The Munich Wall

So, this is another German refugee story, with a twist.

Down in Munich.....in a southeast neighborhood called Neuperlach....it's a upscale area that had a large city-owned chunk of land with nothing there.....no park.....no forest....nothing.

Munich and it's city authority had to put up a permanent refugee 'city'.....not just a shelter but a place that would semi-permanent (probably 20 to 30 years).  So this chunk of land was selected.

Now, you can image.....folks have been there for decades and didn't ever suspect that the city would do something like this.  So as the news got out....hostile feeling arose.  The neighbors wouldn't accept this.

So a compromise was worked out.  There's a three-meter high stone fence (not the kind of thing that you can climb or do much with) that is being erected.

Well....yeah, some people have observed that it's about as high as the old Berlin Wall.

Negativity?  Immigration-friendly folks think it's a pretty negative slam against who is moving in.  The neighborhood?  They established a line and weren't going to back down.

My humble guess is that after these folks move in and spend six month there....the idea of a friendly neighborhood will cease to exist, and most will leave.  Maybe folks will come and go, but I seriously doubt that long-term residents will ever stay in this new neighborhood.

Comparison against the Berlin Wall?

If you went to any German middle-class neighborhood and just said there's this open plot within 5 minutes walking and we (the city authority) intend to put up a quick-low-income housing project.....just about every German would raise a stink and be uncooperative....voting down city council people in the next election.  The problem though.....is that in most German communities, you just don't have open plots of land unless it's way out of town or in some former industrialized area.

The wall deal?  My humble guess is in four years....the project will be deemed a failure and the city will pay half-a-million Euro to have everything removed and set back to it's original condition.  At that point, the neighborhood will demand it be made a city-park....to ensure nothing stupid happens ever again there.