Berlin is growing: according to a forecast from spring 2020, 3,925 million people are expected to inhabit the German capital by 2030. That is about 250,000 more people than today (as of December 2019). More people need more housing and more infrastructure. In construction planning, certain standards must be observed to preserve high-quality soils, soils with valuable functions that need to be protected and to prevent soils from being rendered impervious or destroyed. The planning advice for soil protection provides support here.
The “Planning Advice” Map was created by combining data on “Soil Associations” and “Soil-Scientific Characteristic Values” to develop “Criteria for the Evaluation of the Soil Functions”. These criteria formed the basis for deriving the “Soil Functions” according to the Federal Soil Protection Act (BBodSchG) and for assessing their need to be protected. The classes of impervious soil coverage were presented based on the respective information from the Environmental Atlas. This process also involved classifying how worthy of protection a soil is, which was implemented in five categories. Soils with a high habitat or archival function, such as bog soils are most worthy of protection. Interventions in the soil are only permitted to a limited extent here, if at all. They must be approved by the “Umwelt- und Naturschutzamt” (office for the environment and nature) of the borough in question.
The map reveals that areas particularly worthy of protection are concentrated on the western, northern and south-eastern periphery of the city: in the Spandauer Forst and in some parts of the Grunewald, on the Barnim and in the Köpenicker Forst.