The protection of high quality soils in inner urban areas of Europe is a challenging task as the soil in urban areas is in the conflict between environmental protection and urban development. However in many cases soil is still treated as a two-dimensional resource for settlement development and the importance of natural soil functions is neglected. But especially in densely populated areas soil plays a crucial role for environmental conditions and the living quality. The soil itself together with the plants and the organisms living in or on it, are closely interconnected with city climate, water balance and biodiversity.

Although soil protection strategies like the concept of the City of Stuttgart exist, public and administrative bodies are still not sensible to soil and its functions. This leads to the ongoing consumption of valuable urban soil by sealing or building activities regardless the functional role. Ongoing decrease of living quality and increase of environmental pollution and disasters like floods will be the consequences. Last but not least the destruction of functional soils results in changes of the urban and regional climate.

Therefore a comprehensive management strategy for soils in urban areas in central Europe was developed and established within URBAN SMS. Digital planning tools were developed and tested for the measurement, evaluation and prognosticating of the soil consumption. Beside the provision of practical decision making tools the awareness of the public was sharpened for a better protection of soils according to their functions for the urban environmental quality. Results by soil losses, particularly the consequences for the urban climate, were examined regarding a sustainable city development.

• Extension of Stuttgart´s soil protection concept (BOKS) for different planning and realisation stages of the urban planning process.
• Improvement and updating of the data sources of the soil protection concept.
• Development of a digital evaluation and prognosis tool (URBAN SMS Software) to accelerate the evaluation of planning scenarios. Thus recommendations for a sustainable soil use can be integrated in the planning process.
• Formulation of a comprehensive manual for urban soil management.
• Scenario modelling of different developments with special focus on climatological impacts for a better illustration and estimation of the consequences of continuous soil consumption.
• Evaluation of compensation measures for soil consumption.
• Provision of a movie about the importance of soil protection in urban areas.

The actions in the URBAN SMS project pursued the careful, economical and thrifty handling of the local soil resources by the protection of soil quality and valuable free spaces in urban areas. Actions and scenarios demonstrated that urban soils play an important role in connection with natural environment cycles. A new IT tool of the upgraded soil protection concept could be provided for the planners and decision makers. Further actions were implemented to sensibilise the broad public to notice the soil as an elementary preservation property. With the help of the project results new components for a sustainable urban development were created which support the preservation of the remained functional soils and the inner urban development.

The results of the URBAN SMS project are summarized in the Brochure "Soil in the City" which is available as pdf by the enclosed link. The products of the URBAN SMS actions can be downloaded on the project website www.urban-sms.eu. Also the presentations and posters of the final conference held in Stuttgart on 8th of February 2012 are placed there.

www.urban-sms.eu
URBAN SMS -(German)
CENTRAL EUROPE Programme