban development contract that supplements the development plan is only permissible if „the contract was already concluded before the resolution on the development plan was passed and was the subject of consideration and public participation“.

„According to this case law, everything that is the subject of the municipality's decision to weigh up must also be the subject of public participation,“ emphasised Dombert in his presentation to decision-makers from districts, municipalities and authorities. Until now, the practice has often been different. However, municipalities can no longer be content - as the wording of Section 3 (2) of the German Building Code might suggest - to only publicly display „the drafts of the urban land-use plans... together with the justification and what the municipality considers to be the essential environmental comments already available“, said Dombert.