Downzoning property rights as a strategy in flood risk management?

This paper explores why municipalities continue to allow development in flood-prone areas despite growing awareness of flood risks. It focuses on the case of the St. Pius Quarter in Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler, in the Ahr valley. Here, development rights were granted shortly before the 2021 floods and retained afterwards, despite updated hazard classifications and a high probability of recurring flood events.Using the Policy Arrangement Approach (PAA), this paper analyses if downzoning property rights is used to reduce flood risk, based on the interaction between spatial planning and flood risk management across the dimensions of PAA. Based on expert interviews and policy document analysis, the findings show that legal protections of property, financial reliance on land development, fragmented institutional responsibilities, and dominant growth-oriented narratives collectively uphold the status quo. While municipalities do have the legal authority to downzone areas where no buildings have yet been constructed, political pressure, limited budgets, and legal complexity make this option difficult to realise.The case of the St. Pius Quarter illustrates that downzoning is not simply a technical or legal issue, but a political one embedded in broader institutional and discursive structures. Change is only possible when all four dimensions of the policy arrangement shift together: legal frameworks must support preventive action, resources must be available, actors must be empowered to act, and public discourse must recognise downzoning as a legitimate response to risk. Without such alignment, municipalities remain locked into development patterns that perpetuate exposure to future flood hazards.