Introduction: Integrated care solutions need supportive financial incentives. In this paper, we describe the financial architecture and operative details of the integrated pilot Gesundes Kinzigtal. Description of integrated care case: Located in Southwest Germany, Gesundes Kinzigtal is one of the few population-based integrated care approaches in Germany, organising care across all health service sectors and indications. The system serving around half of the population of the region is run by a regional health management company (Gesundes Kinzigtal GmbH) in cooperation with the physicians' network in the region (MQNK), a German health care management company with a background in medical sociology and health economics (OptiMedis AG) and with two statutory health insurers (among them is the biggest health insurer in Southwest Germany: AOK Baden-Württemberg). Discussion and (preliminary) conclusion: The shared savings contract between Gesundes Kinzigtal GmbH and the two health insurers, providing financial incentives for managers and health care providers to realize a substantial efficiency gain, could be an appropriate contractual base of Gesundes Kinzigtal's population health gain approach. This approach is based on the assumption that a more effective trans-sector organization of Germany's health care system and increased investments in well-designed preventive programmes will lead to a reduction in morbidity, and in particular to a reduced incidence and prevalence of chronic diseases. This, in turn, is to lead to a comparative reduction in health care cost. Although the comparative cost in the Kinzigtal region has been reduced from the onset of Gesundes Kinzigtal Integrated Care, only future research will have to demonstrate whether-and to what extent-cost reduction may be attributed to a real population health gain.

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Social restratification is likely to occur in new towns and social mix and mixing must be considered as a part of the commitment approach to new town research. Kanter and Sicinski utilize the concepts of commitment, stabilization, and satisfaction in a community, which are relevant to Kelman's concepts of compliance, identification, and internalization. Imaginative architectural projections for new towns have largely not been implemented, and new towns generally reflect conventional city planning. Such planning may create other problems similar to those it sought to avoid. Conventional planning has been used in two large towns in the United States. Technical innovation is being attempted on a small scale in at least one new town and another has added a symbolic monument to gain commitment. Three urban theorists, each working on different premises, have devised models of dispersed urbanism which vary in details of execution. Advances in communication and transportation make these models actual potentials. Samplings of future home buyers reveal these models to be attractive alternatives to the conventional city. Evidence from diverse fields of research indicate that complex microenvironmental factors are important to a state of human well-being, rather than simple concepts such as over-crowding. Cooperative research among social scientists, planners, and developers is urged.

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