Spatial planning

Die Umlegung names two quite different operations, and the one a newcomer usually meets first is not the one in this list. In a planning office it is land readjustment: a block of awkwardly cut fields is pooled, the land needed for roads is taken out, and each owner is allotted a new plot that can actually be built on, in proportion to what they brought in. In a rented flat it means something else. Die Umlegung der Nebenkosten is the apportionment of the service charges, and a landlord who writes die Kosten werden auf die Mieter umgelegt is passing them on, not redrawing anything. What joins the two is the literal picture behind umlegen: to lay something down again, differently. The context nearly always settles it. Plots, owners and der Bebauungsplan point to the first sense; tenants, meters and an annual statement point to the second.