Municipal association: Maximum 700 m² plots for single-family homes

“Land is a limited resource,” said Municipal Association President Johannes Pressl at the presentation of a current survey in which 440 mayors took part. The result was hardly surprising: 98.1 percent of the local leaders want to continue to have the authority for spatial design in the community in their hands.

A comment on the topic: Sisyphean work

Pressl is aware that land use must be limited. The association of municipalities has therefore drawn up a “municipal soil protection plan”, which is still being discussed with scientists and will be approved in September.

A sense of proportion when allocating new space

Among other things, it is planned that new building plots should only have a certain size. The draft states that single-family home plots may only be 700 m2 in size in the future. Anyone who reduces individual plots by dividing them should be supported. “We have to allocate new space with a sense of proportion. Building higher is also an issue.” Existing properties need to be rethought. “Heirs get grandma’s house, they want to keep it and it doesn’t come on the market,” said Pressl. He doesn’t want to take anything away from anyone, but people have to be motivated to use living space.

Expropriations are a difficult issue. However, Pressl is calling for more legal options for communities to make it easier to rededicate existing building land that is not being used. Town centers should be put to greater use again and vacancies should be avoided. Pressl was reserved about the taxation of vacant properties, saying that the respective regional circumstances had to be taken into account.

The head of the community association thinks nothing of the goal of limiting land consumption in Austria to 2.5 hectares per day. 70 percent of mayors spoke out against this limit in the survey. It is currently assumed that daily land consumption is around 12 hectares.

Reactions

The Green Secretary General Olga Voglauer strongly criticized the “sham survey” among mayors: It was downright disrespectful to try to brush off the concern of limiting land consumption in this way. The environmental protection organizations Greenpeace and WWF were also outraged that the community association was against the 2.5 hectare target and that Austria would continue to be covered in concrete.