Rhinehessen Regional Park Master Plan

By drawing up a master plan, the districts and municipalities are creating a joint platform for the development of a future regional park in Rheinhessen. The master plan is not a legally binding plan. Its informal character as an orientation and design framework provides the necessary flexibility for future developments. It is intended to formulate guiding principles and motivate the regional players to jointly develop the park and the projects further.

As part of the metropolitan region "Rhine-Main Area", it is important for Rhinehessen to preserve and develop its soft location factors. To this end, the towns and municipalities want to activate above all the local recreation and nature experience potential of the Rhine-Hessian landscape. The local plans are to be brought together in the supra-local open space concept.

Another task is to develop new projects and measures. and to combine these with the existing projects to form an overall picture. Finally, suggestions are to be made as to how the regional park planning can be implemented in the future. To this end, the plan names the anticipated costs, realisation periods and possible sponsors of the projects.

A distinctive feature of the master plan process is the comprehensive dialogue on the planning and project contents with all those interested and involved in the regional park. This form of "bottom-up" planning makes use of the local knowledge and expertise of the stakeholders and citizens in the municipalities and avoids "top-down" planning developed exclusively by expert consultants. This gives the planning result a broader acceptance and basis of legitimacy. The planning experts limit themselves to the coordination, monitoring and structuring of the planning, moderate the process and contribute professionally justified examinations, expert opinions and suggestions only where this is necessary to ensure a coherent, implementable and overall effective concept.

Two moderated workshop rounds created a platform for jointly developing, collecting and discussing project ideas. About 220 participants collected about 400 project ideas. The citizens took on the role of "local experts". Local knowledge and experience flowed into the joint concept development.

Following this, the ideas and conceptions developed were brought into a coherent network of regional park routes by the planners and the steering group, and spatial development focal points were defined. The second round of workshops began with a presentation of the results achieved up to that point. The participants were asked to elaborate on these and, if necessary, to replace them with better alternatives. The result of the workshop phase was an agreed route concept with proposals for development focal points and impulse projects.

The planners then checked all project and measure proposals for their compatibility with the basic idea and the mission statement of the regional park and their environmental compatibility, particularly in the affected bird, FFH and nature conservation areas. On the basis of this, the ideas were categorised as feasible in the short, medium and long term or as a vision.