Tuesday, March 19, 2019

Urban Growth in Germany Story

I sat and looked over the basic story laid out by the Institute of German Business (IW), and their recent study of city growth.

There is a change occurring to the landscape of cities, which people have openly talked about over the past decade.  'White flight', which is an American term to suggest people getting negative about big-city life, and moving miles beyond the city.....to urbanized regions within driving range of their jobs, or their lifestyle.....is now taking place in Germany.

In their study....roughly 600,000 non-Germans (to include not just immigrants, migrants, etc....but also EU residents as well) move into Germany each year.

Out of this number, the IW folks can show that one out of every two....are settling in large cities.  They can show of the 71 cities they studied.....63 of them grew in 2017.  For example, IW can show Berlin grew roughly 1.4 percent a year, from 2011 on.

In some ways, it's not a negative thing because Germany has this shortage of skilled workers and university background people.

But the study comes to this conclusion.....families in general, are leaving the urban cities, and exiting to regions around there.

I can look presently at the Frankfurt environment and while there is still growth going on in the city itself.....you can draw a 30-kilometer circle, and show a number of people/families who've packed up and moved to more quiet and comfortable surroundings.  A great example is Idstein and Eppstein....both well outside of Frankfurt, but both enjoying spurts of growth.  The whole end 'zone' of Idstein has grown in a major way over the past decade.

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