van der Horst, TimoTimovan der HorstSchmidt-Döhl, FrankFrankSchmidt-Döhl2026-01-082026-01-082025Central Europe towards Sustainable Building, CESB 2025https://hdl.handle.net/11420/60640Based on the United Nations Agenda 2030 the government of Germany has formulated a national sustainability strategy which seeks to mitigate the ongoing increase in land take and aims for a circular economy until the year 2050 instead. Despite these political efforts, more land has been converted to building land in recent years. As part of a recent research project at Hamburg University of Technology, a preliminary study on land-take in Germany has been carried out as first milestone. Drivers of land take in recent years have been the regions of north-eastern, western and south-western Germany, while in centre regions a notable decrease in daily land take could be observed. The northern metropolitan areas mostly reported decreasing rates in their urban centres while land take increased in their suburban and greater areas. In contrast a densification of urban centres could be observed in the southern regions, while the surrounding rural areas showed decreasing or neutral trends. Only few counties reported a consistent negative land take over the recent years. Additional findings indicate that land take came almost exclusively at the expense of agricultural areas. In combination with recent efforts of afforestation backed up by comprehensive environmental protection laws, the available arable land quickly decreased over the recent years. To challenge this ongoing problem, the research project takes a novel approach on the design of large-scale commercial real estate by combining these buildings with commercial agriculture. A project outline is given at the end of the paper.enhttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Technology::690: Building, ConstructionSocial Sciences::363: Other Social Problems and Services::363.7: Environmental ProblemsConference Paperhttps://doi.org/10.15480/882.1640910.1088/1755-1315/1546/1/01202010.15480/882.16409Conference Paper