Munich planning department rejects jury model for allocating city housing plots

Munich's planning department has said that a jury modelled on those used in architectural competitions would be too inflexible for deciding who builds homes on city-owned land. The response came from city planning director Professor Elisabeth Merk, answering a request from the Greens – Rosa Liste – Volt group on the city council.

In their request of 25 February 2026, councillors Paul Bickelbacher, Nimet Gökmenoğlu, Ursula Harper, Angelika Pilz-Strasser, Florian Schönemann, Christian Smolka, Sibylle Stöhr and Sebastian Weisenburger asked the Department of Urban Planning and Building Regulation to run a pilot in which several adjoining plots would be allocated by a jury instead of the usual points system. They argued that the points system is too static and leads to very similar applications, whereas a jury could take account of priorities suited to individual sites or applicants. They said the jury approach had already proved itself in Tübingen, was no less legally sound than a points assessment, and had long been proposed by Munich housing cooperatives.

The department said that for around 15 years the city has allocated residential building land through a concept-based procedure, in which the quality of proposals and their social and ecological sustainability decide which cooperatives or private developers are chosen. Sales to the highest bidder are no longer used. More than 50 such procedures have been carried out across the city, including in development areas such as Prinz-Eugen-Park, Freiham Nord and Kreativfeld, where the department said they had helped create stable neighbourhoods and good-quality housing affordable to a broad section of Munich's population, along with many shared facilities.

According to the department, applicants must meet basic requirements, such as the city's ecological criteria catalogue, and can also submit optional written proposals on priority themes set by the city council's planning committee. Recent tenders for cooperatives have focused on social issues, forms of housing and resident mix, as well as ecological and sustainable building. The department stressed that no rigid points system is used; proposals are scored within a range from very good to rather moderate, allowing individual offers to be properly assessed.

The assessment is carried out by a panel of experts from various city departments, covering housing and urban development, housing subsidies, social planning and social housing provision, with the mobility and climate and environment departments brought in where relevant. For cooperative housing tenders, the mitbauzentrale münchen, which works on behalf of the city, advises on anonymised proposals but has no vote. The department said the procedure is accurate, legally sound, and efficient in time and cost, and is regularly reviewed and developed in light of feedback from politicians and the housing sector, but that a competition-style jury bound by the guidelines for planning competitions would be too inflexible for city land tenders.