The Lex Adickes, named after Frankfurt's mayor Franz Adickes and enacted for the city in 1902, gave the municipality power to pool fragmented private land parcels, re-plan them into rational building plots and street layouts, and redistribute the new plots to the original owners. Land needed for streets and public space was deducted, and owners shared in the resulting uplift in value, allowing the city to capture part of the betterment. It overcame the obstacle of scattered ownership without outright expropriation. The mechanism balanced private property with coordinated development.
The law effectively invented modern land readjustment as a planning technique. The approach was widely adopted, notably in Japan, Korea and across rapidly urbanising parts of Asia, where it remains a principal means of converting fragmented land into serviced urban districts.