Landscape Architecture Frontiers

German landscape planning has gathered many experiences and become an outstandingly working system of the nation’s territorial spatial planning. By reviewing its history, values, and legal framework, this paper summarizes the experience of German landscape planning and draws conclusions for its success into four logics: 1) the normative basis for the evaluation and deduction of objectives is transparent and stems primarily from ethical and cultural values; 2) social development needs are considered in the overall spatial planning and local participation processes; 3) planning methods include ways to effective implementation; and 4) the principle of subsidiary and the scale effect of landscape processes are considered. These logics are reflected and guaranteed by the German legislation. With a profound understanding of China’s reality, the authors argue that China needs more efforts to further separate the right to use and the revenues from the ownership of the spatial resources, and build a balancing mechanism for public-private interest negotiation to ensure the fairness of planning; In addition to enriching the evaluation standards and methodological standards for territorial spatial planning, a greater attention should be given to enhancing the effectiveness and efficiency of public participation at lower planning levels by establishing respective routines of bottom up initiatives and processes; Within the “Five- Level and Three-Type Framework,” China should introduce cross-level and cross-regional planning coordination mechanism that facilitates the paid supply and compensation mechanism of ecological public goods like ecosystem services.