2023-05-07 21:29:25
Speckgurt – the name alone does not invite you to proudly tell your friends and relatives about your new move plans. It’s semi-idyllic in the country and mostly interesting in the big city, but between worlds, in the midst of terraced houses and garden gnomes, life is neither one nor the other. Nothing is modern here, let alone sophisticated.
The residents are aging, the infrastructure is poor, and the rows of shops are falling into disrepair. That was roughly the swan song for the environs of big cities, in which the media and city dwellers have for years agreed in equal measure with conviction and arrogance.
But the pitch of the song has changed: In recent years, the commuter belt has become much more popular as a place to live – and now the shops are coming back, too.
It started with real estate prices. Since rental and purchase prices are no longer only rising in the metropolises, but also in medium-sized cities, people are forced to look beyond the city limits. At the latest when starting a family, most of them had to realize that two rooms, a kitchen and a bathroom with a child are not enough and that the small park three blocks away is perhaps not ideal as a children’s playground and local recreation area. More space and a private garden are needed, but being close to the center often remains a dream, even for high earners.
Bacon belt grows faster than urban area
That makes life in the suburbs – because it is reasonably affordable – more attractive again. This can be measured in the number of residents and commuters, even in medium-sized cities like Hanover, where prices are still far behind Frankfurt, Munich or Berlin. Between 2015 and 2020, the number of commuters to Hanover increased by around 11,000 to 130,000, while the population in the surrounding communities has grown steadily and clearly disproportionately to the state capital, a trend that can be seen in many cities in Germany.
More and more people are moving to the commuter belt. Their purchasing power attracts the retail trade – and partly revitalizes the pedestrian zones.
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Image: dpa
Then came the pandemic, and with it the realization that an additional study would be good, and having your own garden would be really nice. The home office became fashionable and with it the tolerance of longer commutes, because you no longer have to cover them every day.
Pandemic has changed the claims
Around one in four Germans now works from home at least once a week, as the Ifo Institute determined a few months ago. In some sectors such as management consulting or the IT sector, the proportion is even over 70 percent. Employees from the big city who have the opportunity to work from home are 13 percent more likely to have moved than those who do not use a home office, according to another Ifo study from February.
The demands on housing have also changed with the pandemic. Around half of those surveyed with concrete plans to move stated that the corona pandemic had made them less willing to compromise when it came to their own living conditions. In short: The suburbs have recently gained wealthy residents.
Purchasing power is shifting to the surrounding area
All of this shifts the economic balance of power between the city and the surrounding area. Cima is a company that advises cities on urban development. It continually measures how much money is available for consumer spending in retail. An important location factor for companies – and purchasing power is shifting to the surrounding area. This can be seen again in the example of Hanover. A special evaluation for the FAS shows: In the neighboring communities, purchasing power has recently grown more strongly than in the state capital itself, in the 30,000-inhabitant town of Burgdorf by as much as 6 percentage points.
#Retail #coming #village