Modelling the spatial impact of regional planning and climate change prevention strategies on land consumption in the Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Area 2017–2030

•Scenario-based Urban Growth Simulation Model (SUSM) for Western Germany.•Two 2030 scenarios (planning, no planning) with 283 km2 total new urban area.•Efficient urban development rates higher without regional land development plan.•25–33 % of new urban areas in zones of regional climate change prevention strategy. Urban sprawl is a ubiquitous with a complex network of driving forces and human and natural impacts on various scales of the coupled human-environment urban system. In Germany, a land consumption of 30 ha per day is envisaged. In that regard, the effect of growing metropolitan areas on the climate of local neighborhoods becomes more and more a topic in regional planning. Accordingly, the objectives of the study are a) to contribute to the climate change related land cover simulation efforts in Germany in a spatially explicit manner with a resolution of 30 m, b) to investigate future land consumption rates and population growth rates having a view on goal 11 of UN’s SDG, and c) analyze the spatial impact of planning policies in regard to land use planning and official climate change prevention strategies using Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Area (RRMA) in Western Germany as a study area. The study makes use of land use and land cover classification of multispectral satellite data and the derivation of land surface temperature based on Landsat satellite in order to calibrate and validate the urban growth model SUSM (scenario-based urban growth simulation model). Two scenarios for future land consumption 2030 are implemented and the future impacts of urban growth with the projection of land consumption rate (LCR), population growth rate (PGR), and LCRPGR index on municipality level, as well as the impact on regions vulnerable to climate change evaluated. The comparison of simulated urban growth to observed urban growth from 2005 to 2017 shows that the PA of SUSM for historic scenario is 68.06% with an overall accuracy of 97.15%, a Matthews correlation coefficient of 0.66, a figure of merit of 0.51 and area under curve of 0.84. The total quantity of new urban areas of our SUSM simulation 2030 were approximately 283 km2. While the difference in the simulated total quantity is nearly zero, the simulated allocation of new urban areas across the districts can differ by up to 25 km2 in the two scenarios. The number of municipalities with efficient urban land development rates increases in the SUSM scenario where no regional land development plan has been incorp