I§ 1 (Scope, Definition and Principles of Urban Land-Use Planning) of the Federal Building Code (BAUGESETZBUCH, BauGB, 1986) (available in German) stipulates that preparatory and legally binding land-use plans "shall contribute to securing a more humane environment and to protecting and developing the basic conditions for natural life". According to § 1 para. 5 of the Federal Building Code, what has to be especially considered is the "general requirement for living and working conditions which are conducive to good health" as well as environmental concerns.

Urban land-use planning treats especially the following noise-relevant problems:

• Confirming the inventory of consistent mixed uses and allocating new consistent uses aiming at traffic avoidance ("Municipality/City with short paths"; "Densification of settlements near the stops of public transport")

• Enlarging/conserving/protecting large-scale cohesive recreation areas

• Determining the locations of new uses in accordance with the need for noise protection or with emission characteristics

• Relocating the fringe zones of emission-intensive uses due to immission conflicts with uses in need of noise protection

• Changing designated noise-intensive uses

• Representing areas with use restrictions etc.

Noise protection within urban land-use planning includes the following general recommendations:

• Polycentric city or municipality structures and a consistent mix of uses shall be encouraged in order to prevent traffic

• The reduction of emissions at their source has priority over immission protection measures

• New building areas/commercial areas shall preferably only be built in connection with public transport and rail etc.

§ 9 (Content of the Legally Binding Land-Use Plan) gives significant noise protection planning measures by listing possible designations on urban-planning grounds.

According to § 9 para. 1 No. 24, the legally binding land-use plan can define "protected areas to be kept free from development with their uses, spaces for specific installations and measures to provide protection against harmful environmental impact within the meaning of the Federal Immission Control Act, and the provisions to be made, including building and other technical measures, to provide protection against such impact or to prevent or reduce such impact".

According to § 9 para. 5 No. 1, the binding land-use plan shall indicate "spaces which, on development, will require special physical provisions to counter external forces".

The legally binding land-use plan contains an environmental impact assessment if it prepares projects according to Annex 1 to the Environmental Impact Assessment Act (Umweltverträglichkeitsprüfungsgesetz, UVPG) and the mentioned characteristics/values are on hand or may have considerable negative environmental impacts according to the required preliminary examination of individual cases or if it replaces a plan approval decision according to Annex 1 to the Environmental Impact Assessment Act. According to § 17 of the Environmental Impact Assessment Act, the environmental impact assessment "shall be performed in the planning procedure as an environmental assessment pursuant to the provisions of the Building Code".

No. 18 of Annex 1 to the Environmental Impact Assessment Act lists building projects like holiday villages, hotel complexes, leisure parks, car parks, industrial zones, shopping centres or urban development projects. But projects listed under the other numbers also require an environmental impact assessment if the admissibility of the project is based on a local development plan.

Noise protection often plays an important role as for decisions on the permissibility of individual projects. This is especially true for:

- exceptions to and dispensations from the designations contained in the legally binding land-use plan according to § 31 of the Federal Building Code (para. 2: "...after taking due account of the interests of neighbours, deviation is compatible with public interests")

- the assessment of the permissibility of development projects within built-up areas according to § 34 of the Federal Building Code (para. 1: "The requirements of healthy living and working conditions must be satisfied; the overall appearance of the locality may not be impaired.")

- building in the undesignated outlying area according to § 35 of the Federal Building Code (para. 3, second indent: pollution control as an important criteria for deciding about the permissibility of projects)

The "Ordinance on the utilisation of land for building" - Federal Land Utilisation Ordinance (BAUNUTZUNGSVERORDNUNG, BauNVO, 1993) (available in German) - contains a pollution control ranking corresponding to the purpose of the specific area by classifying the types of building zones according to §§ 2 to 9. This classification concerns both emissivity and immission sensitivity of the authorized uses. This is why the classification of the areas according to the Federal Land Utilisation Ordinance (e.g. industrial areas, commercial areas, core areas, mixed areas, village areas, general residential areas, purely residential areas, small housing estates) can also be found in the context of the definition of immission guide values in the technical set of regulations on noise abatement (see section 2.5). Noise abatement issues are not only significant in the context of planning industrial uses (GI areas, i.e. commercial areas, and GE areas, i.e. industrial areas) but they also represent a particular problem when defining other "special areas" according to § 11 of the Federal Land Utilisation Ordinance.

What counts in practice is the possibility according to § 1 para. 4 of the Federal Land Utilisation Ordinance to structure a building area (e.g. a commercial area) according to the type of permitted uses and the type of enterprises and installations and their particular needs and characteristics. And, above all, an area-related sound power level for noise immissions can be defined according to this ordinance.

Other provisions that are significant for noise protection issues can be found in § 15 of the Federal Land Utilisation Ordinance about general conditions for the permissibility of constructional and other installations:

These are inadmissible when they can produce nuisances and disturbances which are unacceptable in the building area itself or in its neighbouring area according to the type of building area or if they are exposed to such nuisances and disturbances (para. 1).

We also would like to point to the newly added paragraph 3, according to which the permissibility of installations in building areas shall not only be assessed within the meaning of the procedural classifications of the Federal Immission Control Act and the provisions made on the basis of this act. This makes clear that an "installation subject to licensing" in the context of pollution control may not exclusively be placed in an industrial area.

The consideration of pollution control in building procedures is ensured by the general clause of § 3 of the Federal State Building Code (LANDESBAUORDNUNG, LBO, 1995) and the general requirements defined there: It determines that installations are to be arranged, constructed and maintained in such a way that public safety and public policy, especially people's life and health, are not in danger and that the installations can be used according to their purposes and without deficits. The same applies to the demolition of installations.

The provisions on the operation of building sites (§ 14 of the Federal State Building Code) as well as on the protection from vibrations and noise (§ 16 of the Federal State Building Code) have to be considered in particular. The provisions on service plants (§§ 32 to 35) are to prevent among other things the sound transmission to adjacent rooms. If dwellings are shielded from a noisy environment by constructional sound insulation measures, the aspect of interior noise produced by service plants becomes more and more important. The requirements for the sound insulation of exterior building components are elaborated in DIN 4109.