Top priority: Reduce land consumption – Main-Kinzig district records its development potential digitally
Gelnhausen/Hanau in June 2019 – The Main-Kinzig district faces major challenges when it comes to attracting companies to the region, as commercial space is becoming scarce. However, there is development potential in every district, such as brownfields, vacancies and undeveloped land that can be better used. These inner development potentials are now being digitally surveyed in a project under the leadership of the Kreiswirtschaftsförderung.
The Main-Kinzig district is breaking new ground with Winfried Ottmann, Head of Economic Affairs, in order not to constantly designate new industrial estates, but to make use of the existing inner-local development potential in the sense of sustainable land management. In a digital model project with the character of a lighthouse for the state of Hesse, the existing commercial potential is to be recorded, digitized and activated using the interior development software aREAL® of the Hanau-based company immovativ GmbH.
In a first step, the still available commercial areas in the industrial estates in the district will be digitized and presented in the municipal real estate portal (KIP) of the respective municipality and district as an interactive property plan. This online presentation enables companies and investors to obtain a comprehensive overview of available areas for new locations in a map display at any time.
In a second step, the experts at immovativ GmbH convert already existing surveys on intra-local development potentials into a uniform data format and make them available to the respective business development agencies in a database. Using a mobile iPad application, the data can then be quickly and easily updated by the municipalities and further brownfields, commercial real estate and vacancies can be recorded.
Want to raise the inner-local development potential (from left to right): Susanne Reinert (immovativ), Winfried Ottmann (county councillor), Walter Dreßbach (head of the department for economy, labour and digital infrastructure) and Stefan Müller-Schleipen (immovativ).
The development potentials are transferred directly from the app to the database and can then be visualized in a map view. This provides all municipalities in the Main-Kinzig district with a daily updated overview of urban land reserves, a digital construction gap and vacancy register and legal protection in accordance with the building code. In order to reduce land consumption, the law requires a development “inside before outside”. On the basis of the collected data and the aREAL® software, usage concepts can then be developed together with the owners or the properties can be marketed.
With the use of the software, land consumption in the Main-Kinzig district is to be sustainably reduced in order to make a contribution to environmental and climate protection.
“Detached from the question of climate protection and internal development, I, as Head of the Economic Affairs Department, welcome the project, because it will make the potential for space transparent for businesses. In this way, jobs can be created in the future and the entire Main-Kinzig district secured as a business location,” said Winfried Ottmann, Head of Economic Affairs. “It would be desirable in the course of the implementation of the project if the municipalities in the district were to give up their church tower thinking in this way and jointly develop industrial sites where it is appropriate, because as the Main-Kinzig district, we are only perceived as a joint entity in the Rhine-Main region and can only be strong together”.
Employees of some municipalities in the district have already taken part in an introduction and training course. They come from Bad Orb, Bad Soden-Salmünster, Bruchköbel, Hanau, Maintal, Neuberg and Schlüchtern.
