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Until the reunification in 1989, East and West Germany had been developing in two completely different directions. East Germany was characterised by a restrictive spatial planning policy limiting urban development to the major cities and selected smaller agglomerations. Locations for urban growth were determined according to industrial production. Municipalities were not allowed to designate land for building purposes on their own. Urban development therefore followed an overall plan. West Germany developed in the opposite direction. Similar to other Western European countries, it was characterised by a continuous suburbanisation, which was already part of a critical debate by the time the reunification occurred.
These different initial conditions become visible when reviewing the ratio between the cities and their surrounding areas. In contrast to metropolitan regions in the West, cities in the East still had a distinct edge as well as a considerable difference in the population density between the city and the surrounding areas. After the reunification a dramatic process of reversal began in the newly-formed German states. This is still going on today even though the speed has decelerated in recent years.
Since 1989 all bigger cities in Eastern Germany have seen a continuous loss of population. Apart from a drop in the birth rate, there are various migration processes taking place that increase the negative effect in the population development. The two main tendencies are a classic suburbanisation on one hand and a migration to the old West German states on the other hand. Both tendencies can be traced back to existence and non-existence of job opportunities respectively suburbanisation being a spontaneous result of wealth following well paid jobs and the migration to the old West German states as a reaction to the lack of jobs.
In the absence of inter-municipality agreements and planning, as well as legal regulations, this excessive suburbanisation has developed in a more or less uncontrolled process. New settlements on virgin land were quickly erected without any consideration for regional development. Each community in the immediate sphere of influence started to designate land for building purposes to attract new investors and, in turn, tax payers. Increasing mobility in form of car ownership and the rapid restoration of streets and highways further encouraged a decentralised settlement development independent from existing urban agglomerations and public transport infrastructures.
The result was a social and systematic segregation of various functions such as the residential, shopping and industrial areas. With the introduction of new large scale shopping centres, traditional main streets in the towns and villages lost their meaning and economic viability.
This development was further accelerated by generous government funding schemes that introduced tax cuts for investments into new housing production. The program was meant to stimulate the market and therefore fuel the economy, but investors were mainly interested in saving taxes and thus started to build regardless of whether there was a local need for housing or not. As a consequence of this, there was an uncontrolled growth and overproduction of new housing. The real needs had been either ignored or overestimated. This has led to the peculiar situation that there are a lot of empty new buildings in locations that are difficult to access and a lot of dilapidated old buildings in the centre of towns and villages. Under the conditions of the program it was economically more advantageous to invest in new buildings than to renovate the old.
Building new houses was equated with economic development and could not be politically questioned until in the mid nineties. Under this dictate of growth the few hundred thousand empty apartments already existing in the former German Democratic Republic were ignored. Ten years after the reunification the housing industry is asking the government for the funding of a large scale demolition program to "stabilise" the housing market. According to a report about the housing situation in the newly-formed German states about 350 000 houses need to be demolished in the coming years.
When reviewing the development in German cities it becomes clear that the people move out of the core city but do not want to live without the city. Therefore it is logical that the population growth converges on the peripheral zones of the city. Comparing the motives of the people who move out with the political and planning measures undertaken by the cities, it becomes evident that the actions fail to meet the requirements of the people.
Although there has been a continuous migration from the city to the suburbs for years, the aim of the people might not be the suburbs as such but rather the improved conditions available. The step to leave the city has to be considered as a decision based on an evaluation of the advantages and disadvantages which ends positively for the suburbs. Studies conducting interviews among people interested in self-owned property showed that most of them consider the suburbs as a "second best choice". Important criteria for the decision were the available type of housing, the difference in price and the "better" neighbourhood.
In regards to the continuous loss of population to the suburbs many Eastern German cities take an ambivalent position towards the problem. On one hand there is the vision of the "compact city", of multi-storey housing blocks with hard edges and few open spaces that ignore the demands of the urban dweller. On the other hand many cities are repeating the mistakes of the suburbs by building suburban housing within their jurisdiction to keep taxpayers within city limits. New forms of housing that could combine the best of both worlds are rarely considered.
Brown fields (fallow industrial sites) could offer plenty of space for potential redevelopment within the city limits but the costs remain a major obstacle. As long as smaller neighbouring villages can just designate virgin land for building purposes the reactivation of brown fields in the cities will remain too expensive. As a result even shrinking cities in the newly-formed German states are still growing in terms of covered surface. Thus communal land management can only be successful on a regional level.
The urban visions of the "compact city" and the "decentralised concentration" referred to in the German "National Report Istanbul +5" still address traditional images of the city. However, for most of the urban inhabitants today, the administrative border of the city has lost its meaning. In all likelihood, there are few people who know where it is exactly. When regarding the settlement development in Germany during the last ten years it becomes clear that the economic and physical sphere has spread from the traditional European city centre towards the peripheral areas. Increased mobility and modern media have enabled us to inhabit and cover a much larger area. The regions between prosperous cities have become the major growth areas in recent years. Because of this, it is necessary to develop new forms of administration that relate to the actual urban landscape.
When comparing current policy with the prognosis of several studies that were published in the last years there is no indication that the land consumption rate shall change extraordinarily. The objective of a sustainable development is questioned by political decisions, which promote a further decentralisation of settlement areas (via tax cuts for commuters or subsidies for property of detached houses).
So far national policy is still based on a status quo approach. The call for equal living conditions in all parts of the country has mainly been interpreted as an invitation to bring the rate of land consumption and sealing in Eastern Germany up to a level similar to that in the West. Looking at the migration processes of Germany in an overall perspective it becomes visible that certain areas grow and others shrink. In contrast to the political vision, people do not tend to spread out equally. Until now this has primarily been regarded as a negative development and therefore discouraged. But why shouldn't these dynamics just be followed and the areas from which people retreat de-sealed?
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(c) Knut Unger 2001. mailto:unger@mvwit.de |
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