The Federal Building Code of 1960 (Bundesbaugesetz) gave West Germany a unified national framework for urban land-use planning, replacing a patchwork of state and Prussian-era laws. It established the two-tier system of the preparatory land-use plan (Flächennutzungsplan) and the legally binding development plan (Bebauungsplan) that municipalities still use to control building. It regulated land readjustment, expropriation, infrastructure contributions and compensation, balancing private property against the public planning interest. Consolidated with urban-renewal law into the Baugesetzbuch in 1986, it remains the core statute of German planning.
It created the binding municipal plan system that governs almost all German development, embedding a careful balance between property rights and public planning into federal law.