Regional co-operation
The city of Chemnitz is interlinked in many areas with its surrounding area, the neighbouring municipalities and towns, as well as the region.
Important areas of responsibility include the organisation of local public transport, the development of sites for residential and commercial construction, agreements on economic development, cultural and educational offerings and measures to protect natural resources.
The cooperation is partly voluntary and partly in fulfilment of mandatory tasks. The City of Chemnitz works in numerous regional co-operations and is a member of various special-purpose associations.
Regional Convention Chemnitz
The idea of the regional convention is to jointly present a region that is home and work environment for almost 1.6 million people. The aim is to pool strengths, utilise potential and formulate common goals vis-à-vis the federal and state governments. One of the main objectives is to keep people in the region or attract them to it.
Regional planning association
The Chemnitz Region Planning Association is one of four planning associations in the Free State of Saxony. Members of the association are the independent city of Chemnitz and the districts of Erzgebirgskreis, Mittelsachsen, Vogtlandkreis and Zwickau. The region covers an area of approx. 6,500 km² and has a population of around 1,466,000 (as at 31 December 2015).
History
The predecessors of the Chemnitz Region Planning Association were the Chemnitz-Erzgebirge Regional Planning Association founded on 24 September 1992 and the Southwest Saxony Regional Planning Association founded on 13 October 1992.
On 1 August 2008, as part of the Saxon functional and district reform, the two associations were merged to form the new Chemnitz Region Planning Association and additionally expanded to include the former district of Döbeln.
Tasks
Regional planning has the task of concretising the programmes and plans of state planning and defining the so-called objectives of spatial and state planning specifically for the region. Regional planning thus represents the essential link between the supra-local development concept of the state ("state policy") and the concrete definition of land use at the local level through urban land-use planning ("local policy"). To this end, a regional plan is drawn up by the association's office in consultation with the members of the association (Chemnitz and the above-mentioned districts).
In detail, the association has the following tasks
- to draw up, adopt and update the regional plan and, in doing so, to coordinate the interests of the region within the framework of regional planning, taking into account the planning objectives set by the Free State of Saxony and the principles of regional planning,
- to participate in the preparation and establishment of spatial and regional planning objectives by state authorities in accordance with the provisions of state law,
- to work towards the realisation of development plans,
- to coordinate the regional plan with those of neighbouring regions, taking appropriate account of their interests and spatially significant plans,
- to inform and advise the bodies responsible for urban land-use planning, other public bodies and other planning bodies about the requirements of spatial and regional planning in its association area and to work towards ensuring that spatially significant plans and measures in its area are in harmony with each other and
- to issue statements on spatially significant plans and measures within the framework of regional planning procedures, other regional planning consultations and specialised planning.