Current governance and planning systems for open spaces in pilot sites

WPT2 - Local governance and implementation level. Deliverable D.T2.1.1

Authors: Peter Laner, Ranzoni Marco, Andrea Omizzolo, Eurac Research - Institute for Regional Development Bolzano/Bozen. With contribution of Philipp Vesely, Juliette Conrad; Salzburg Institute for Regional Planning and Housing (SIR), Constantin Meyer, University of Würzburg (JMU), Andrej Gulič, Sergeja Praper, Simon Koblar, Urban Planning Institute of the Republic of Slovenia (UIRS) Guido Plassmann, ALPARC – the Network of Alpine Protected Areas Richard Schoßleitner, (Office for Spatial Research) & Gerhard Ainz (RaumEval) Marion Guitteny, Asters-CEN74

Bolzano, December 2020 This project is co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund through the Interreg Alpine Space programme.

Table of Contents

1 Problem statement and objective of the activity ...... 5 1.1 Selection of cross- border case study areas and pilot sites ...... 6 2 Methodology ...... 7 3 Human impact on the loss of alpine open spaces ...... 8 3.1 Soil sealing and urban sprawl in the Alps ...... 8 3.2 The pressure on open spaces in the selected pilot sites ...... 10 3.2.1 Berchtesgadener Land ...... 10 3.2.2 Salzburg/ Tennengau ...... 11 3.2.3 Friuli Venezia Giulia (Prealpi Giulie) ...... 14 3.2.4 Upper Soča Valley ...... 15 3.2.5 Mont Blanc - Auvergne –Rhône Alpes ...... 16 3.2.6 Mont Blanc – Upper Aosta valley & Piedmont ...... 17 4 Governance and spatial planning approaches considering planning gaps ...... 19 4.1 Berchtesgadener Land (DE) ...... 19 4.2 Salzburg/ Tennengau (AT) ...... 22 4.3 Friuli-Venezia Giulia (IT) ...... 25 4.4 Upper Soča Valley (SI) ...... 27 4.5 Mont Blanc - Auvergne – Rhône Alpes (FR) ...... 29 4.6 Upper Aosta Valley & Piedmont (IT) ...... 31 4.7 Overview and reflections on existing planning gaps ...... 34 5 Implementation obstacles for safeguarding open spaces ...... 37 5.1 Berchtesgadener Land (DE) ...... 37 5.2 Salzburg/ Tennengau (AT) ...... 38 5.3 Friuli Venezia Giulia, Prealpi Giulie (I) ...... 39 5.4 Upper Soča Valley (SI) ...... 39 5.5 Mont Blanc - Auvergne – Rhône Alpes (FR) ...... 40 5.6 Upper Aosta Valley & Piedmont (IT) ...... 41 6 Best practices for safeguarding open spaces ...... 42 7 Conclusion ...... 45 References ...... 46 Literature ...... 46 Legal sources ...... 48 Annexes ...... 49

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List of Tables Table 1: Selected cross border case study areas and pilot sites ...... 6 Table 2: Overview of planning gaps for functions of open spaces ...... 34 Table 3: Overview of planning gaps for open spaces in spatial planning ...... 36 Table 4: Best pratices ...... 42 Table 5: List of institutions involved in interviews and workshops ...... 53

List of Figures Figure 1: Soil sealing changes 2009-2012 in the Alpine Space ...... 9 Figure 2: Development of land use in the district of Berchtesgadener Land 1980- 2012: Increase and decrease according to land use categories in ha...... 11 Figure 3: Settlement development Oberalm - Tennengau 1952/1954 – 2017 ...... 12 Figure 4: Timeseries of selected indicators for soil consumption in Tennengau (1971 = 100 %) .... 13 Figure 5: Increased soil consumption in the province of Udine compared to the previous period [ha]...... 14 Figure 6: Built up areas in the upper Soča Valley 2002, 2012 and 2020 in hectares [ha]...... 16 Figure 7: Increased soil consumption in the Aosta Valley compared to the previous period [ha]. ... 17 Figure 8: Soil consumption in Piedmont 1991- 2018...... 54

List of Annexes Annex 1: Collection of GIS – data sources ...... 49 Annex 2: Questionnaire for telephone interviews ...... 52 Annex 3: Involved experts ...... 53 Annex 4: Additional data on soil consumption ...... 54

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1 Problem statement and objective of the activity

The OpenSpaceAlps project came so far to the following definition of the term “open spaces”: Open spaces comprise areas outside housing/settlement areas, commercial/industrial areas and other special designated areas (e.g. golf courses and leisure parks) that are kept free from building developments of any kind, which are not predominantly developed (punctual, linear or planar infrastructure) and widely free of soil sealing, ideally free of traffic or largely reserved for non- motorised traffic and thus 'noise-free'. Technical infrastructures not belonging to the landscape structure are either non-existent or hardly available. The OpenSpaceAlps catalogue of different planning approaches as Deliverable D.T1.1.2 shows a huge variety of these among the Alpine countries, which could be suitable for the safeguarding of open spaces. Because of these varying planning systems in the countries (Meyer 2020) and the competences finishing at the national border, open spaces are not harmonised. The work of Haßlacher et.al. (2018) is claiming the need for more international cooperation in the field of safeguarding open spaces. The problem of the lack of harmonisation gets clearly visible by the illustrated example of protected areas in the cross – border region of Bavaria and North Tyrol (Weber in Haßlacher et.al. 2018). Furthermore, studies on common spatial perspectives of the Alps are showing, that soil sealing, which is one of the most important reasons for the loss of open spaces, is not an issue limited to a specific national context. It should rather belong to the common challenges of the Alps and be studied and discussed on a macro-regional and transnational level (Chilla et al. 2019). The influence of the international agreement of the Alpine Convention and its protocols on direct measures for the safeguarding of alpine open spaces is still questionable. Based on the catalogue, it was not possible to analyse “to which extent the Alpine Convention and its protocols lead to direct measures for the safeguarding of alpine open spaces” (Meyer 2020). Thus, it is necessary to analyse the main issues for the loss of open spaces, as well as current governance and planning systems with its planning gaps on a local level and bring it in the context of cross- border areas. For this task, three cross-border case study areas with six pilot sites were selected. For the analysis of current governance and planning systems at local level and to indicate planning gaps, a distinction was made between sectoral planning system and the cross-sectoral spatial planning approaches. For the sectoral planning system, we used the concept of three different functions of open spaces according to Haßlacher et al. 2018: ecological, economic, and social functions. Planning for open spaces considers ecological functions by protected natural areas and protected landscapes, while economic functions include agriculture and forestry. Social functions are considered when it comes to planning for outdoor recreation areas, e.g., skiing areas or others, retention areas for flood protection, or immission control. The report presents the pilot sites and cross-border areas, gives a short overview of the main reasons why open spaces are endangered in the Alps and breaks the issue down to the level of the pilot sites. The deliverable collects current governance and spatial planning approaches in pilot sites to complete the catalogue of different planning approaches. It gives indications of planning gaps and obstacles of implementation for safeguarding open spaces to build a basis for the elaboration of local implementation strategies for each pilot site in the subsequent activity. This will finally contribute to the planning handbook for alpine open spaces proposing new integrated approaches and strategic recommendations for the coordination of open spaces at national and transnational level.

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1.1 Selection of cross- border case study areas and pilot sites

Three cross border areas between Germany and Austria, Italy and Slovenia, as well as Italy and France were selected for the activities in WPT2. The cross-border case study areas consist of one pilot site for each country. The aim of the activities in the pilot sites is to identify the main criteria for securing open spaces in spatial planning at the local level through the sketching of the potential processes for harmonization of local governance and planning systems approaches. All the selected cross border case study areas are experienced with European cross-border projects and can refer to existing cross-border networks, which was one of the criteria for the selection. The Euregio Salzburg – Bechtesgaden installed technical working groups (dt. “Facharbeitsgruppen”), among which there is one for spatial planning and regional development. (dt. “Raumordnung und Regionalentwicklung”) (euregio-salzburg.eu). Espace Mont-Blanc is a cooperation project among France, Italy and Switzerland (espace-mont-blanc.com), which is a starting point for the establishment of a network for the activities in the WP2 of the OpenSpaceAlps project. The national parks Triglav and Prealpi Giulie and their municipalities at the national border are experienced in direct cross-border cooperation (parcoprealpigiulie.it). Table 1: Selected cross border case study areas and pilot sites

Cross- Responsible border case Country Region Pilot sites project study area partner

Berchtes- Landkreis gadener Land DE Berchtes- Biosphere reserve Berchtesgadener Land JMU - gadener Land Salzburg/ Federal state AT Tennengau/ District of Hallein SIR Tennengau of Salzburg

Prealpi Giulie National Park. FEDER- Friuli Venezia IT PARCHI/ Giulia Municipalities of Chiusaforte, Lusevera, Moggio Triglav – Udinese, Resia, Resiutta, Venzone, and Taipana EURAC Prealpi Giulie

Zgornje Posočje/Upper Soča Valley region. SLO Soča Valley UIRS Municipalities of Bovec, Kobarid and Tolmin

Mont Blanc region – Auvergne – Rhone Alpes

Auvergne – Municipalities of Bourg-Saint-Maurice, Les FR ALPARC Rhône Alpes Contamines-Montjoie, Saint-Gervais-les-Bains, Chamonix-Mont-Blanc, Sainte-Foy-Tarentaise, Montvalezan, Séez, Bourg-Saint-Maurice, Tignes Mont Blanc Mont Blanc region – Upper Aosta Valley FEDER- Aosta Valley/ IT Municipalities Courmayeur, Etroubles, La Salle, PARCHI/ Piedmont La Thuile, Morgex, Ollomont, Pré-Saint-Didier, EURAC Saint-Rhémy-en-Bosses, Valgrisenche

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2 Methodology

The current governance system and planning gaps in each pilot site were revealed in two steps. First, each project partner provided a specific desk research regarding planning gaps for open spaces in the legal systems. In the second step, these analysis on planning gaps were completed and substantiated with online- or telephone- interviews involving 1-2 planning experts per pilot site. These were conducted through an interview guideline composed of ten open questions (Annex II: Questionnaire for telephone interviews). To reveal reasons for human impact on the decrease of open spaces and its main problems in pilot sites, as well as obstacles and best practices in implementing the protection for open spaces, online focus group – workshops were conducted for each pilot site. The guiding questions are based on the results of an existing investigation regarding implementation problems for safeguarding open spaces in Switzerland conducted by the German Academy for Territorial Development (Job et al. 2017: 72). The focus groups consisted of a heterogenous group of experts (listed in Annex III: Involved experts). Therefore, practitioners, politicians and experts from the local and regional level, from different municipalities and different sectors, were invited. Practitioners: - Representatives of the spatial planning departments of the federal state/ region/ department. - Representatives for intermunicipal planning Politicians: - Politician, local/ regional councillors for spatial planning or e.g. environment of selected municipalities. Experts: - E.g. representatives from the national parks or institutions for sectoral planning, e.g. forestry, landscape planning, or others.

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3 Human impact on the loss of alpine open spaces

To give a brief overview of the loss of near–natural open spaces in the past years, it was selected the issues of soil sealing and urban sprawl. Soil sealing is defined as the “covering of soil with an artificial impervious surface” (Tobias et al. 2018). This is the most intense form of land degradation and affects all ecosystem services (ibid.) provided by open spaces. For the two selected issues, data covering the whole Alpine space are available, because the data are monitored throughout the European countries (Chilla et al. 2019 & European Environmental Agency 2016), which demonstrates the importance of these two indicators. The issues of soil sealing and urban sprawl were used as a starting point for the workshops, as during the interviews it was revealed, that urban sprawl affects most of the pilot sites.

3.1 Soil sealing and urban sprawl in the Alps

Soil sealing is a slow, but steady process, which is omnipresent in the Alps, and therefore a threat for open spaces in general. The following grid map visualized soil sealing measured as the relation of sealed area to land. It shows that the trend is most probably to happen in urban areas, but almost all municipalities in the Alpine Space are affected. Another analysis of soil sealing in the Alps, considering only the year 2012, depicts a morphological picture, which makes visible that the settlement pressure concentrates on the flat valleys (Chilla et al. 2019). Thus, it is crucial to consider also lower altitudes when speaking about alpine open spaces.

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Figure 1: Soil sealing changes 2009-2012 in the Alpine Space Source: ESPON Alps 2050. The Alps 2050 Atlas. The EEA conducted a European-wide analysis of urban sprawl. They used the index on weighted urban proliferation (WUP), which measures the size of the built-up area, the dispersion of settlements and the utilization density (population and job density). The patterns of urban sprawl in the Alpine Space in 2009 at the level of NUTS 2 regions show large variations within each country. Capital cities or regions of particularly high economic importance exhibit very high values for the various indicators of urban sprawl. It is possible to see how the weighted urban proliferation index is not homogeneous along the Alpine range: the most affected regions from urban sprawl are Lombardy, Veneto, the French and German alpine zones while the least affected are Trentino-South Tyrol, Eastern Slovenia, as well as Western and Southern Austria. A comparison between the years 2006 and 2009 shows that the highest changes in urban proliferation (WUP) values were detected in Piedmont, Eastern Slovenia and Veneto. On contrary, the urban proliferation (WUP) in the Aosta Valley, Central Switzerland and Trentino-South Tyrol decreased. All other areas of the Alpine chain show a slight increase in weighted urban proliferation (European Environment Agency, 2016).

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3.2 The pressure on open spaces in the selected pilot sites

The conducted online workshops helped to get a deep insight on problems of soil consumption in the pilot sites. For each pilot region it was possible to identify one of these problems, which has a high priority and will have a strong relevance for the implementation strategy.

3.2.1 Berchtesgadener Land The loss of open space by large-scale projects is of secondary importance in the Berchtesgadener Land district. Rather, many smaller projects and processes in already built-up areas lead to urban sprawl, as they also require accompanying infrastructure measures. This is due to the expansion effects of the Salzburg metropolitan area which mainly affects the northern area. In terms of specific uses, commercial areas outside closed settlement areas cause the greatest land take. These designations are usually also larger in area. The pressure on open spaces by the extension of touristic infrastructures like hotels and the upgrading of cable cars like the Jennerbahn is notable. These are strictly connected to the extension of transport infrastructure. Besides this, two major transport projects are known: the expansion of the A8 Munich-Salzburg motorway and the Laufen bypass. The pressure spaces coming from solar plant is classified as the most relevant in the category of infrastructure for renewable energies and mining. This takes places especially around Teisendorf (former ammunition depot) and in the urban area of Laufen (photovoltaic park). The use of wind power has not played a role in the district so far, while there are several enquiries about hydropower (on the Saalach), which have serious ecological impacts. In the entire district, Saaldorf- Surheim and Bischofswiesen are more intensively planned with regard to mining. These infrastructure developments affect certain types of open spaces. Ecologically valuable areas are usually strictly protected from the point of view of nature conservation law and forestry areas are only affected to a lesser extent in comparison with agricultural areas. The forest quality is ecologically intact. This is also due to the fact that mountain forests are generally managed more extensively. But open spaces that do not have specific qualities are difficult to protect with the current planning instruments - both spatial planning and sectoral planning. Banal open spaces, e.g. agricultural land, are not considered. Agricultural land is primarily at risk, as this is where the larger designations for residential and commercial use take place or where these areas are "easy" to build on. Regarding the recreational effect of open spaces in Berchtesgaden, the question arises whether the social function of near-natural open spaces is endangered by the recreational use itself (e.g. in the Königssee area). From the Biosphere reserve’s point of view, a qualitative endangerment of open spaces exists due to over frequency of tourists. From the point of view of the district and the city of Bad Reichenhall, there is primarily a quantitative loss of open spaces. The increasing sealing and land consumption are also evident in the fact that it is becoming more and more difficult to find suitable compensation areas or eco-account areas in one's own natural space within the framework of municipal land use planning. The quantitative loss is linked to a structural and qualitative loss of open space functions. The qualitative loss is difficult to answer from a planning perspective, as the qualities of open spaces are not clearly defined. For example, there is no consideration of the quality of the soil when open spaces are used. However, there is certainly a qualitative loss of open spaces because settlements are spreading mainly on areas with high soil quality. From a nature conservation point of view, the general decline of alpine pasture farming causes a change in the quality of open spaces, as the biodiversity decreases in the long term due to increasing fallow and scrub encroachment of open areas. In addition, alpine pasture management is an important cultural asset and offers local recreation for tourists and locals.

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Development of Land use in Berchtesgadener Land 1980 - 2012: Increases and decreases of land use categories in ha (ALB-System) 800 700 600 500 400 300 200 100 0 -100 -200 -300 -400 -500 -600 -700 -800 1980-1984 1984-1988 1988-1992 1992-1996 1996-2000 2000-2004 2004-2008 2008-2012 Buildings and urban open spaces Industrial zone (without mining) Mining Recreation area Transport Agriculture Forests Water Other land uses (without cemetery)

Figure 2: Development of land use in the district of Berchtesgadener Land 1980- 2012: Increase and decrease according to land use categories in ha. Source: JMU, based on Bavarian State Office for Statistics 2020 (GENESIS-Database). Diagram includes some statistical reclassifications of land use categories.

3.2.2 Salzburg/ Tennengau The most important problem of the Tennengau region is similar to the one in Berchtesgadener Land. The main pressure is from residential and industrial settlement development especially in the Salzach-Tennengau region. Starting from the city of Salzburg, the settlement pressure is enormous up to Hallein and it decreases towards Golling. In this area, the Taugl river also represents a certain break. In the Lammertal, the settlement structure is also scattered, but even smaller. Here there are still open spaces between the settlement areas. The fact that settlement development is the main driver, especially in Salzach-Tennengau, can also be seen in the increase in building land prices. As a result of the expansion, the pressure for land use changes to building land will continue. The expansion includes associated infrastructures, from access roads and power lines to sewage supply and disposal. The expansion of linear infrastructures, such as broadband internet connections, will also have an impact on open space, even if they are underground.

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The urban sprawl is also caused by farms. Near built-up areas, agriculture is increasingly coming under settlement pressure, why farms have to be increasingly relocated, which are occupying additional open space. Figure 3: Settlement development Oberalm - Tennengau 1952/1954 – 2017

Source: Schoßleitner R., based on data from SAGIS

Pressure on open spaces is also coming from the energy and mining sector. In view of the Energy Expansion Act and the Energy Targets 2030, solar systems in open spaces will become an increasingly important topic in the future. In order to minimise costs, open spaces, mostly agricultural ones, with optimal sunshine duration or angle of irradiation would be used for this purpose. They have a freer availability compared to buildings and other installations. The pressure for renewable energies is more in the Salzach-Tennengau region, where there is a better connection to the energy infrastructure of substations, transformer stations or existing power lines. However, such areas can also be found in the Lammertal. There are also certain efforts to use wind energy, but no concrete projects yet. However, the pressure will increase here. A concrete project for mining activities, which would have been realised far from existing infrastructure in the Tennengau region, was refused. Currently this project is on hold. Contrary to these sectors, which have a high pressure on open spaces in Tennengau, tourism, transport and power lines do not represent a big threat for open spaces. The planned 380-KV line will also have a major impact on open spaces especially on the eastern slope of the Salzach valley, at least during the construction phase. But with regard to the after-effects, it depends on the design. Due to the height of the transmission line, natural areas may re-emerge underneath it, although slightly modified. In addition, the existing 220 KV lines will be dismantled. It could become a "zero- sum game". The Salzach Valley is also already strongly characterised by transport infrastructures like railway, motorway and federal road. Due to the good development, no greater pressure is to be expected in the future. Apart from the extension of the regional railway to Hallein, nothing is currently planned. The development of forest roads or alpine roads used for forestry purposes has largely been completed in the Tennengau. Only in the Tennengebirge are there isolated requests for alpine pasture development.

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Besides small developments for tourism infrastructure, no major projects for tourism are planned. The reactivation of Gaißau-Hintersee ski area is considering a larger snow reservoir and a corresponding supply of lines for the production of artificial snow. The ski infrastructure in the Tennengau region has only been renewed to a minor extent in recent decades. The tourism influence in the Lammertal valley should be extended to the municipality of Abtenau. Here it is primarily a matter of settlement areas used for tourism and less of ski infrastructure in sense of lifts or ski slopes. On a small scale, this development is also possible in the Krispl settlement in the future. Ski tourism development has sufficiently taken place in the municipalities of Russbach and Annaberg-Lungötz.

Timeseries of selected indicators for soil consumption in Tennengau (1971 = 100 %)

250%

200%

150%

100%

50%

0% 1971 1981 1991 2001 2011 2019

Population Dwellings Overnight stays

Figure 4: Timeseries of selected indicators for soil consumption in Tennengau (1971 = 100 %) Source: Schoßleitner R., based on data from Statistik Austria

The mentioned infrastructure developments are mostly affecting agricultural areas. The pressure is almost exclusively on agricultural land and especially on the highest-quality soils, as these are located in the valley area and are also well developed. They are therefore predestined for development. There is a conflict of interest here within spatial planning. This means that not only the production function but also one of recreation is lost in the area close to settlements. In addition to settlement development, agricultural land is also used for ecological compensation measures, while natural or near-natural areas, including high mountain areas or alpine pastures, are less at risk. Also, the forest has a high protection status due to the long-standing forest law. In the long term, there is an increase in forest area, also if in the recent past there has been a slight decline. Some minor qualitative threats for natural areas are caused by fragmentation and the intensification of agricultural land. In the course of intensification of agricultural management (e.g. clearing of hedges etc.), the loss of the small-scale character of the landscape is accompanied by negative effects on the aesthetic. The quantitative loss in the Tennengau region has largely already occurred in earlier decades, while the loss of quality plays the biggest role because it affects our daily living space. The threat to the quality of open space varies according to altitude zones. In the valley area there are hardly any ecologically valuable areas left (possibly along the Salzach). The higher the slopes, the higher the quality of the open space and the lower the threat. In the future, however, the quality will presumably also decrease in higher locations due to leisure traffic, fragmentation or residential development.

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Due to the productivity pressure and settlement pressure on agriculture, it is increasingly moving to higher locations. As a consequence, qualitative changes are noticeable there. The structural loss can hardly be separated from the loss of quality. Fragmentation effects are noticeable in the ecological function and quality of the open spaces. In the area of Golling-Taugl there is still the last biotope network in the Salzach valley that is not continuously developed and crosses the valley. But in the area of the green space network according to the Tennengau Regional Programme, there is hardly any corridor left, as here settlement development reaches almost directly to the banks of the Salzach. In addition, representatives for nature conservation states that forestry road projects, together with the increasingly larger agricultural areas for mechanised farming, cause a reduction in quality. However, the small-scale character of the farms is very high in Tennengau according to experts for agriculture.

3.2.3 Friuli Venezia Giulia (Prealpi Giulie) Soil sealing in Udine was still present in the past years, while the total amount of additional soil consumption for each year is decreasing. A closer look to the municipalities revealed, that 8,96 ha were sealed in the period from 2011 to 2019, which is not a high amount compared to other pilot sites. The main issue in this pilot region is the coordinated development regarding protected areas. 366 ha of sealed soil is situated in protected areas of high landscape value, according to the landscape and cultural heritage code. According to the local experts, the park area is an overall open space because there are no infrastructures present, while in other parks and outside the Prealpi Giulie National Park new developments take place. In the wider area there are problems due to the presence of heavy infrastructures as energy plants, railways, the highway to Austria and the potentially transboundary ski resort of Sella Medea, but in the pilot site the situation is completely different.

Increased soil consumption in the province of Udine compared to the previous period [ha]. 350 289 300 250 179 200 149 150

Area (ha) 100 56 50 30 0 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 Year

Figure 5: Increased soil consumption in the province of Udine compared to the previous period [ha]. Source: Elaboration based on data of the national environmental information system. http://groupware.sinanet.isprambiente.it/uso-copertura-e-consumo-di- suolo/library/consumo-di-suolo/indicatori

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In the pilot site there are no significant settlement pressure or pressure of urban development; on the contrary, smaller villages and urban areas are threatened by the advance of the forest and the problem of land abandonment. Moreover, there is no pressure from touristic infrastructures because there is not a significant tourist flow in this area. The nearby ski area of Sella Nevea (Chiusaforte) is small and has no particular impact on the area. No pressure is registered from transport infrastructures because there is not a significant transport flow in this area. On the contrary, the low presence of people and vehicles indirectly affects the maintenance of existing infrastructure. The energy production infrastructures are well integrated into the landscape and territorial context. The main problem in this area is the unregulated return of the forest, the loss of human-managed open spaces; the semi-natural open spaces are a result of man's centuries of work in the mountains: loss of human presence means loss of traditional activities and traditional landscapes, loss of agricultural areas and loss of semi-natural touristic places for recreation, particularly in terms of a controlled increase of compatible tourism activities for the future. The lack of anthropogenic pressure has a negative effect on the territory in terms of functionality that is no longer guaranteed. Moreover, this area is affected by a high Land Property Fragmentation.

3.2.4 Upper Soča Valley The most important pressure on open spaces in the Upper Soča Valley comes from housing, transport and touristic infrastructure. Open spaces with the traditional dispersed settlement pattern are being misused for secondary housing and tourism capacities instead for agriculture, which would be allowed. This land use change was not in line with municipal spatial development policy and planning documents. There is a general pressure for construction in currently non-settled areas and for changed use of abandoned buildings, e.g., from farmsteads to secondary housing, which are strongly related to tourism. There are several areas in the Upper Soča Valley pilot region which are very attractive for tourism activities, some of them are already intensively used. Examples are the Soča river and its valley. The negative impacts of tourism are rather high, and some natural areas are exposed to excessively high pressures. This leads to the calls for an upper limit. There is a tendency for tourism activities to try to “spread” into the pristine areas with high environmental and nature protection and natural heritage value. Tourism infrastructures such as bicycle tracks have been introduced, but it turned out, that they are not suitable for the areas. In some cases, e.g., for “glamping areas”, the tourism activities started with rather little infrastructure and later demands grew. New camping sites and glamping areas are being set up, bringing along requirements for new or additional infrastructure. Thereby the carrying capacity of the places and the territory is not being considered. Conflicts between the local population and visitors emerged and an active mediation is missing. Transport infrastructure developments do not consider the needs of the local population. Therefore, it is crucial to define the carrying capacity and needs of different tourism and recreational activities (Soča river, paths, trails, airfields, parking lots). The guiding questions are “how many people are allowed in the defined time unit” and “how many parking spaces are available”. The Soča river spring and the Tolmin gorges are exposed to the highest tourism pressure. The high mountains around Triglav and other places with high landscape quality and beautiful view are of interest to construct housing units or secondary homes. The identity of the landscape and settlements is being gradually lost due to inappropriate construction or renewal of buildings. Some activities, e.g., in agriculture, are in decline which negatively affects the open space and the protected areas. For example, it changes the characteristics of habitats which were the rationale for

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protecting the area. The management of natural resources is not well developed resulting in potential degradations and losses. The mentioned processes are affecting the characteristics of the landscapes and traditional architecture. There is a paradoxical situation that when the open space is being “sold” by marketing activities it may subsequently loose its value due to enhanced tourism activities and high number of visitors for example. Open spaces act as a “coulisse” for the settlement areas, but all spatial interventions lead to an enhanced fragmentation of open spaces. The pressures caused by tourism activities vary seasonally, with a peak in the summer.

Built up areas in Upper Soča Valley 1600 1463 1445 1496 1400 1200 1000 800 600 Hectares 400 200 0 2002 2012 2020

Figure 6: Built up areas in the upper Soča Valley 2002, 2012 and 2020 in hectares [ha]. Source: Graphic data RABA, 2002, 2012, 2020. Republic of Slovenia, Ministry of Agriculture, forestry, and food. Available at: https://rkg.gov.si/vstop/. Decrease from 2002 to 2012 can be explained by slight change in precision of mapping.

3.2.5 Mont Blanc - Auvergne –Rhône Alpes The French pilot site in the Mont Blanc region is affected by the presence of individual chalets, collective housing, artisan area (Sallanches). In this area the price of land is very high and the pressure is still very strong. The new urban planning documents limit the building spaces; they are stricter, but the building possibilities are still possible. Materials related to excavation are also a problem, as they have mostly been stored in open areas. Tourist accommodations are multiplying. Car parks, for access to tourist sites, are expanding or multiplying. A new ski slope and a project for a retaining hill are also being considered. The increase in the number of visitors is accentuating this pressure. Some natural areas have been impacted by the huma infrastructures and activities, particularly wetlands. However, the natural areas are rather high in altitude. Meadows are the most affected ones. The densification of town planning means that specific open spaces such as gardens or wasteland, located between already urbanised spaces, are the most affected ones and under high pressure. The closure of open spaces contributes to deterioration of the quality and structure of these environments. Invasive species, very often brought in by closure, also contribute to degrade the quality of these environments. Unauthorised car parks also degrade these environments in this area. The main problem is the disappearance of these spaces through their artificialisation.

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3.2.6 Mont Blanc – Upper Aosta valley & Piedmont The Italian part of the cross- border case study area Mont Blanc shows similar trends in soil consumption as the Prealpi Giulie pilot site. The amount of additional soil sealing in the whole Aosta valley is decreasing each year, but it still shows a significant amount. A closer look to the interested municipalities shows, that from 2011 to 2019 almost 43 ha of open spaces were lost due to soil sealing. A remarkable amount of infrastructure development took place in precious landscape. 16 hectares were built in protected areas of high landscape value according to the D.Lgs. 42/2004 (art. 136, art. 142 c.1 a, b, c, d, l).In totally, more than 655 hectares of sealed soil is located in such protected zones. This is 71% of the total sealed soil in the pilot site.

Increased soil consumption in the Aosta Valley compared to the previous period [ha]. 70 63 60 50 40 30 23,57 19,82

Area (ha) 20 14,33 10 2,62 0 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 Year Figure 7: Increased soil consumption in the Aosta Valley compared to the previous period [ha]. Source: Elaboration based on data of the national environmental information system. http://groupware.sinanet.isprambiente.it/uso-copertura-e-consumo-di- suolo/library/consumo-di-suolo/indicatori

The municipalities in this pilot area are very different from each other. In the municipality of Courmayeur, the main problem is the presence of second homes and of very old structures needing renovation. There are three major abandoned hotel complexes. The aim of the municipal administration is not to use the green areas to build any new structures needed by the municipality, by renovating the old hotels and avoiding land consumption. For the municipality of Courmayeur the administrator highlighted that there are no equipped areas for campers and the only current way to connect the inner valleys and those towards France is by car. During the tourist season, second homes contribute to anthropic pressure by doubling the number of inhabitants. Most of the tourists from the second homes come from the big cities in the plain. This number is increasing. The accesses to the two valleys present mobility problems, in particular the excessive presence of cars. The problem is the tourist road network. Transport is poorly organised and one or more 'light' means of collective transport is needed (electric train? shuttle?). They need to find the right compensation for the people who live there. Cycling can also be improved to connect the area with Switzerland and France. In the Valgrisenche area there is a project for a new small slope on the territory of a neighbouring municipality. In terms of tourism, there are some infrastructures, but not much has been invested in

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the past to improve the situation; most of the tourism comes from winter heliskiing and summer walking. Trail maintenance is carried out in cooperation with neighbouring municipalities. The area is covered by a heliskiing service. Municipality has identified Areas in which helicopters cannot fly. From February 2020 the owner's confirmation of overflight and landing areas is required. The private areas cover a large part of the territory and extend as far as the glacier. Heliski consortium dedicated part of the revenues to maintain the agricultural areas and territories. There are protected natural areas (SCI ZPS) in the area, but heli-skiing cannot fly over them and there is a ban on skiing near them. Moreover, regional rules impose precise areas for heli-skiing and there is a detailed mapping of routes and landing points; these shared rules are valid for 5 years. The municipality have 2 hydroelectric power stations: in one of them the current dam must be lowered because the embankment is damaged. A construction road is needed for the work, for which more than 600,000 euros are needed but in general the impact of these 2 stations is negligible. Traditional mountain activities are still present. The anthropized area is small and there are problems of accessibility. The problem is not human impacts but rather the need for human intervention to manage the land and not to allow natural hazards due to abandonment. Open space must be managed and guarded by humans. The risk is the non-usability of spaces and the loss of biodiversity. Moreover, the territorial fragmentation of the small agricultural areas is very high.

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4 Governance and spatial planning approaches considering planning gaps

4.1 Berchtesgadener Land (DE)

GENERAL APPROACH FOR SAFEGUARDING OPEN SPACES

Bavaria has a common approach on safeguarding open spaces as a single category. It exists an analysis of undissected low-traffic areas “Unzerschnittene verkehrsarme Lebensräume” for Bavaria and the Alpine Plan in Germany is the most important planning tool for safeguarding open spaces on regional scale. The most important legal instrument on regional level to safeguard open spaces is the State Development Programme and its so-called “Anbindegebot”. This is a regulation for a continuous settlement structure. Next to these instruments exists also sectoral approaches for the safeguarding of open spaces through several categories of nature protection: Landscape, nature conservation, national Park Berchtesgaden in the southern part, Natura 2000 areas (Habitats Directive), landscape components/ elements and natural monuments. Besides the instruments mentioned in the OpenSpaceAlps catalogue, there exist informal intermunicipal concepts for landscape planning, which have intersectoral approaches. The biosphere reserve Berchtesgadener Land (UNESCO) is an advantageous precondition for administrative cooperation, financial issues, and touristic administration. This is identically with the whole “Landkreis” since it’s extension in 2010. The biosphere reserve is not a protected area, but relevant areas are under existing protection categories. There is only a declaration based on the principle of voluntariness. A second example is the transnational landscape structure plan elaborated by the Euregio and its working groups, which play an important role for exchange across borders. The Euregio “Salzburg - Berchtesgadener Land – Traunstein” developed a settlement development concept, which was an overall spatial concept but without binding effect on a very large scale. Despite these efforts, this had not been considered in municipal planning. A problem for the implementation of the concept were the different national standards of implementation in the Euregio area. A third example concerns the southern part of the “Landkreis” Berchtesgadener Land. In the run-up to the local land use plans, an intermunicipal landscape concept (Alpine park plan 2010/2011) was elaborated for five municipalities in the valley basin: Berchtesgaden, Bischofswiesen, Marktschellenberg, Ramsau and Schönau. The initiative stated at regional plan level from the government. The motivation for this procedure were financial subsidies from the region. The result should have been transferred to the local land use plans of each municipality because the Landscape Plan is incorporated within them. Land use plans are an important instrument for safeguarding open spaces at local authority level. However, the added value is questionable due to the lack of transferred results and the missing intermunicipal land use plan. This could have defined e.g. a location for an intercommunal industrial area as indirect open space protection but never was realised. Despite the active role of mayors, which exchange frequently and generate a strong cohesion, there exist no meetings exclusively for open space planning.

MAIN LEGISLATIVE GAPS IN PROTECTION OF OPEN SPACES FUNCTIONS

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The Bavarian Alpenplan is the most important instrument for the safeguarding of open spaces but still offers gaps for nature conservation, especially for recreative activities that do not require “classical infrastructures” such as e.g. mountain bikes. It also does not include wildlife corridors and the Zone C of the Alpenplan is generally limited to the higher altitudes of the Bavarian Alps. Most of the valleys are inside of the zone A and are therefore not affected by restrictions. In addition, the regulations are not cross-border harmonized with Austria. The highest settlement pressure exists primarily on agricultural land and its economic function, where mostly no protection status is present. Berchtesgadener Land is influenced by the agglomeration of Salzburg and is therefore a growing region. The region is growing closer and the settlement pressure increased in the last 10-15 years with the opening of borders. In the municipality Schönau, free areas are exposed to enormous settlement pressure and the building land prices increased strongly. Schönau and Ramsau have areas without village centre and a high number of scattered settlements. The topic of housing in these municipalities will be important for politics in the next 10 years. It is intended to focus on the recovery of existing structures in future, which would be important for safeguarding open spaces, but the process is in an initial phase. Although the regional plans are defining clear objectives (more restrictive) and principles (less restrictive), they must be pursued by local planning. Municipalities must respond to the regional objectives, but pursuing the principles are open to the municipality by weighing up the interests on land use. Agricultural reserved areas are less restrictive principles and therefore they are not an exclusion criterion for settlement development. For example, it is permitted to realise buildings for farming with huge dimensions in open spaces, if the farmer owns more than 5 ha agricultural land. Therefore, a redefinition of objectives and principles could be valuable to protect agricultural land. While settlement development is reducing agricultural land in the valleys, agricultural land becomes free because of abandoned farms and these areas have been overgrown by forests in the last years. Therefore, the biosphere reserve tries to keep the existing farms alive. In contrast to agricultural land, the economic values of forests are not affected by major planning gaps because of the sufficient protection status, covered by the federal and state forest laws. The social function of areas for recreation could be safeguarded by additional capacity of public transport to deal with the high amount of day tourists. The Alpenplan does not set any limits to nature- based activities as hiking, it restricts only technical infrastructures. Social protection function of open spaces is covered by the hazard zone plans in Germany. They need a validation by local spatial planning to become legally binding. However, a municipality can develop an area in a designated reference area for geological hazards, dealing with the existing risks within the framework of the weighing procedure (§ 1 (7) BauGB).

MAIN LEGISLATIVE GAPS IN REGIONAL AND INTERMUNICIPAL PLANNING Instruments for open space planning are sufficiently present at regional level in Bavaria. Beside the undisputable relevance of the Alpenplan at regional level, it does not cover the whole territory of the Alpine Convention in Bavaria (= territory of all Landkreise in the Bavarian Alps). The zonation of the Alpenplan is bound to the morphological delimitation of the southern Bavarian Alps. Thus, it remains still a potential for regional planning because an extensive open space planning does not exist. It would be good to connect the different regions from the northern part and the southern part, also because of ecological connectivity. An intersectoral approach would be ideal, but it would require a huge participation process with the need of involving a big number of stakeholders. Although general and sectoral planning regulations contemporary exist, the Bavarian state spatial planning law (BayLplG) is impeding effective combinations of these regulations at the same areas

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through the regulation “Doppelsicherungsverbot” in Art. 19 (2) Nr. 4 and Art. 21 (2) Nr. 3: The state development programme and regional plans are only allowed to establish planning regulations for an area/ issue if it is not yet regulated by sectoral planning. While regional instruments are widely developed, intermunicipal land-use plans are generally possible but in practice very rare to see applied. The example of the Alpen park plan shows that municipalities were not able to realise an intermunicipal industrial zone. The problem here are gaps in the common tax revenue of the municipalities which impeded the realisation of a common soil saving settlement development. Settlements continue to be built on open spaces, and often no compensation areas are made available. They can be relocated by areas in other municipalities or compensated by financial payments. This reduces open spaces in general.

EFFECTIVENESS OF PLANNING INSTRUMENTS AND POSSIBILITIES FOR IMPROVEMENT In Berchtesgadener Land there is no lack of planning instruments, according to the experts, it is rather an implementation problem. Although the analysis of undissected low-traffic areas (“Unzerschnittene verkehrsarme Lebensräume”) are not incorporated in local planning, additional instruments are not necessary according to the experts. The problem comes up with the implementation of the existing instruments. In theory there are hardly any gaps, but in practice gaps appear. Municipal decisions have a very large scope for action. The government of Oberbayern has an important role to monitor the settlement development of the local level, but the monitoring competence of the State is very limited. Each municipality is autonomous in municipal land use planning. State planning must create specifications via the State development concepts, but the State planning sovereignty must only control procedures, rather than the content.

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4.2 Salzburg/ Tennengau (AT)

GENERAL APPROACH FOR SAFEGUARDING OPEN SPACES

Alpine open spaces in Salzburg, as it is defined in the State Development Concept, are implemented as “alpine quiet zones” just in the Regional Development Programme for Tennengau. Only the municipalities of this region had to integrate the quiet zones in the local land use plans. They are defined in the mountain range of the “Osterhorngruppe” triggered by the prevention of a stone quarry project. Other landscape protection areas in Salzburg have a sectoral approach also because the administrational spatial planning and nature protection departments have been divided. Similar to the Sectoral Programme for ski facilities, already mentioned in the OpenSpaceAlps catalogue, Salzburg defined a Sectoral Programme for golf courses. It regulates the approach where and how golf courses can be built. On a local level, it is possible to protected agricultural land by the Local Spatial Development Concepts. These sectoral approaches do not correspond to the project definition of open spaces, because of certain land use zoning for buildings, which can be present within landscape protected areas. The application of the OpenSpaceAlps project definition of “open spaces” in Salzburg would lead to some challenges: The criteria “noise-free” is quite difficult to define and the valley floors are heavily exposed to noise. But despite these difficulties, there is still potential for the extension of the zone. In higher altitudes and in the hilly landscape of the Flachgau region, as well as for Natura 2000 sites, the definition of open spaces would be applicable. The need for an analysis was recognised by the federal state, which arranged a study on the delimitation of tranquil zones according to the Alpine Convention. The analysis started from the approach to collect all protected areas and buffered disturbing roads (e.g. the Großglockner road) on both sides. The similar method of buffering was applied to areas for ski resorts and created a coarse grid for alpine tranquil zones on a huge scale. Although this study was not published due to the conflict of interest concerning renewable energies like wind parks, it can be a starting point for the GIS analysis in the OpenSpaceAlps project. The level of analysis can differ from the implementation level. Until now, open spaces are not focus of informal agreements between municipalities, which could be an opportunity for implementing open spaces as a general protection. At the other hand, nature conservation falls within the competence of the federal states. For this reason, the nature conservation offices of the state government offices are of particular importance. The departments of the federal states in charge of nature and landscape protection are the highest nature conservation authorities. Protected areas (e.g. National Parks, natural reserves, biotope protection, European protected areas) must be integrated in spatial planning documents. Therefore, during the elaboration of the implementation strategy it must be validated if the issue could be implemented on an intermunicipal level, or by nature protection offices on a regional level.

MAIN LEGISLATIVE GAPS IN PROTECTION OF OPEN SPACES FUNCTIONS The ecological value as one of three open spaces functions is addressed by nature and landscape protection in Salzburg. Nature conservation areas are quite well covered by the present instruments. Salzburg had to implement protected areas in the last few years due to the commitments of the European Union. However, wildlife corridors as linear structures are not sustained by politicians because of conflicting interests from the economy and agriculture. Only in the Pinzgau region, some of the corridors are prescribed in the Regional Programme. There would also be the possibility to implement a tranquil zone for nature protection, but it never was applied in Salzburg. Therefore, the federal state administration tries to keep ecological corridors free by an informal way, when acting

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as a supervisory body. In comparison to nature protection, the effect of landscape protection status is weaker because exceptions of buildings and building land designation is possible. The aim is to maintain typical landscape for the location. On a regional level, green belts are safeguarded for example along rivers. These green structures are rather linear open spaces than areas. Unfortunately, the glossary of the spatial planning law does not yet contain any comprehensive definitions for larger areas. Regarding economic functions of open spaces, there is a very low pressure on forestry coming from settlement development or other land uses, while it is not the case for agriculture. Forests and agricultural land and are protected by the prohibition to construct, with exception of buildings for farming or forestry themselves. These cases are for example, if the distance from the farm to the agricultural area is too big, or in case of new farms, when the land use conflicts within a settlement is not supportable (germ. “Hofaussiedelungen”). A criterion is the necessity of use for the buildings. Although this implemented protection status, new development (settlement development, traffic areas and also recreational development) generally takes place on agricultural land. The best agricultural soils in valley areas are affected by soil sealing. This is apparent from the soil evaluation for agricultural soils, which can be used in spatial planning issues. As a consequent, farms with intensive agriculture are moving from the valley to the hillside and are endangering mountain biodiversity. An example is the creation of hillside terraces. For land use changes, the spatial planning objectives have to be weighed up against each other during spatial planning processes. To counteract these developments, regions within the federal state can designate priority areas for agriculture in the regional programme on intermunicipal level, like it is implemented in the regional concepts of Flachgau Nord and the Salzburg surrounding area. These agricultural areas would be also combinable with ecological corridors. Open Spaces, providing social functions for recreation and protection, are considered in spatial planning in Salzburg. The establishment of areas for recreation is foreseen by the Salzburg State Development Concept (2003) as a topic for the regional development concepts (“c c1 6 Definition of priority or precautionary areas [...] for recreation”). Only some regional programmes provide for this, while the need for defining such areas grows because of emerging trends like mountain biking endangers the quality of natural protected areas. On federal state level, the Sectoral Programme for ski facilities (dt. “Sachprogramm Skianlagen 2008) deals with future skiing infrastructure. Particularly the federal state departments of geology, nature protection and forestry decide where ski facilities may be built. But also, the improvement of the quality of ski slopes by artificial snowmaking is at the cost of ecology. Beside these regional planning instruments for safeguarding the recreational value of open spaces, the protection function is mainly implemented on a local level. Hazard zone plans are created on a municipal basis and become legally valid by the integration in the land use plan (zoning). For some rivers, an intermunicipal analysis exists, but intermunicipal retention zones as in Vorarlberg is not present in Salzburg. Although the disaster prevention is functioning very well, its structures are sometimes a problem for nature conservation and the quality of open spaces.

MAIN LEGISLATIVE GAPS IN REGIONAL AND INTERMUNICIPAL PLANNING

Despite the considered functions of open spaces in spatial planning in Salzburg, implementation gaps for open space planning on a intermunicipal level and an ongoing reflection on wind farms with pending decisions emerged. The federal state would be responsible for planning alpine zones (e.g. quiet zones), but this has been delegated to the intermunicipal instance. The awareness of the topic on this level depends on many factors, among which one is the awareness of the regional association manager and a second one is the influence of individual interests. These interests can be transferred from local to intermunicipal level by the majors, which influences negatively the awareness of open

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spaces. In the case of Tennengau, the awareness of the need for quiet zones was present because the state development concept was defining this new planning tool. But the awareness for this issue dropped due to fully developed ski resorts. This decreased the need to protect new areas and political pressure. The long-term perspective got lost. Therefore, there is a need for action to implement quiet zones for other regional programmes to safeguard open spaces in a long term. While open space planning is installed on an intermunicipal level, the federal state is aware, that the upcoming installation of new wind parks have to be regulated on a federal state level. To promote the energy transformation, new studies on energy parks for renewable energy were elaborated in the course of the new State Development Programme. But the political pressure of both sides, areas for renewable energies against landscape protection, is high. Hence, a study on open space could help to combine both land use interests.

EFFECTIVENESS OF PLANNING INSTRUMENTS AND POSSIBILITIES FOR IMPROVEMENT Legal instruments for safeguarding open spaces are sufficiently present in Salzburg. Spatial planning in Salzburg works strongly on the local level and the federal level can regulate the concrete settlement development on local level because their concepts, which contains settlement boundaries, are approved by the federal state by decision. However, what is still missing, are basic studies for open spaces. There is no focus on open spaces and municipalities have little awareness of biotope networks. They don’t have the economic capacities and human resources to plan for open spaces and when it comes to planning for the local development concept. Issues from the offices for nature protection are only recognised and not always implemented, because local authorities keep their options for settlement development open. This is connected to the issue that local administrations are very strongly affected by property interests. Strict taboos rarely exist, and nature protection monitoring can only give position statements. The State Development Programme and the intermunicipal programmes contains rather vague objectives and measures which define the framework and constrain municipalities following a certain development. The development interests of municipalities produce surpluses of building land, which could be a challenge for open spaces. Keeping building land free means that more areas have to be designated for development than necessary and this could be potentially more damaging to open spaces. Therefore, it would be advantageable to have studies for landscape structures, like the ones in the regional programmes on a wider area, similar to the existing wildlife corridor studies for nature protection or the urban green belts for Europe. It would make sense to elaborate a green space plan, which includes existing green areas (biotopes, etc.) and defines areas for new status for open spaces or areas for improvement.

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4.3 Friuli-Venezia Giulia (IT)

GENERAL APPROACH FOR SAFEGUARDING OPEN SPACES

Important planning tools are the regional territorial plans with its implementing rules that safeguard the open spaces through the territorial zonation, in particular agricultural and forestry areas (E zones) and naturalistic safeguard areas (F zones), and the regional landscape plan. This defines the ecological connectivity network and considers all neighbouring regions. These instruments reflect the main approach in the regional planning system, while there is no analysis focused on a comprehensive protection for open spaces. Besides the well-known regional planning tools, the pilot site comprises formal and informal instruments on various levels, not mentioned in the OpenSpaceAlps catalogue. The national Galasso law of 1985 defined areas which are protected in general. On the intermunicipal level, the Prealpi Giulie National Park additionally has a conservation and development plan elaborated in 2015/2016, that the six corresponding municipalities must follow regarding their urban planning processes. This plan protects additional areas such as river areas, rocky areas and glaciers. On municipal level, the forestry management plans guarantee a high protection based on naturalistic principles. The municipalities of Taipana and Stregna implemented plans to avoid woods overgrowing of alpine pastures and suggested a project for pasture recovery, which is giving an economic value for open spaces. Another example is the Climaparks project for the management of protected areas in climate change. Agricultural-landscape areas in local land use plans grant additional safeguarding tools for open spaces.

MAIN LEGISLATIVE GAPS IN PROTECTION OF OPEN SPACES FUNCTIONS

Ecological and economic functions of open spaces have been protected since the first regional territorial plan was introduced in the 1970ies. Forests, alpine pastures and natural areas are protected since the first regional territorial plan which provides clear implementation regulations for the local plans. Especially regulations for forests are very protective. In the conservation and development plan of the park, the most ecologically valuable areas are indicated as RN. These are areas where the natural environment and landscape are preserved in their integrity and in which only restoration work on degraded ecosystems is allowed. Less valuable areas are the ones in which the aim of social and economic development is pursued through activities compatible with nature conservation (indicated as RG). In the Landscape Plan of FVG, open spaces are explicit mentioned in the description of morphotypes, but mostly related to urban green spaces within settlement structures, which is not subject of the OpenSpaceAlps - project. The economic function of agricultural areas of the highlands, mountainous pastures and mountainous grassland in the region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia (FVG) are protected by the Landscape Plan. The main gap concerns agricultural areas in the valleys (permanent settlement space) of FVG, which are not mentioned explicitly and may be more at risk of soil consumption. Agricultural areas in FVG have a land use zoning, but in comparison to the region Piedmont no special protection measures are applicated. Furthermore, the flatland of FVG is highly fragmented (PPR – FVG – RE1). The Landscape plan also protects the economic value of forests. But in contrast to the restrictive regulations in other regions, the construction and expansion of ski lifts, ski slopes and corresponding relevant structures to them in forests is allowed with authorization (Art.28, PPR-FVG). The major planning gaps for safeguarding the open space – character of forests is expected by the coordination of the numerous exceptions of possible interventions.

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Social functions of recreational open spaces could be endangered by missing concepts for tourism in mountain areas. So far, no such a concept could be found for FVG. The approach of skiing area boundaries seems not to be implemented in spatial planning in Italy. In contrast to the recreational function, the protection function of open spaces is widely recognised in spatial planning. In Friuli Venezia Giulia it exists regional flood risk plans for the main rivers Isonzo, Tagliamento and Livenza and for regional river basins of tributaries (Regione Friuli-Venezia Giulia). These plans define risk zone of different degrees and technical standards to keep these areas free from buildings which could increase the flood risk. Municipalities must adapt their settlement development to these “Hydrogeological Structure Plans” (Authority of the basins).

MAIN LEGISLATIVE GAPS IN REGIONAL AND INTERMUNICIPAL PLANNING

The main gaps concern the evaluation of ecosystem services, low planning resources for small municipalities, communication problems between the different levels of planning stakeholders, no knowledge on local basis in the effects of the network Natura 2000 areas regulation and technical issues on GIS Database and instruments (e.g. no common database). Furthermore, there are no standards for planning organisation and processes. The consideration of transboundary areas and issues is marginal and not effective. To overcome these lack of planning resources on the intermunicipal level, FVG established Territorial Intercommunal Unions (UIT) as associations of municipalities in 2014, which base on a regional law, because the provinces of the region were abolished. Originally the adhesion of municipalities to UIT was mandatory, but in 2018 this obligation was abolished and now the municipal authorities, according to the latter regional law, can freely join (Consiglio regionale FVG 2019). A high number of municipalities are not part of a UIT (Regione FVG 2018). This might be also problematic for the coordination of landscape planning and the safeguarding of open spaces, while within an UIT, territorial planning is coordinated between municipalities, like the case of the UIT Carnia shows (SIM Carnia).

EFFECTIVENESS OF PLANNING INSTRUMENTS AND POSSIBILITIES FOR IMPROVEMENT Improvement strategies in the Prealpi Giulie pilot site could focus on two aspects: Firstly, the six municipalities which belong to the nature park suffer from structural weaknesses for the spatial planning sector. They are very small (300-1.800 inhabitants), and some have no urban planning office. Only one has a digitalized urban plan, the other ones are not updated or digitalized and not conform to the park’s conservation and development plan. Trying to overcome this situation, the Friuli Venezia Giulia region tried to merge the small municipalities in the intermunicipal territorial union (UTI), but it was not successfully accomplished. This is the first potential for the implementation strategy provided by the OpenSpaceAlps project. The second potential refers to common standards for safeguarding open spaces and their monitoring. A concrete decision for certain standards is outstanding, as it also shows the big variety of projects for monitoring modalities. This is where OpenSpaceAlps gives a valuable support, defining priority criteria list for the preservation and safeguard of open spaces in the Alps (see Deliverable D.T2.5.1).

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4.4 Upper Soča Valley (SI)

GENERAL APPROACH FOR SAFEGUARDING OPEN SPACES

There is a mix of sectoral and general approaches. Protected areas have their own management, which are not only responsible for nature conservation, but also for many other sectors and aspects, including spatial planning, mobility management, forestry, visitor management, tourism, or agriculture rural development. Sectoral approaches are integrated inside plans of national parks or biosphere reserve administration, like mobility management. The geographical scale effects of these approaches are based according to the needs. The elaboration of related formal plans, like for example the Sustainable urban and regional mobility plan (SUMP), is generally supported by informal planning processes. In National parks or biosphere reserves, open spaces conservation is one of the core objectives and must be managed by administrations through the 10 years management plans. Additionally, special laws protect catchment areas from hydropower, also outside National parks. In 70’s there was a high pressure for hydro power plants on river catchments like on the Soca river, but a law gave protections against this new infrastructure based on cultural and social needs. Indirectly, this law preserves landscape and extended the protection from the National park to other areas, outside the park’s boundaries. Despite this strong integrative cross- sectoral approach, there are no databases and analysis focused on a comprehensive protection for open spaces. Only the separate elements of open spaces can be found in GIS databases of various sectors.

MAIN LEGISLATIVE GAPS IN PROTECTION OF OPEN SPACES FUNCTIONS In general, where areas have a zone administration, usually it tries to manage land use by an integrated approach. Without management, usually there are interest conflicts between sectors, claiming the importance for the areas. In these cases, the pressure comes mostly from infrastructure developments. It is an organisational issue that is directly affecting the safeguarding of open spaces regarding a certain area. While this is a general observation, planning gaps in ecological, economic and social open space functions can nevertheless be identified. Nature protection is lacking an interdisciplinary approach because of the sectoral agencies dealing with protection and missing resources for dealing with related aspects that would be playing an important part. There is an administrative “fragmentation” of nature protection, while Slovenia has a comprehensive approach for landscape protection. It is part of the Slovenia legislation as it has also signed the European Landscape Convention. However, it is the toughest part because it demands a cross-sectoral approach and landscape elements must be defined very well. Regarding the economic function of agriculture, in Slovenia it is part of landscape protection. Agricultural land in Alpine areas is affected by plant overgrowing due to abandoning agricultural activities. Saving abandoning pastures from overgrowing by forests and the support for extensive agriculture, for example by the combination of farming with tourism, can help to protect landscape. The aim is not an economical one, but from a landscape conservation point of view. The touristic attractiveness of the landscape is based on agriculture. The overgrowing also brings problems for forestry because forests originating from overgrowing of abandoned farmland are increasingly spreading to the plains, mostly of poor quality. They will not be able to produce desired economic effects for a long time and have implications on changing habitats, biodiversity, and ecosystem services.

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About social functions, municipalities are responsible for the management of the tourist sector in coherent collaboration between them and the natural parks. One of the most important challenge is that developers are trying to circumvent legislative and planning provisions to realize their development decisions. Furthermore, the new division of municipalities resulted in different planning approaches. Additionally, some legislations are lacking because some recreational activities like mountain biking are quite problematic. Similar to this problem is the issue regarding protection function of open spaces and natural hazards regulations. There is a national plan that define the preparation of municipal detailed spatial plans, but it lacks coordination between municipalities.

MAIN LEGISLATIVE GAPS IN REGIONAL AND INTERMUNICIPAL PLANNING

In the first draft of the Spatial Development Strategy of Slovenia, currently in elaboration, guidelines for green infrastructure at the regional and local level are proposed. These are strongly connected to the preservation of open spaces. This shows that the planning system generally works from a formal point of view, but in practice, the coordination between sectors by spatial planning is not functioning well, causing more power to sectoral laws. Also, there is a huge gap between national and local planning level and often plans are seen as an obstacle. Cooperation between municipalities is voluntary based and there is no responsibility for (e.g., communities in Julian Alps cooperate for tourism).

EFFECTIVENESS OF PLANNING INSTRUMENTS AND POSSIBILITIES FOR IMPROVEMENT According to expert’s knowledge, Natura 2000 areas in Slovenia cover approximately 40% of the total area and the controlling authorities have an efficient effect on safeguarding open spaces. Local spatial plans need an approval from all the national level sectors, among which the Agriculture Ministry tends to be very restrictive. From the perspective of the experts, Slovenia is therefore sufficiently focused on protection and too little on development. More cooperation between every sector within the country and between trans-boundaries areas in spatial planning is desirable in future. Planning of transport and tourism infrastructure in the pilot site lacks the strategic component, e.g. as concerns the seasonal use of space for parking by visitors, paths and roads. Tracks for cycling and mountain biking are being set up without accurate formal bases like plans or permissions. They are often poorly maintained. It is recommended to involve the public when it comes to landscape protection and planning.

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4.5 Mont Blanc - Auvergne – Rhône Alpes (FR)

GENERAL APPROACH FOR SAFEGUARDING OPEN SPACES

The Regional Ecological Coherence Scheme (fr. Schéma régional de cohérence écologique - SCRE) represents an ambitious approach for the protection of natural resources and contains promising targets, especially the topic of defragmentation of the landscape and natural areas by so called green and blue corridors (fr. trames vertes et bleues). There are tools to increase knowledge of open spaces, mainly as territorial analysis, but the understanding of the functioning of open spaces is still limited. Analysis for example for establishing ecological or agricultural inventories are often too static. They should focus more on dynamics, links between open spaces and on their functions. In addition, forestry, agricultural and natural areas are often addressed in separate analysis, which also limits the understanding of the general functioning.

MAIN LEGISLATIVE GAPS IN PROTECTION OF OPEN SPACES FUNCTIONS

Ecological functions of open spaces are mainly covered by the Regional Ecological Coherence Scheme. But despite the ambitious approach of this instrument, its realisation is very limited, and the planning processes and progress are very different according to the different French regions. The scheme has not enough legal impact and cannot be enforced against third parties. The adaptation of tranquil zones as a concept deriving from the protocols of the Alpine Convention does not exist in the various French protection systems. In France, the expression of tranquil zones is not usual in the language and legal vocabulary. Also, the term “landscape protection” does not find concrete realisations on the territory in France. The closest comparable concept of landscape protection is maybe the ZNIEFF (Zone naturelle d'intérêt écologique, faunistique et floristique). but no real protection status is available for this category. Even the regional nature park is a kind of landscape protection without a real protection status because the park by itself has no reglementary competences. For a valid protection, protected areas such as “nature reserves” must be comprised within the park. The economic function of agricultural land in spatial planning is often analysed separately from natural values, which limits the understanding of the general functioning of open spaces. This may be related to the administrative separation between entities responsible for agricultural policies (Chambres d’agriculture, directions départementales…) and the ones responsible for urban policies. The social function of open spaces for protection against natural hazards is increasingly accepted, while the recreational aspect of open spaces is not strongly considered in planning documents. Sectoral policies regarding hazard zones can be quite protective also for natural areas. For example, plans for preventing flooding risks (PPRI) define and guaranty areas that must kept free from constructions. However, the PPRI is far from being a regulatory document covering all high-risk areas. In the past decades, some French municipalities have been reluctant to set up these plans, although the prescription of PPRIs has become more accepted in recent times due to serious natural disasters in some French territories. The reason for the inactivity of setting up these plans is the potential strictly regulations of the PPRIs concerning urban expansion. Such strict regulations are also lacking in the field of sustainable planning for recreational areas. sport areas, while investments are still provided for ski areas comparable with the situation in some Austrian Länder (Cour des comptes 2018). There is no political pressure to change this situation.

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MAIN LEGISLATIVE GAPS IN REGIONAL AND INTERMUNICIPAL PLANNING

The administrative region in France is responsible for strategic planification and definition of overall objectives. Concerning the Regional planning, sustainable development and equality Scheme (SRADDET), only the objectives are binding. Regions for example define the green and blue grid on a regional scale, which must be assumed by the local or intermunicipal level. One of the most important instruments at local level to take over the regional regulations is the Territorial Coherence Scheme (SCoT). Nevertheless, 30% of the French municipalities have no adopted SCoT in 2019 (Fedescot 2019), although these municipalities then must respect the rule of limited constructability. More than 100 SCoTs are concerned by mountain areas. Of these "mountain SCoT" only one third are approved in 2014, for the remaining 2/3 the work remained to be produced. (Rolandeau & Degiuli 2019). These municipalities are not able to open up areas for future urbanisation. At intermunicipal level, the intermunicipal local urban plan (PLUi or PLU if this document is only at municipal level), delimits the agricultural (A), natural and forestry (N) zones. However, article L. 122-9 of the code of urban planning (mountain law) does not prohibit certain constructions such as wind turbines in a PLU Zone N in mountain areas. The territorial plans for climate, air, energy (PCAET) established at intermunicipal level are only obligatory for municipalities of more than 20.000 inhabitants. Thus, this threshold exempts some mountain areas from any planning in this field.

EFFECTIVENESS OF PLANNING INSTRUMENTS AND POSSIBILITIES FOR IMPROVEMENT In France, the state has an important role in the protection of natural, agricultural and forestry spaces. Indeed, the French state is both very influential at national and territorial level (“Etat déconcentré”). For example, the mountain law is the result specially adopted to ensure protection of mountain sites. But the superposition of instruments does not necessarily lead to a better protection of natural areas. For example, since the construction of motorways is a cause of public utility, it derogates from most instruments. It is a factor for lack of implementation because the system becomes too complex (Mallard et al. 2019). Moreover, the mountain law was successively revised, which progressively eroded its founding principles. The general rules were gradually relaxed. The possibility to specify the modalities of application of the mountain law through a territorial planning directive (fr. directive territorial d’aménagement DTA) has only be used in the territory Alpes Maritime. Such a guideline in other French parts of the Alps would have given the possibility to designate the most remarkable spaces, landscapes and environments of the mountainous natural and cultural heritage. In particular gorges, caves, glaciers, lakes, peat bogs, marshes, places where mountaineering, climbing and canoeing are practised, could be defined and imposed with modalities of their preservation. As landscape planning is not considered in France, site inventories have no legal binding protection status. The ZNIEFF inventory (fr. Zone naturelle d'intérêt écologique, faunistique et floristique) for example, lists many rare, exceptional sites that remain to be protected. However, the majority of these sites do not benefit from any legal protection.

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4.6 Upper Aosta Valley & Piedmont (IT)

GENERAL APPROACH FOR SAFEGUARDING OPEN SPACES

Open spaces are safeguarded by sectoral and general plans but not as a single category, according to the definition of the OpenSpaceAlps Project. They have different values to be protected and different importance depending on the thematic plan. These current planning activities focus on the elaboration of formal plans, while informal approaches are not part of the open space planning process. In most of the cases, open spaces are evaluated from an ecological and landscape point of view both on a regional and on a local scale, considering that the Regional Landscape Plan follows a cross-sectoral approach. A big part of open spaces is protected by the status of ecological corridors, green infrastructure, and natural protected areas. An important approach in the Landscape Plan, which has a tradition in the Italian planning system, is the objective of counteracting soil consumption. Besides these instruments on regional level, some intermunicipal administrations are working on analysis of “free areas”, which is close to the open space approach. One example for an approach, which is close to the one of the OpenSpaceAlps project, is the elaboration of local landscape plans in the lower Val Susa and the landscape around Ivrea (ital. “eporediese”). On intermunicipal scale, cartographic maps for “free areas” and the visualisation of indicators for strengthen biodiversity and the definition of new ecological corridors were elaborated. A second example concerns the former provincial territorial plan (Piano Territoriale di Cooridnamento Territoriale - PTC2) of Turin. It classified the territory of the metropolitan area of Turin according to three types of areas based on the presence and density of buildings: dense areas, transition areas and “free areas”. The latter includes both agriculture territories and territories with high ecological relevance for which protection is needed. This was the reference for the elaboration of all local plans. This territorial plan for the province of Turin is currently under redefinition. The new metropolitan plan of Turin (piano territoriale città metropolitana - PTCM) will give new indications for passing from quantitative parameters to a qualitative evaluation, which is based on the consideration of soil as an ecosystem service. These mentioned examples are showing that planning categories already consist in an integrative planning approach. But beside these particular cases at intermunicipal level, there is not a specific GIS analysis for open spaces as a single category across the whole region. From the experts’ point of view, it is important to create a specific GIS database for open spaces, considering also the social, cultural, and economic value of open spaces. Relevant information for such further analysis can be found in the category of green areas in the urban planning GIS database.

MAIN LEGISLATIVE GAPS IN PROTECTION OF OPEN SPACES FUNCTIONS On the regional scale in wide areas (“area vasta”), the Landscape Plan, relevant for open space protection, is not considering the concept of tranquil zones, as it is written in the protocol for spatial planning of the Alpine Convention. The concept, implemented in Germany and Austria, is not implemented in the Italian Landscape Plans, but they are a cross-sectoral instrument protecting ecological and social functions, as well as agricultural areas. They define a series of land use limitations by prohibitions or authorisation procedures to follow the guidelines for territories around lakes, rivers, mountain areas and forests. Similar aspects to “tranquil zones” can be found in the objectives of the landscape plans, regarding the containment and mitigation of settlement sprawl in rural areas. This objective is implemented by a strategical project regarding the green belt, more related to urban green than alpine areas (Piano Paesaggistico Regionale Piemonte 2017). Nevertheless, some gaps emerged for ecological, social and economic functions of open saces.

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Regarding the protection of ecological function of open spaces, the local level, is the weakest one. The “area vasta” restrictions are not mandatory for the provinces and municipalities, leaving some free gaps for new types of development which competes with the use of open spaces. There is a quite huge gap between regional administration and municipalities because some local communities do not follow the prescriptions, which leads to negotiations between the parties on different scales. National parks and other nature protection administrators can help covering these gaps. To safeguard the economic function of open spaces, an approach like the one of Tyrol with areas secured for agricultural use (germ. Landwirtschaftliche Vorsorgeflächen) is not implemented. However, the Landscape plan of Piedmont ensures the conservation and valorisation of rural areas of high “bio-permeability”, i.e. rupicolous grasslands located beyond the upper limit of tree vegetation, grasslands consisting of meadows, meadow pastures and mountain and hill pastures and bushland; permanent grasslands, lowland pastures consisting of permanent herbaceous forage crops in current use, normally mowed and grazed (Art.19). For the areas of high “bio-permeability”, local plans may provide new land for settlement and infrastructure purposes only when it is demonstrated that there are no alternatives based on reuse and reorganisation of existing settlements (Art. 19). To safeguard the economic function of forests, land use changes are prohibited by the regional law for management and economic promotion of forests in Piedmont (Art. 19, (2) regional law 10th February 2009, n. 4.). Exceptions are considered for mining activities, infrastructures of regional competence or public interest, cable cars and ski slopes and deposits of waste (Art.2, regional law 9th August 1989, n. 45). In any case, these interventions are only allowed with special permissions and must be compensated by reforestation or by payments (Art.19 (6) regional law 10th February 2009, n. 4). For the preservation of social functions of open spaces, the approach of defining and delimiting skiing areas is not implemented in the Landscape Plan of Piedmont, while no major planning gaps can be found for the protection against natural hazards: In Piedmont, flood risk plans are coordinated on a regional level (PGRA Piedmont) and it exists special attention for the Po river with plans for the riverbanks, which is delimiting the flooding area by three categories. This plan has an influence on the land use in the respective zones.

MAIN LEGISLATIVE GAPS IN REGIONAL AND INTERMUNICIPAL PLANNING

In Piedmont, the Reginal Territorial Plan of Piedmont in force was elaborated in 2011. Together with the Landscape Plan, which was updated in 2017, these instruments are important for safeguarding open spaces, but due to the different time of renewal, the plans seem not coordinated. Since the rural development plan is intended to feed the regional plan, the coordination of these two plans might represent a planning gap for landscape protection and thus also for the safeguarding of open spaces. Besides the planning instruments on regional level, the regions give opportunities for intermunicipal structural plans in the regional legislation on a voluntary basis. Unions of municipalities in Piedmont are established by law and adopted to the so called “mountain communities”, which have a long tradition in mountainous areas. They can take over municipal planning on an intermunicipal scale (Regional law 23 February 2007, n. 5 – text in force since 01/01/2020). A positive example for intermunicipal planning is that of “river contracts”. These are voluntary instruments of strategic and negotiated planning that pursue the protection, the correct management of water resources and the enhancement of river territories together with the protection from natural hazards, contributing to local development (Bianchini & Stazi 2017). The river plan for the Stura river for example, focused

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on the environmental compensations for preserving biodiversity and redeveloping run-down areas. But these are some rare examples and in practice, intermunicipal plans that would help to connect open spaces are rarely implemented. Thus, the implementation strategy could focus on the extension of intermunicipal planning for open spaces in Italy.

EFFECTIVENESS OF PLANNING INSTRUMENTS AND POSSIBILITIES FOR IMPROVEMENT A good control system can help safeguarding open spaces and keep them free from new constructions and other infrastructures as it is foreseen in the regional law for urban regeneration (Regional law 16/2018), but municipalities and their plans have a certain autonomy that cause dissents and leads to negotiations between different planning levels. There are gaps in the Landscape Plan at local scale that allows new constructions in open areas next to urban areas if a new settlement project provides a dedicated part of the site to improve the local ecology and biodiversity. It would be useful to propose open spaces as a normative category to be safeguarded by spatial planning and to create guidelines with common standards, like the IUCN categorisation.

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4.7 Overview and reflections on existing planning gaps

In order to work towards cross-border strategies, the single sectors are discussed and summarized to facilitate further investigations. Table 2: Overview of planning gaps for functions of open spaces

Country/ pilot site

Sector Austria Germany France Italy Slovenia

Tranquil zones Many Alpenplan is and wildlife instruments on very general, corridors are not Nature federal states without implemented. No tranquil Missing conservation level but weak specifications. Regional zones are interdisciplinary implementation IT does not Ecological foreseen approach of wildlife contain wildlife Coherence corridors corridors. Scheme rarely implemented. Main protection Alpenplan Many gaps of linear open offers Landscape Strong planning

Ecological functions between state Landscape spaces along protection conservation is structures with and local level conservation rivers. Missing mainly in not cross-sectoral planning protection for higher-altitude implemented. approach. documents. areas. areas. High pressure High pressure on on agricultural Protected, but Gaps between Agriculture agricultural land landscape by less restrictive in Over-growing agriculture and conservation by new urban dev. the valley due abandoning urban policies developments. while missing bottoms protection Federal Forest Forests are Strong protection Over-growing Act and ten- protected by and land usage creates forests Forestry yearly Regional federal and - can be changed with low

Economic functions regulation forest state forest only with economic and Development laws authorization. ecological values plans

Existing concept Alpenplan Lack of High risk of plans Recreative for skiing areas. does not limit sustainable circumvention by activities No regulation of

There are only activities but planning developers. No reactive activities regulation some limitations only concerning sport laws for mountain in few regions. infrastructures areas biking.

Instruments are Good included in Need for Quite protective coordination Natural hazard zone spatial plans as PPRI Municipalities not among

Social functions Hazards plans but they planning but they do not collaborating for administrations regulation need spatial validation of cover all high- hazard plans. within river planning hazard zones risk areas basins validation

Gaps in safeguarding the ecological value as one of three open space functions concern wildlife corridors. These are connecting protected natural areas and thus representing an important part of

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open spaces but are not mandatory to respect at local level in Austria, France, Germany and partially also in Italy. The main problem for nature conservation in Slovenia on the other hand are strong lobbies and land-use conflicts between other sectors. Touristic uses related to new technologies (e- bikes) are not yet regulated in the pilot sites. Compared to nature protection the landscape protection status is generally weaker. While in Italy, Germany, and Austria it has a certain importance on regional or federal state level, the term “landscape protection” does not find concrete realisations on the territory in France. In Slovenia there are problems with the vertical coordination of landscape plans and conflicts with developers. Regarding economic functions of open spaces, the pressure on forestry is very low, while the one on agricultural land is very high. This is caused due to settlement development, especially in the valleys, but also on mountain pastures. Priority areas for agriculture are missing. There is no such an approach in the selected pilot sites, like the agricultural priority areas (germ. “Landwirtschaftliche Vorsorgeflächen”) in Tyrol (see D.T1.1.2. catalogue of spatial planning approaches and Ortner in CIPRA Austria). France has problems of uncoordinated urban and agriculture policies. A general trend in some pilot sites is also the overgrowing agricultural land in alpine areas, due to the abandoning of agricultural activities. This also creates problems for forestry. In Slovenia, forests of mostly poor quality, originating from overgrowing of abandoned farmland, are increasingly spreading to the plains. Forests are strongly protected in most of the investigated countries and no incisive planning gaps could be found. It is advantageous for the cross-border case study area Berchtesgadener Land – Salzburg/ Tennengau, that Austria and Germany have a common approach for safeguarding the functions of forests. However, some minor planning gaps are present in Italy. In forests of FVG it is not strictly forbidden to construct new skiing areas and the legislation provides numerous exceptions of possible interventions for constructions. While the social protection function of open spaces is recognised on a European level by the flood risk directive, the recreational function for the society receives no attention. Since open spaces are defined as free from disturbing infrastructure and noise-free, a distinction must be made in planning of recreational areas. They can be divided in sport areas such as ski stations, which need to be limited, and contemplative recreations areas such as natural spaces, which need to be protected. The development of ski areas in the cross – border case study area Berchtesgadener Land – Salzburg/ Tennengau is regulated through specific planning instruments such as the concept for skiing areas in Salzburg or the Alpenplan in Bavaria. The major gaps can be found in the other cross – border case study areas, where such an approach seems to be missing or where developers are trying to circumvent legislative and planning provisions. A general problem in the case study areas is that activities such as mountain biking with e-bikes are creating new problems, which are not sufficiently regulated yet. It would be reasonable to address the differences between countries regarding the accessibility of the near-natural landscape in further investigations. Such different statuses of implementation in various pilot sites can also be found for planning against natural hazards, although there exists a European directive of assessment and management of flood risks since 2007 (Directive 2007/60/EC). One the one hand, intermunicipal and regional planning for natural hazard zones are implemented in Austria, Germany and Italy, especially for extended river basins, covering wide areas. On the other hand, gaps can be found on the local level in France, where flooding risk prevention plans are a strongly binding tool but far from covering all high-risk areas. Also, in Slovenia municipalities are rarely collaborating for hazard zone planning, and in Germany the implementation on local level has much room for interpretation.

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Table 3: Overview of planning gaps for open spaces in spatial planning

Country/ Pilot site Aspect Austria Germany France Italy Slovenia

Any plans for State Not sufficient renewable Development implementation Guidelines for energies or alpine Programme and planning green Regional Only the objectives quiet zones. and regional resources on local infrastructure planning of SRADDET are Local plans not able scale. are proposed situation binding. administrations to protect open Negotiations but still in affected by spaces in between different elaboration. property interests. special cases. levels.

The coordination Intermunicipal SCoT does not fully Inter- Foreseen but not No with neighbouring land-use plans cover mountain municipal mandatory. “River intermunicipal municipalities is are possible areas. PCAET only planning contracts” plans exist in foreseen but not but applied mandatory if > situation successfully practice mandatory very rarely 20.000 inh.

French mountain Exceptions in law progressively If an area has not the regulation eroded by revisions. a clear landscape of a continuous Directive only Missing common Missing protection, there settlement applied in Alps indicators and Awareness not tools or are no legal structure. Maritime. standards for present capacities basis. Austria has Implementation Superposition of open spaces. not joined ELC is the main instruments yet. problem. derogates protection.

A main task for integrated spatial planning is to coordinate the mentioned sectors on various levels and to give the development of open spaces a common direction. However, a common planning gap at regional level lies in the coordination of land use of certain sectors. There is hardly any planning regarding areas for renewable energies like wind farms or solar fields at regional level. The vertical coordination between the regional level and the local level is the second remarkable common spatial planning gap. The implementation of regional regulations is limited due to the autonomous land use planning of the municipalities, which have a certain scope of decision making. Thus, regional planning instruments are e.g., not able to safeguard open spaces in special cases or it leads to negotiations between the regional and local level. Even if important instruments for safeguarding open spaces according to the definition of the project exist, the comprehensive implementation is still lacking at regional level. The German Alpenplan for example does not cover the entire German territory within the Alpine Convention delimitation and the federal state of Salzburg is not making use of the competence of establishing tranquil zones on the federal state level. The decision if this tool will be implemented remains therefore on the intermunicipal level. In general, intermunicipal planning is foreseen but not mandatory in the analysed planning systems, with exception of Slovenia, where intermunicipal plans do not exist in practice. For example, not all municipalities in the Italian pilot sites are participating to a Territorial Intercommunal Union (UIT). In Germany, intermunicipal planning is very rarely implemented in practice, but there are some good examples regarding landscape planning considering open spaces. The intermunicipal local urban plan (PLU) in France does not protect forests, agricultural or natural areas against certain constructions and is therefore poorly suitable for safeguarding open spaces.

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5 Implementation obstacles for safeguarding open spaces

5.1 Berchtesgadener Land (DE)

From the local planning point of view, there are enough plans and data bases for settlement and open space planning. The problem lies rather in the fact that these are not usable for the municipalities in everyday administrative and planning practice. The data would have to be "activated" in such a way that they are easy to understand and can thus be used immediately by the municipality in the context of urban land use planning. This "activation" of spatial data and analyses would have to pursue the purpose of assigning a clearly identifiable status to open space. Without such a clear value, open spaces and their ecosystem services are hardly taken into account in the evaluation process, as the municipalities cannot put it in any relation, for example to the requirements for new building land. In particular, the importance of agricultural land should be raised, e.g., in the sense of: Which areas are necessary for sufficient and qualitative agricultural supply and the preservation of the rural cultural landscape? Only through such interrelationships can more binding specifications/representations in urban land use planning (e.g., absolute building limits) be better justified and implemented. Representatives from state planning authority confirm, that the definition of the qualities of open spaces is only very general. This is one of the reasons why it is difficult to plan open spaces. The specific qualities should be worked out scientifically and analytically. In particular, the soil quality in terms of soil fertility of open spaces should be better included at the regional level. "This has been better worked out in other federal states" of Germany. Thus, it is an important knowledge gap, which could be improved. Contrary to this, from local administration’s point of view, the difficulties lie less in the existing planning bases or instruments, but rather in the will to implement. There is no focus on open space, but it is on settlement development, which is also related to the lack of awareness/ value of open spaces. Besides these awareness and knowledge gaps, an important implementation problem lies in the horizontal coordination between local administrations. There is still a "parochial thinking" or a political "trade tax thinking". This leads to isolated developments that end at the municipal border. There are inter-municipal approaches especially in the inner Landkreis through the joint landscape framework plan for the Alpine Park Berchtesgaden, which would be the basis for the land use plans in the individual municipalities. However, when it comes to the implementation of planning projects, there is a lack of coordination between the municipalities. Municipalities convert their land use plans into development plans and focus more on their own municipal area and less on the superordinate, cross- municipal planning level. Particularly when it comes to designating commercial areas, the municipalities think very strongly of themselves, as trade tax plays a major role here. E.g., there is not a single inter-municipal commercial area in the district. There is also no binding coordination on settlement development at the district level, only an "informal network meeting" within the EUREGIO regional planning working group. Thus, the clearest opportunities for improvement exist in horizontal coordination. In order to facilitate the implementation of existing plans, communication barriers would have to be removed. The mayors in the district are certainly open to new ideas. However, there is a lack of exchange between the municipalities in this field. As soon as the municipalities exercise their planning sovereignty, they are relatively free in their planning. This also applies for vertical coordination.

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There is always a great tension when the higher planning level intervenes in the settlement development of the municipalities. Since regional planning associations in Bavaria are mainly composed of municipal representatives and are thus returned to the task of the municipalities, the willingness to introduce additional instruments to secure open space from the state planning authority in regional planning is "limited". In addition, it is difficult to communicate concrete specifications in the regional plan ("an accompanying process would be necessary here"). It would also be desirable that the possibilities of the regional plan, which it already offers, are better perceived by the municipal representatives sitting in the planning association. Greater regional coordination to secure the necessary land could even be a relief for the municipalities, as they could then refer to already agreed objectives and then devote themselves to implementing municipal land use planning within these frameworks.

5.2 Salzburg/ Tennengau (AT)

Experts from Salzburg confirm, that, awareness for safeguarding open spaces is lacking, otherwise the coordination on the horizontal and vertical level for the implementation of measures would be easier. Conflicts of interest for the use of open spaces exist between sectoral spatial planning offices. The perspective of the respective experts is always directed towards their own protected good, and the individual groups (e.g. agriculture, soil protection, spatial planning, landscape planning or nature conservation) do not like to mix. For example, the pressure on agricultural land is increasing from various sides. On the one hand, agriculture should be productive, but at the same time there is pressure from settlement development, and agriculture should also provide land for flood protection or ecological compensation measures and remaining areas with high ecological values must be preserved. Data on soil evaluations for agricultural land are provided and they are considered in spatial planning, but a regulative character is lacking. In comparison to agriculture land, forest has a long-standing forest law with a high protective effect and nature conservation also has its high significance in the legal status. There is no possibility to effectively protect soils in the Spatial Planning Law. The most that can be done is to balance interests. In addition, there is no legal instrument to protect soils (a soil protection law) that could intervene in a regulatory way. From the expert’s point of view, spatial planning can only regulate the quantity of open spaces but not the quality. Settlements and at most the adjacent open space areas are considered for settlement integration. Besides these sectoral conflict interests on open space, an important issue is the vertical coordination. The provisions made at regional level to safeguard open spaces are implemented at municipal level in the local spatial development concepts, the land use plans and specified in the settlement development plans. If there is no obligation from regional level, not much happens in open space planning on local level. There are, for example, specifications in regional programmes for the protection of open spaces. Existing planning instruments could include protected agricultural land or biotope network structures (e.g. wildlife corridors). But firstly, they are not used sufficiently and secondly, when these provisions are broken down to the municipal level, it becomes difficult. The big problem at this level is that the open spaces belong to landowners. The respective landowners (perhaps) have different objectives for the use of their spaces than those who decide on them. Without interfering with the fundamental rights of the owners, it is hardly possible to bring the individual interests under the umbrella of the overall interests. There is a big gap between the government goals on land use "from the very top" and specifications on how these are to be

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achieved. If the "how" were clearly defined, the implementation of an economical use of land at the municipal level would be feasible in the first place. This requires a continuous vertical coordination from the top to the bottom. An alternative to this is to facilitate initiatives from the bottom. Municipalities could impose regulations for open spaces too, at it shows the case of the municipality “St. Martin am Tennengebirge”. They implemented tranquil zones at municipal level.

5.3 Friuli Venezia Giulia, Prealpi Giulie (I)

Experts and administrators from the pilot area of Prealpi Giulie confirm that there are no specific knowledge problems about open spaces in this region. In addition, they indicated that the local authorities have No idea how to control and manage the remaining open spaces and to tackle the issue of the uncontrolled advance of the forest. They suggest that the modality of interpreting the territory for open spaces should be functionality. At regional level there is a sort of contrast between people who deal with landscape and spatial planning approach and those who deal with the environment approach. Specifically between the use or non-use of spaces and the point of view of the functionality of spaces and ecosystem services. One of the problems underlined is the problem of land property rules and the cost of enforcing these rules on land fragmentation. Experts highlighted the need for a cadastral reform and some problems of neighbourhood management. There are no specific problems in monitoring the implementation of the rules but a general lack of personnel in the administrations and expert personnel who can solve the problems for the wide areas. Local administrators have pointed out also that there is a high fragmentation in the management of large area problems in mountain areas; after several unsuccessful experiments with inter-municipal and wide area spatial planning, there has now been a return to purely municipal-based spatial planning approach. Municipal administrations tend to resist the push for large area planning in order not to lose their power and control activities. This has a significant impact on the management and planning of open spaces in the pilot area.

5.4 Upper Soča Valley (SI)

It is generally acknowledged that in the pilot region there is enough knowledge in the frame of single disciplines. Also, the local population of the Upper Soča Valley which lives and works in the area can most accurately assess the degree to which the open space is endangered. However, the awareness about the significance of open spaces is lacking as well as the realisation that there exists a “mosaic” of approaches to the topic of open space. Therefore, it would be necessary to rethink and spread values among the population. Education and awareness raising campaigns are urgently needed. A second aspect regarding lack of knowledge seems to be among planning experts. The elaboration of spatial planning documents is strongly influenced by the “logic of the capital”. In practice this results in developments that threaten the characteristics and qualities of the natural open spaces more and more. A strongly related problem in the process of elaboration of the spatial planning

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documents is a lack of background studies, such as assessments of vulnerability of the landscape and attractiveness for various activities. If these background studies were available, then the spatial planning documents could be elaborated more quickly and the proposed solutions better substantiated. Territories of municipalities located along the Slovenian state border are generally characterised by high quality landscape and environment. The municipalities, on the other hand, lack resources to have high quality analyses elaborated for example. Support of external experts would be needed, and the participation of local communities should also be ensured. Among the implementation obstacles, the conflicts between sectors in Slovenia seems to be one of the most serious problems. Several sectors are sharing and claiming the open space, e.g., nature protection, water management and agriculture. Hence, municipalities have an interest to coordinate the uses and develop the territory in an integrated manner. But in practice, intersectoral aspects are lacking in the planning of watercourses, municipal spatial plans, regional projects, and new energy infrastructure facilities. In general, the understanding of standpoints of other sectors is not given, although the Slovenian Ministry for the Environment and Spatial Planning would have been assigned a mediating role on several occasions. This causes a call for an “enabling structure”. Opportunities for enhanced cooperation, coordination and interdisciplinary work are needed. This concerns not only the integrated planning among sectors, but also horizontal coordination among municipalities. Intermunicipal cooperation as well as cooperation with the Triglav National Park is needed, especially during elaboration of spatial planning documents. The regional level is crucial when it comes to strategic thinking and planning. Currently too many tasks are at the municipal level. A regional spatial development plan should be elaborated, clearing up the interests and intentions as regards the territory, taking decisions and “defending” them. The mechanism of spatial planning could offer important answers and provide a monitoring system for defined objectives. In the process of preparing the spatial planning documents too little attention is on defining the monitoring systems allowing to follow the state of open spaces and implementation of the plans by means of measurable indicators. In cases where the spatial planning documents are of high quality and have been elaborated in a participatory process there is less need for control. But municipal administrations and other institutions lack staff and expertise. Territories of municipalities are large and have demanding characteristics. It is also demanding to coordinate restrictive measures and development initiatives. Stronger teams would be needed, also to be able to communicate with experts that elaborate background studies. Accurate analyses still need to be elaborated and values identified. The “locals” are often not aware of the qualities and value of the territory and environment where they live. Therefore, strategic and goal-oriented planning has to be conducted, to be able to carry out monitoring.

5.5 Mont Blanc - Auvergne – Rhône Alpes (FR)

It is generally acknowledged that in the pilot region there is good overall knowledge by local experts and administrators they reported that the location of some wetlands, dry lawns and plants of cultivated environments is missing. Moreover, there is a specific lack of knowledge about the land owned by the communities. Experts highlighted that in this area there are few available spaces and many expectations from the different sectors: housing, craft activities, leisure and tourist activities, agriculture etc. They underlined also the presence of conflicts also within the same sector of activity (between farmers for example). Due to the numerous double-activities, there are exchanges and solutions found (e.g. farmer and ski area operator) but in general, there is a lack of dialogue

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/concertation between these different sectors. Local elected officials do not always enforce the regulations that for examples generally limits artificialisation. The controls are very much linked to the local political will. The SCOT (Schéma de Cohérence Territorial) must be seen as a territorial project, beyond the administrative limits of the municipalities and must be imposed on land use planning issues.

5.6 Upper Aosta Valley & Piedmont (IT)

The local administrators pointed out that there are no land use conflicts between sectors & horizontal coordination between sectors. They indicated that for the Upper Valley administrators there is here is a common strategic direction regarding the regional rules and also a cross-communication between municipalities. Nevertheless, some mobility regulations are not clear enough, particularly on the issue of the relationship between residents owning land and the presence and activities of tourists. In addition, the rules governing the production and serving of local food are very complicated and onerous.

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6 Best practices for safeguarding open spaces

The below mentioned instruments represent a collection of best practice examples for safeguarding open spaces in the pilot sites without any claim to completeness. A detailed description will be elaborated in further deliverables if they are suitable to be transferred in other pilot sites. Table 4: Best pratices

Tranquil zones and In the regional programme of Tennengau, Tranquil Zones agricultural preservation according to the definition of the Alpine Convention are areas within the regional implemented. In Salzburg, it is possible to designate priority areas programmes (AT) for agriculture in regional programmes or at local level. Implemented e.g. in the regional programmes of: - Salzburg Seeland; "Core area for agricultural production", - Salzburg and surrounding municipalities; "Suitability area for agriculture" or "Multifunctional priority area for ecology, recreation, agriculture and green belt" - Flachgau-Nord "Priority area for agriculture" - Lungau "Precautionary area for agriculture"

Law for Soča river (SI) Additional law for protection in Slovenia, against the establishment of hydropower and for protection of the identity- forming elements of the river landscape, coming from social and cultural needs of the population.

River contract Stura river (IT) Intermunicipal planning for river basins in Piedmont by “river contracts”. As soft power tools, in the area administrators are experimenting the collective management of areas also devoted to compatible tourism.

“Blue zone” Vorarlberg (AT) Regional protected open spaces for the protection against flood risks, through the preservation and safeguarding of areas for flood drainage or retention and for future protective water engineering measures (Office of the Vorarlberg Regional Government 2018).

Agricultural priority areas Regional protected open spaces for the preservation of Tirol (AT) agricultural land.

Mitigation measures at local In order to protect agricultural soils and their functions (including level in Salzburg (AT) production but also recreation functions), mitigation measures are prescribed in areas close to settlements within the framework of development planning.

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Evaluation and mapping of Salzburg is one of the first Federal States in Austria that has a soil functions (AT/DE) freely available soil function map with five relevant soil functions. The production function is mapped via the financial soil estimate and an indicator for yield. Also, other functions, such as the location or retention function (connection to flood protection) are also taken into account. With the help of the soil function evaluation, it should be determined which areas should be kept free for certain uses. The topic of soil quality for qualitative planning of open spaces is implemented in Germany, but it is better addressed in other federal states than in Bavaria. It has to be proved how effective this instrument can be.

Definition of settlement Settlement boundaries in regional and local planning boundaries (AT/DE) instruments in German and Austrian are seen as a good measure to limit land consumption.

Intermunicipal soil alliance - Creation of a landscape structure plan for the Pielach Valley Pielachtal (Lower Austria, based on the soil alliance plans for forest development AT) (designation of ecological priority areas to safeguard the production basis of agriculture, biodiversity and the recreational function). - Support for young farmers in agriculture – fair prices for quality products. - Quality, integrative tourism (nature and adventure as well as eco-educational offers, maintenance and preparation of the attractive hiking trail network). - Awareness raising/advice (information on services of farming concerning landscape management, advisory focus on "sustainable forest management", educational offers).

Restrictive measures within Restrictive measures were introduced to limit construction of the municipal spatial plan of agricultural buildings in the open space. This was considered the Tolmin municipality (SI) necessary because there were massive abuses, especially in the Soča valley, where new buildings actually became secondary homes or were intended for tourist stays. The measures have proven to be effective.

The problem is that restrictive measures are valid on the territory of the whole municipality – which is rather large-, imposing restrictions also in areas and cases where there is no intention of abuse.

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Landscape plan for Debeli The plan contains all elements that need to be protected when rtič, Ankaran Municipality (SI) aiming at preserving open spaces.

Agrarian or pasture Agrarian or pasture communities are in places where they communities (SI) continue to operate “guardians” of the traditional uses and infrastructures that sustain the landscape and open spaces. But once the uses are discontinued, pressures arise very quickly.

Agricultural plans (I) for the As soft power tools, in this region there are sort of agricultural use of abandoned land plans for the use of abandoned agricultural land. Voluntary association of landowners and farmers work together for the management of abandoned areas in a sort of collective management.

Accessibility of mountain Open data collection and shared Webgis on Carnia Mountain territorial data (I) Area

Territory project via the A major initiative will be launched shortly. It must be a real SCOT (F) territorial project, and for that, the elected representatives will have to take a higher profile. Dialogue between the actors and between the municipalities will be essential.

Mont Blanc Plain Project (F) Exchanges take place with elected representatives, farmers and associations for the preservation of natural environments and open space in the heart of the Mont Blanc region. Exchanges are in progress, and a real local desire for preservation seems to be emerging. This has been made possible in particular thanks to the time spent by the Community of Communes in leading the initiative.

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7 Conclusion

The analysis of planning approaches in the different pilot sites revealed that open spaces, according to the definition of the project, are generally not subject to specific rules or safeguard actions. However, it can be noted that their safeguard is considered by both, sectoral and general planning instruments. Open spaces are rarely classified as a single category which incorporated all functions and typologies for open spaces with a holistic approach, but mainly sectoral approaches are applied. The Alpine Convention defines a single category by purposing the delimitation “of tranquil areas and areas in which construction of buildings and infrastructures is restrained or prohibited, as are other damaging activities” (Alpine Convention, Art.9 (4) Lit.b). These tranquil zones would be in line with the definition of open spaces, but they are rarely implemented in the selected pilot sites. There are no such approaches in France, Italy and Slovenia. Relevant GIS analysis for a single category with a holistic approach for the definition open spaces are conducted in Salzburg (Austria) by a not published analysis of tranquil zones, and in the metropolitan area of Turin (Italy) by the definition of “free areas”. The approach of these analysis could be important for mapping of open spaces on an alps-wide scale and the zoom to case study areas (activity AT3.2). While the investigation started with the assumption, that ecological, economic, and social functions of open spaces are protected by sectoral plans, it turned out that Landscape Plans in Italy or management plans for national parks and biosphere reserves in Slovenia have a holistic and cross- sectoral approach and should not be defined as sectoral instruments. Thus, in these cases it is a mix of sectoral and holistic approach. However, a common characteristic of the governance and planning systems seems to be that open spaces in every country are also covered by several sectoral approaches, even if they implemented a single category for open spaces. These sectoral approaches have different importance in the planning systems. Agricultural land is mainly under pressure and has significant planning gaps, while forests and natural hazard zones experience already a well-functioning protection status. Also, nature parks are highly protected, but their connection through wildlife corridors suffers from the missing implementation. Planning for recreational areas are less established. An important gap in integrated spatial planning for open spaces is the insufficient vertical coordination between the regional and the local level. It turned out, that missing awareness and knowledge can be a significant cause for the insufficient consideration of important functions of open spaces in landscape planning and local administrations. Studies on open spaces such as for wildlife corridors, or tourism carrying capacities are missing and from the experts’ point of view, standardised indicators for a common protection status are required. For example, a management and guidance of tourism visitors is strongly needed in the Slovenian pilot site. Informal planning processes play a secondary role for safeguarding open spaces. Such processes are mostly part of the elaboration of formal plans. The implementation strategies, which will be further developed in the OpenSpaceAlps project for safeguarding open spaces in the pilot sites, should consider the different planning approaches and propose the selection of appropriate planning instruments at regional level for each pilot site to implement a single “open space” category. The implementation strategy should consider the three functions of open spaces, which have effects that are crossing administrative boundaries, especially within in river basins.

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References

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Annexes

Annex 1: Collection of GIS – data sources

Cross-border case study area Berchtesgadener Land - Salzburg Berchtesgadener Land:

• Overview of all available Geodata in Bavaria: https://geoportal.bayern.de/geoportalbayern/seiten/dienste (most of them only as WMS layer, some of them not for free) • ATKIS Basis DLM” (digital landscape model including land-uses and infrastructures, roads etc.: https://www.ldbv.bayern.de/produkte/atkis-basis-dlm.html) • building shapefiles (“Hausumringe”): • https://www.ldbv.bayern.de/produkte/kataster/hausumringe.html • regional planning: http://risby.bayern.de/RisGate/servlet/Regionalplanung • Shapefiles by the Bavarian state office for the environment (protected areas, natural hazard zones, biotope maps): https://www.lfu.bayern.de/umweltdaten/geodatendienste/index_download.htm • Forest function plans: https://www.stmelf.bayern.de/wald/waldfunktionen/waldfunktionsplanung/054599/index.php (Shapefiles on request from the Bavarian forest administration)

Salzburg:

• Essential list of GIS-data for Land Salzburg (accessible for SIR for OpenSpaceAlps): https://www.salzburg.gv.at/bauenwohnen_/Documents/SAGIS/Geodatenliste.pdf • Austrian-wide WFS and open geo data:

https://www.data.gv.at/auftritte/?organisation=geoland https://www.europeandataportal.eu/data/datasets?locale=de&country=at&page=1 http://geometadatensuche.inspire.gv.at/metadatensuche/srv/ger/catalog.search

Cross-border case study area Triglav – Prealpi Giulie Friuli-Venezia Giulia: • A web GIS tool for the landscape plan of the region. http://webgis.simfvg.it/it/map/bozza-ricognizione- ppr/qdjango/13/. Editable data are mostly available on request.

Slovenia:

• National GIS server, free to use in ArcGIS or QGIS. https://gisportal.gov.si/arcgis/rest/services Most relevant base paths that include several layers: • Environmental atlas: https://gis.arso.gov.si/arcgis/rest/services/Atlasokolja_intranet/MapServer • LIDAR hill shade: https://gis.arso.gov.si/arcgis/rest/services/Lidar_hillshade/MapServer • Ortophoto 2019: https://gis.arso.gov.si/arcgis/rest/services/DOF_2019/MapServer Additional base paths that include several layers: • Environmental GIS server: http://gis.arso.gov.si/arcgis/rest/services • Geology: https://biotit.geo-zs.si/gis/rest/services

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• Online maps: • Nature conservation atlas of Slovenia - https://www.naravovarstveni-atlas.si/web/?culture=en-US • Environmental atlas of Slovenia - http://gis.arso.gov.si/atlasokolja/profile.aspx?id=Atlas_Okolja_AXL@Arso&culture=en-US • Geopedia - interactive web atlas and map of Slovenia - http://www.geopedia.si/lite.jsp?locale=en¶ms=T105_x499072_y112072_s9_b4#T105_x499072_y 112072_s9_b4 • Portal Prostor – vector and raster GIS data for download (predominantly in Slovenian language) - https://www.e-prostor.gov.si/ • The UIRS has access to other data sources that are not freely available online. For more information please contact Simon Koblar ([email protected])

Cross-border case study area Mont Blanc Auvergne – Rhône Alpes:

• Open Data La Région Auvergne Rhone Alpes. Information Géographique: http://opendata.auvergnerhonealpes.eu/dataset/7-les- donnees.htm?facet.themes%5B%5D=Information+G%C3%A9ographique • Protected areas • Favourable area for wind power • etc.

Piedmont:

• Open GIS data for Open Spaces available on the geo-catalogue: http://www.geoportale.piemonte.it/geocatalogorp/?sezione=catalogo • Regional Territorial Plan (search for “piano territoriale regionale”): Soil consumption 2008-2013, Mountain areas, Built-up areas, Areas at high flood risk, Perennial snowfields and glaciers • Landscape plan (search for “piano paesaggistico”): Areas of high agronomic interest (table P4), Areas and elements of specific geomorphological and naturalistic interest (table P4), Areas and elements of specific geomorphological and naturalistic interest with visual relevance (table P4), Free areas of high landscape and panoramic value, Mountain areas of natural continuity (table P5), Protected Areas, Non- mountain areas with widespread presence of hedges and rows (table P4), Rural areas of specific landscape interest SV 1 - SV6 (table P4), Perspective axes (table P4), Motorways and state, regional and provincial roads (table P4), Ecological corridors (Table P5), Parks (table P2), Tourist infrastructure for the mountains (table P4), Morphology of permanent settlement area (table P4), with 14 different categories: http://www.geoportale.piemonte.it/geocatalogorp/?sezione=catalogo, • Flood risk: Flood risk plan Piedmont: http://osgis2.csi.it/webgisAtlante/qgiswebclient.html?map=qgis_cloud/direttiva_alluvioni

Aosta Valley:

• Open GIS data from the regional Landscape Plan available on the geo-portal: https://geoportale.regione.vda.it/download/ptp/ • Land use data: https://mappe.regione.vda.it/pub/geoCartoSCT/ (request needed)

Alpine – wide data

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• GIS data from the project ALPBIONET 2030 for the whole Alps and the EUSALP Territory (see Atlas of ALPBIONET2030, publication 2020). JECAMI tool, Swiss National Park. • World database on protected areas (WDPA) containing UNESCO – sites, national parks, Natura 2000 (EEA). • Alps-wide WMS concerning ecosystem services: www.alpes-webgis.eu (see legend > WMS) • Protected areas in the Alps from ALPARC.

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Annex 2: Questionnaire for telephone interviews

Regarding the provided definition 1. How are “open spaces” safeguarded in your region? (Common protection status like Alpine Plan in Germany or sectoral approaches like in Italy) Regarding the catalogue of planning approaches 2. According to your knowledge and experience, are there some existing planning approaches for the safeguarding of open spaces which were not mentioned in the collection? 3. Which planning approaches for safeguarding open spaces in your region do exist? 4. Are there any other informal plans or ongoing projects? About GIS and open spaces 5. Were open spaces subject of a GIS analysis? 6. Which GIS models and GIS data exists in your region regarding the definition of open spaces? Planning gaps 7. Do you see planning gaps for open spaces regarding the different functions for open spaces in this area? o Ecological functions: Nature conservation and Landscape protection o Economic functions: Agriculture and forestry o Social functions: Areas for recreation, areas for protection against natural hazards, (other) 8. According to your experience, which gaps in regional and intermunicipal planning affect (or could affect) the safeguarding of open spaces? Planning tools 9. According to your experience, do the current planning tools at local / regional level have a weak impact on the settlement development? 10. Are tools missing, which can guarantee the safeguarding of open spaces? If yes, then which one?

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Annex 3: Involved experts Table 5: List of institutions involved in interviews and workshops

Institutions Federal State of Salzburg – Unit 10/04 Spatial Planning

Soča Valley Development Centre

Politecnico Torino - Interuniversity Department of Regional and Urban Studies and Planning

Federal State of Salzburg, Division 5: Nature and environmental protection

Prealpi Giulie Natural Park – Directorate

Prealpi Giulie Natural Park – Spatial Planning Office

Federal State of Slazburg, Department for Infrastructure and Mobility – State geological service

Federal State of Salzburg / Department of Livelihoods and Energy / Department of State Forest Directorate / Forest Planning

Federal State of Salzburg / Department of Livelihoods and Energy/ Unit Agriculture, Soil Protection and Alpine Meadows

Civil engineers for architecture and regional planning in Salzburg

Salzburg Chamber of Agriculture, Rural Area Department

Regional Association Tennengau (representing the municipalities in Tennengau)

Government of Upper Bavaria, Field 24.1 Regional Planning, State and Regional Planning

Biosphere reserve Berchtesgadener Land

Town planning officer of the district town Bad Reichenhall

District architect of the District Administrator's Office (dt. Landratsamt) Berchtesgadener Land in Bad Reichenhall

District Administrator's Office (dt. Landratsamt) Berchtesgadener Land, FB 33 Nature conservation and hunting

Private office for landscape and local planning in Übersee

Bovec Municipality, Department of the Environment and Spatial Planning

Tolmin Municipality, Department of the Environment and Spatial Planning

Soča Valley Development Centre

Republic of Slovenia, Ministry of the Environment and Spatial Planning, Directorate for the Environment, Sector for Nature P.

Institute of agriculture and forestry Nova Gorica

Triglav National Park

Alpine Association of Slovenia

Member of the town council - Les Houches

Member of the town council - Passy

Responsible for natural spaces of the Community of Communes Pays du Mont Blanc

Biodiversity Service, autonomous Region of Friuli Venezia Giulia

Municipality of Resiutta

Municipality of Resia

Municipality of Courmayeur

Municipality of Valgrisenche

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Annex 4: Additional data on soil consumption

Soil consumption in Piedmont (ha). Yeas available 1991-2018.

200.000 174.300 175.400 172.200 180.000 153.321 160.000 145.721 136.995 140.000 129.824133.159 121.951 120.000 100.000

Area (ha) 80.000 60.000 40.000 20.000 0 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 Year

Figure 8: Soil consumption in Piedmont 1991- 2018. Sum given by Consumption of soil from urbanised area and Reversible consumption. Infrastructure land consumption is not included. Source: Regione Piemonte, Monitoraggio del consumo di suolo. https://www.regione.piemonte.it/web/temi/ambiente-territorio/territorio/monitoraggio-consumo-suolo

Current governance and planning systems for open spaces in pilot sites Laner, Omizzolo, December 2020 54

Current governance and planning systems for open spaces in pilot sites

Authors Peter Laner ([email protected]), Ranzoni Marco ([email protected]), Andrea Omizzolo ([email protected]), Eurac Research Institute for Regional Development Bolzano/Bozen.

With contributions of Philipp Vesely, Juliette Conrad; Salzburg Institute for Regional Planning and Housing (SIR), Constantin Meyer, University of Würzburg (JMU), Andrej Gulič, Urban Planning Institute of the Republic of Slovenia (UIRS), Guido Plassmann, ALPARC – the Network of Alpine Protected Areas

Layout Peter Laner, Eurac Research

December 2020

OpenSpaceAlps project partners:

Urbanistični inštitut Republike Slovenije Urban Planning Institute of the Republic of Slovenia

OpenSpaceAlps – Sustainable development of alpine open spaces by enhancing spatial planning governance https://www.alpine-space.eu/projects/openspacealps/en/home