Guiding document for urban development in Europe: The New Leipzig Charter

The New Leipzig Charter(link is external)refers to the well-known sustainability triangle and advocates a socially just (just), green (green) and economically productive (productive) city. To enable European municipalities to achieve these three closely related dimensions, the document provides them with five key principles:

• Orientation towards the common good, i.e. a sufficient supply of infrastructures, services of general interest and affordable housing for all people;
• integrated approach and work between individual departments and across different levels;
• Participation and co-creation in the sense of a real co-creation of the entire urban society in urban development projects;
• Multi-level cooperation (multi-level governance) of all political-administrative levels as well as all social actors including civil society and the private sector;
• as well as a location-based approach, which is based on local requirements and finds tailor-made solutions.

It focuses on the district as well as the city as a whole and the urban region (functional area) as fields of action. In the case of the latter (urban region / surrounding area / functional areas) the New Leipzig Charter shows overlaps with its spatial “twin document”, the Territorial Agenda 2030 (link is external)which was adopted a day later. While the charter focuses on urban development, the focus of the agenda, which bears the title “A future for all places”, is on balanced spatial development in Europe.