Since the 1980s, a new planning culture has evolved from critical rationalism in the regeneration of towns and villages. The principles of separation of functions and expert planning, as well as of total restructuring, have been superseded by careful renewal and critical reconstruction—all based on public discourses about shaping towns and villages and cultivated in informal framework planning, cooperative competition procedures, urban forums, and citizens’ appraisals.
Beyond the urban and rural cores, on the other hand, the development of landscape is still characterized by functional planning procedures. Land usages and infrastructures are developed according to principles of priority areas, taboo and buffer zones, exclusion criteria, and spacing regulations. Spatial structure concepts are usually lacking, as well as regional publicness.
The focus of this book is the question of how dialogical discourses, models, and procedures with regard to spatial structural qualities can be transferred from town and village centers to the planning of rural and suburban areas. The basis for this is a new social agreement on landscape.

With contributions by Dieter Hoffmann-Axthelm, Wolfgang Haber, Werner Konold, Rolf Kuhn, Hansjörg Küster, Peter Latz, Martina Löw, Holger Magel, and Jürgen Wenzel, among others