Building law: planning, permits, defects

Die Erschließung is the word on this list most often translated too grandly. A dictionary offers « development », but English planning law uses that word for the building project itself, which German calls das Vorhaben. In German building law die Erschließung is narrow and physical: the road that reaches a plot, the water main, the sewer, the power line. A plot is erschlossen once these are in place, and nothing may be approved on it until die Erschließung gesichert ist. Owners pay towards the road through der Erschließungsbeitrag. Away from the building office the noun keeps a wider sense of opening something up: a region is opened to tourists, a mineral deposit to mining, a library’s holdings to readers by cataloguing them. And a difficult text can sich erschließen, becoming accessible to someone who reads it slowly. Only the first sense sends anybody a bill.