Nature Intrusion Offset Areas Pool in Tempelhof-Schöneberg, Berlin

As statutory demands on protecting species and nature grow, so does pressure for utilizing intra-urban areas. Therefore, the Tempelhof-Schöneberg Borough-Office commissioned the definition of areas that can be used for nature conservation in public green spaces.

Together with the Department for City Planning, the Office for Environmental and Nature Protection and the Department for Green Spaces, as well as a public charity in the district’s south, we created the Tempelhof-Schöneberg nature intrusion offset concept in line with the German Impact Mitigation Regulation.

FUGMANN JANOTTA PARTNER analyzed 25 green spaces in the Tempelhof-Schöneberg district for their potential as nature conservation areas and created biotopes for specially and strictly protected species. We also performed an extensive analysis of both the relevance and the locations of protected species and biotopes in the district that may become especially relevant when planning projects or often mean that other biotopes have to be created by the constructor under the German Impact Mitigation Regulation in order to offset the entailed intrusion into nature.

In addition to nature preservation aspects, our aim was to warrant the feasibility of such projects and long-term care for such areas in line with the established green spaces management of the city of Berlin. This way we will better integrate nature protection requirements into Berlin’s city development. As a result of our analysis, we excluded numerous areas from further processing despite a large number of areas with a high potential for nature preservation.

Finally, we created a catalogue of methods that builds upon Berlin’s care standards for green and open spaces. It is a comprehensive plan to represent the inventory and the potential areas for creating, upgrading and maintaining natural spaces under the German Impact Mitigation Regulation in the analyzed areas. This will enable the district’s authorities to combine several offsetting measures for various interventions. As a result, they will be able to guarantee the success of such measures while meeting the special requirements of the green spaces involved.