City, country, flight!
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It was an idyll: the beautiful, old mansion in the middle of the huge, enchanted garden, the silence, the birds in the morning, the air ... Steffi (32) and Jörg (31) had their dream home on the island after the birth of their son Elias Country found. Only 20 kilometers east of their old home of Hamburg stood the pretty house they could rent. With their child, they wanted it to be quieter and greener, they wanted less excitement and traffic.
"Two months after moving in, we threw a big garden party, which was really great," says Steffi, adding grinningly: "But then we already knew that we would retreat again."The loneliness, the boredom, the commotion of the newly-baked father, who spent more than two hours on the train every day just to get back to work and back again." He left the house at 7:00 am and returned at 7:30 pm ", Steffi remembers, "we had much less time together than before."
Barely half a year later, the little family moved back to Hamburg and today is "absolutely happy". After the episode in the country especially Steffi appreciates to have a good infrastructure and to be able to meet friends anytime: in the playground, in the café or even in the evening spontaneously for a beer. Meanwhile she got her second child, daughter Greta was born in the big city.
The ideal image of the German family with father, mother, child and home in the countryside is crumbling away quietly. The Vorstadtdomizil of yore was tailored to the housewife marriage, with the same employer for the man. In times of changing jobs, high fuel costs, rising divorce rates and equal relationships in which both partners earn money and participate in public life, the country idyll quickly turns out to be inflexible, expensive and time-consuming.
Lebensabschittsimmobilie instead of palace in the park
The needs of families have changed: if both parents work and the children are cared for in the day care center, short distances and an intact infrastructure make life much easier. Or if the marriage is broken: The new maintenance law now forces divorced mothers back into the labor market early. But in the countryside not only the jobs, but also the kindergartens are rare? and mostly only accessible by car. The beginning of a parental chauffeur career, which culminates when the children go to school: they want to visit friends, train in the sports club, in the evening in the cinema or in the pub. "If they are 12 years and older, they want to go to the city anyway, because they want to experience something," says Birgit Gebhardt from Trendbüro Hamburg. Then Mom or Dad spends so many evenings behind the wheel.
Researchers like Carsten Große Starmann, Project Manager Demographic Change at the Bertelsmann Foundation, have long been talking Of life estatethat select people according to their specific needs in different phases of life. The house for life is now fast becoming a crap on the leg, the more flexible city apartment increasingly attractive. Although metropolitan cities have failed to create affordable housing for families, have they done much for them in recent years? for fear of a dereliction of inner cities. Traffic-calmed zones, green oases, courtyards and roof terraces make city life more and more pleasant.
"There is a new desire for city"This is how the renowned futurologist Professor Horst Opaschowski puts it in a nutshell:" People are moving towards prosperity, above all the commuters are returning to the city, "he predicts, although there are still no numbers for Germany that confirm the trend - The latest studies are from 2006. But: "All researchers agree that there is a trend in Germany back to the city," says Starmann He is convinced that many more people would live in the cities, Alexander Schürt of the Federal Institute for Building, Urban Affairs and Spatial Development (BBSR) also sees this: "Various surveys of migrant motifs have shown for many years that many people would have stayed in the city if adequate housing offers had existed."
Meike and Paul anyway, both independently, two daughters, would like to stay in Frankfurt. But they need at least five, better six rooms to live and work? priceless in the city. Now a construction site in the countryside is being searched for.
High downtown rents were also the reason for Katharina (33) and Nils (37) to turn their backs on their 2.5-room apartment in Hamburg and move to the countryside. "We loved the idea of having something bigger in the countryside," says Katharina. Just 40 kilometers south of the city, the couple could afford a row house for rent. Today, after five years, both want to go back.It has been shown that they commute to the city almost every day, to the job during the week, to meet friends at the weekend, to visit exhibitions, to eat well or to go to nice bars. They also go to Hamburg for shopping, "because you will not find what you are looking for in the village boutique." In the town there is also only an "incontinence café" for the older generation, complains Katharina, and a cinema with a small, delayed film offer. Then nothing. "Our friends almost never visit us, because there's nothing to go where they can go, so we drive to town and every time they say, '' Who's going? Who does not drink? Where do we park? '"After New Year's Eve in Hamburg, they drove the S-Bahn to the city limits and then took a taxi home - an expensive fun, but the last train left at 0.15 am The smaller city apartment appears meanwhile as the lesser evil.
Time is luxury, flexibility is duty
In fact, living, working and leisure are increasingly merging, says Birgit Gebhardt from the Trendbüro Hamburg: "Time is luxury, flexibility is mandatory." In our digitally networked service society, it is increasingly expected that one will be there for work during leisure time. " But you can pick up the child from the day care center or go to the hardware store during working hours. The radical separation of the spheres of life, as it was done in the 70s, has long since reversed. Hamburg's HafenCity, for example, the largest urban development project in Europe, has taken up the cause of a mix of all areas of life. Many prospective buyers of the noble downtown apartments are people from the surrounding area who long for urban life again.
And there is another reason why the house in the countryside is well on the way to becoming an anachronism: Climate change gives it a tinge of aftertaste. For Astrid (32) and Heiko (40) he was motivation enough to give up her idyllic country life and despite the two small daughters to move back to a flat in Braunschweig. "Living in the countryside to enjoy the beauty of nature and then having two cars - it's just crazy to blow out so much CO2," says Astrid. But without a second car at some point it would not have gone any further: Karla, aged seven, had to be carted to the school 17 kilometers away, Sister Lenja in the kindergarten 7 kilometers away. The father then often had to borrow a car to come to a customer. He sells solar plants and wind turbines, traffic planner Astrid deals with car-free housing projects. Life in the countryside became an indissoluble contradiction for the environmentally conscious family.
Today Karla drives to Braunschweig city bus to the school, Lenja's kindergarten is just a stone's throw from the apartment, the children have their friends in walking distance. Astrid can now do everything by bike again and raves: "Spontaneous eating or shopping fast, when you suddenly do not feel like cooking something extra - that's just awesome!"
When the house gets too big ...
But even for parents whose children are out of the house, the city is increasingly interesting: "The new old expect very different things from life than their ancestors," says Carsten Große Starmann. They no longer sit at the warm stove and knit wool socks for the grandchildren. You want to go to the theater, to sports, to meet friends? and when the going gets tough, good, uncomplicated care.
Lotte (59), who would rather not have named her real name, because she will say that she finds the people in the countryside so small-minded, petty-bourgeois and crazy, is soon moving with her husband back to Munich, about 130 kilometers away of the cultural offer. For the past 30 years, the couple has had to travel two hours each time to visit a Kandinsky exhibition or to go to the opera. "Here in the city, but at 20 o'clock the sidewalk is folded up", she says," there used to be a musical theater, but that went bankrupt. "Besides, the kids are out of the house and that's big: 300 square feet to clean with garden and shovel snow and all that goes with it. After her breast cancer, Lotte is not as fit as before and looks forward to a small apartment with elevator, suburban train connection, a good infrastructure and a colorful leisure activities.
"City, Land, Flight" is becoming increasingly popular in Germany.
