Deep Water Ports as a Trigger for Ongoing Land Use Conflicts? The Case of Jade Weser Port in Germany

Roni Susman () and Thomas Weith
Additional contact information
Roni Susman: Working Group “Co-Design of Change and Innovation”, Leibniz Center for Agricultural Landscape Research e.V., 15374 Müncheberg, Germany
Thomas Weith: Research Institute for Regional and Urban Development, 44135 Dortmund, Germany

Land, 2025, vol. 14, issue 10, 1-22

Abstract: Coastal areas are under intense pressure worldwide because diverse stakeholders rely on coastal resources, and the supply of land is highly limited. Coast-dependent economic activities like transportation and logistics infrastructure in the Jade Bay, Germany, have experienced extensive demand for land. The situation is more interesting because national parks encircle the seaport. Understanding the complex seaside–landside dynamics following the development of Jade Weser Port is crucial for promoting sustainability, as massive development exceeds existing spatial capacity. However, a comprehensive framework to assess land use conflicts when dealing with infrastructure development in sensitive coastal areas is often missing. We analyze the origin of land use developments and the planning process at different administrative levels by retracing land use changes from 1970 to 2015 using a time series of satellite images, analyzing planning documents, and examining realized activities. We look for an embedding of transport infrastructure development and its feedback on land use. As a consequence of land use conflicts, these land system dynamics create winners and losers across multidisciplinary aspects. Our findings reflect interdisciplinary aspects which discuss both societal changes and the constellation of inadequate planning approaches to address the complexity of coastal land use. The degree to which these activities cause land use conflicts depends on institutional settings, especially the consistency of ICZM and infrastructure planning.

Keywords: land use; conflicts; deep seaport; spatial planning; transport network; nature protection (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q15 Q2 Q24 Q28 Q5 R14 R52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/14/10/2009/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/14/10/2009/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jlands:v:14:y:2025:i:10:p:2009-:d:1766104

Access Statistics for this article

Land is currently edited by Ms. Carol Ma

More articles in Land from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().