Neighbors shocked by the building structure. Who has experienced this before?

We also collected signatures, which, however, was obsolete due to the aforementioned, anyway prevailing processing time, so we could have saved ourselves that. Still got all (three) signatures, wasn’t a hassle despite the "relatively" town center location and thus rather unusual that new construction is still happening.

Fun fact: The objection was then filed by the fourth "neighbor," who legally isn’t one (since a street separates them) and therefore didn’t have to be asked. It was rejected within a few days, so it didn’t cause any issues...

At least you get to know your Pappenheimer that way

Basically, I agree with you. An example of why early neighborhood involvement CAN be useful: currently, a lot of building is going on here with air-to-water heat pumps, often and willingly. Their location can already play a role. At our friendly neighbor, after the building regulations were enforced (see above), I took a look at their plans and promptly saw that their general contractor had planned the air-to-water heat pump on their north side. Their north side is our south side: the air-to-water heat pump would have directly impacted our terrace and bedrooms. I briefly spoke with the neighbor, no problem for them, they moved the air-to-water heat pump to the east side / street, like we did. Nice side effect for him: the general contractor had made a total mess with his original "north planning" - unnecessarily large distance between the technical room and the air-to-water heat pump. Now the pipe run is significantly shorter. Through this “problem” we got talking; he needed space for his construction site and asked if he could use our property for building materials since we were not that far along yet. Of course, no problem. We now have a great relationship with them; it doesn’t even matter if he builds his garage at our property boundary a bit higher than planned and approved. What I mean is, neighborhood involvement can also have a de-escalating effect because you get to know each other early on. Another neighbor who is just starting now is doing the same. He showed us his plans, we showed him ours. He said on his own that he would have the air-to-water heat pump position changed again because otherwise it would really blast in our direction. Also a cool relationship, helping each other where possible. The only black sheep is our field commander hill builder. He didn’t give a damn about his neighbors and now wonders why they are paying close attention and are not willing to turn a blind eye to deviations (I have already reported extensively). I’ll put it this way: sure, you can act like a total egoist and not consider other people. Or you can look for solutions that are acceptable to everyone. Of course, it doesn’t always work, but at least there is a certain chance that it might be possible. If you don’t try at all and stubbornly insist on your right, you completely take away that possibility.

You described that well. That was probably also the purpose of this signature paragraph. In that respect, it is not just nonsense, although legally unnecessary. Unfortunately, it works like this here: I know my neighbors to the right quite well, the others not, because they are all newcomers who didn't even show up at the house during the construction phase, and then suddenly a furniture truck arrives, and just like that they are there. Thankfully, nobody has built anything annoying on our path. We are already older, but this flood of newcomers, best agers who want to go to the sea, partly with CW and S on the car. I would never in my life move 900 km away from home and family at that age. Then one dies, the other is left alone in a foreign place in the dream house with a sea view and starts drinking because of all that sea view. Karsten