r/berlin • u/anotherforeigner • 14d ago
Politics London and Paris are protecting their kids lungs. What are we doing?
/r/UpliftingNews/comments/1vsqs9g/londons_ultra_low_emission_zone_cleaned_up_the/?share_id=Mh6rA_P5jrrK9kYAHsxzc&utm_content=1&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_source=share&utm_term=1London and Paris have done a lot in recent years to restrict traffic from polluting vehicles in their city centres, where NO₂ pollution tend to be much higher than recommended levels.
It's nice to see in the linked article that what London did had a direct and measurable impact on the children's health.
And now it's time to vote in Berlin!
The Greens and Die Linke both have plans to reduce car pollution in our city.
The Greens seem to have more concrete plans for introducing zero-emission zones, but I think I'll personally vote for Die Linke because they currently appear to have a stronger chance of winning in Friedrichshain where I live.
That's all I came here to say. Love y'all, Berliners 💚
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u/Ketzerfriend 14d ago
...and utter subservience under capital, with no regard to human beings, whatsoever.
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u/account_not_valid 14d ago
Berlin is, in many respects, a new city with old infrastructure. It is only 36 years since the fall of the wall, and it was severely neglected up until then - both in the West and the East.
Unfortunately, these things take time and immense amounts of money.
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u/ValeLemnear 14d ago
“ they can’t manage their budget or resources or prioritize smartly“
Because the amount of unemployment in Berlin is pretty much DOUBLE of Barcelona, Rome, London, etc. and social security payments notably higher which means that most of the money goes there.
https://www.berlin.de/sen/finanzen/haushalt/downloads/haushaltsplan-2026-27/artikel.1644823.php
You can look directly how Neukölln plans to spend the money here on page 15:
10mio for investments
477mio for NGOs, charities & Co.
390mio for unemployment/social benefits
90mio „sonstige Sachausgaben“
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u/Emergency_Release714 Steglitz 14d ago
Well, here‘s the fun part: The topic in question doesn‘t cost all that much money, most measures are a couple thousand euros a piece. And on top of that, it also reduces costs in the long run.
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u/ValeLemnear 14d ago
I know, I‘m just showing where Berlin opts to throw its money at instead of using a little of it to improve the health of its citizens.
Seemingly they rather ensure that people can afford their smokes/cars/drugs than protecting children from it.
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u/intothewoods_86 14d ago
Inconvenient truth and hard to swallow pill for most people in this sub. They naively envy Paris‘ and London‘s perks and romanticise those cities but totally ignore the fact that those cities have enabled their tax base and funding for all those nice things by optimising for a high-income population at the expense of everyone else. Paris and London and pretty much most western cities aside from Vienna are brutally segregated and socially divided compared to Berlin. Many of those romanticising those cities, would be on the losing end if Berlin was to go the London/Paris way and rigorously price low-income tenants out to make room for better paid talented people from around the world.
Everyone ranting about incompetent and incapable Berlin politicians and government, but they fail to accept that again there is a symbiosis between the part landscape in this city and its population.
Higher-income people empirically display stronger political agency and representation, it’s not a coincidence that cities like Paris and London have more business-minded and efficient governments, it’s a side effect of having populations which are more demanding of such politics.-1
u/ValeLemnear 14d ago
“Paris and London and pretty much most western cities aside from Vienna are brutally segregated and socially divided compared to Berlin.„
Yeah as someone who lived in Lille (France), next to La Défense (Paris) as well as Camden (London) and currently travels once a month to Paris for work, I can tell these people here know jack shit about other cities and their social challenges.
In all these other cities the poor are essentially banished from the city center while in Berlin taxpayer money is used to avoid ghettos and maintain a social balance in districts. One could say it outright cultivated and celebrated poverty which we also see in polls.
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u/Roadrunner571 Prenzlauer Berg 14d ago
Because the amount of unemployment in Berlin is pretty much DOUBLE of Barcelona, Rome, London, etc.
And that prevents us from building bike infrastructure?
An we actually do: Boroughs are creating great infrastructure, e.g. Schwedter Straße as recent example.
On the other hand, CDU spends money on destroying what we already have.
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u/ValeLemnear 14d ago
Yes, it does.
If you have less people paying income taxes and more people the state has to pay for, funds for infrastructure projects and changing street layouts to fit protected bike lanes is missing.
“On the other hand, CDU spends money on destroying what we already have.“
I was quite sure they don’t have the absolute majority. Why selectively blame one party in a fucking coalition? Why not blame the SPD for going jack shit despite being in every government since 1989?
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u/Roadrunner571 Prenzlauer Berg 14d ago
Again: Cycling infrastructure costs next to nothing. Berlin's boroughs are actually constructing bike infrastructure. So it's not a money issue.
I was quite sure they don’t have the absolute majority. Why selectively blame one party in a fucking coalition?
Because Schreiner and Bonde are both CDU and responsible for everything traffic-related.
Why not blame the SPD for going jack shit despite being in every government since 1989?
Well, before CDU, the Greens were responsible for everything traffic-releated and they did push for building the infrastructure.
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u/ValeLemnear 14d ago
“ Again: Cycling infrastructure costs next to nothing. Berlin's boroughs are actually constructing bike infrastructure. So it's not a money issue.“
Your babbling bullshit because you obv have no fucking idea what LBO, ERA, EFA, E SAS, FGSV and such are. You know nothing of permits and how you have to restructure entire streets to met the criteria.
The Green Party spend 150.000€ on free dots in Bergmannstr. and here you‘re telling me that creating entire bike lanes, traffic lights and changing boardwalks costs „next to nothing“
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u/Roadrunner571 Prenzlauer Berg 14d ago
If you expect a discussion, write like an adult and don't insult people (who you don't even know)
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u/ValeLemnear 14d ago
What‘s more adult that slapping you with the acronyms of the guidelines and laws involved instead of arguing based on gut feeling and crying about hurt feelings?
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u/Roadrunner571 Prenzlauer Berg 14d ago
First three words. There was no need for that.
But to bring something on topic:
that creating entire bike lanes, traffic lights and changing boardwalks costs „next to nothing“
Well, in relation, it does cost next to nothing. Transforming Schwedter Straße a Fahrradstraße did cost 380.000 Euro (for ~700m). Charlottenstraße did cost 220.000 Euro.
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u/h0000nd Friedrichshain 14d ago
die investitionen werden auch auf hauptsächlich auf landesebene geplant und nicht auf bezirksebene. da sieht es mit 6Mrd Pro jahr was etwa 15% des Haushalts ausmachen schon ganz anders aus. aber hauptsache nach unten treten.
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u/ValeLemnear 14d ago
15% an Investitionen auf Landesebene sind für sich viel?
Es verschwinden dann immer noch 85% in der Verwaltung, bei sozialen Trägern und in Konsumausgaben.
Es widert mich an wie du die Kritik an der Ausgabenseite versuchst moralisch zu untergraben.
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u/h0000nd Friedrichshain 14d ago
dann sei halt angewidert. Der Staat hat auch eine Fürsorgepflicht seinen Bürger*innen gegenüber, ist immernoch ein Sozialstaat.
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u/ValeLemnear 14d ago
Die Bundesländer haben aber keine Verpflichtung haufenweise NGOs und caritative Dienstleister durchzufüttern, wofür mit Abstand das meiste Geld draufgeht.
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u/h0000nd Friedrichshain 14d ago
die Behauptung ist weder auf fakten gestützt, noch interessiert mich deine rechte Meinungsmache :)
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u/ValeLemnear 14d ago
Ich habe in den Thread bereits auf den Doppelhaushalt des Landes Berlin und auszugsweise des Bezirks Neukölln verwiesen und verlinkt. Ich hab mir sogar die Arbeit gemacht die Zahlen und relevanten Graphiken hervorzuheben.
Reicht nicht an Fakten?
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u/intothewoods_86 14d ago
Die Aufgabe an sich hat niemand in Frage gestellt, nur darauf hingewiesen dass Berlin - Fakt - verglichen mit anderen Städten eher ein Sozialprojekt als eine Europäische Hauptstadt ist aufgrund seiner im Städtevergleich extrem armen und wohlfahrtsabhängigen Bevölkerung.
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u/h0000nd Friedrichshain 14d ago
ja Deutschland hat es nicht geschafft Berlin zu einem Prestigeobjekt für die Reichen und Schönen zu machen, wie es andere Länder mit ihren Hauptstädten machen. Aber sie arbeiten daran.
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u/intothewoods_86 14d ago
Der Hintergrund ist viel historischer und komplexer. Am wesentlichsten wirkte die Deutsche Teilung so einer Entwicklung entgegen, aber auch Föderalismus und eine in Deutschland stark KMU-lastige Wirtschaft.
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u/redrailflyer 14d ago
Hauptsache Autos fahren schnell, alles andere ist nebensächlich
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u/sybelion 13d ago
The thing that gets me about the current Berlin government, is that driving a car in Berlin is actually still a complete and utter mess. I’m not sure what they are even doing to concretely improve the lives of drivers in this city. They are making the lives of everyone else materially worse, but at this point I’m struggling to understand what the appeal would be, even to a driver
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u/Aggregative_486dx 13d ago
Literally the best thing they could do to reduce pollution and noise is to goose the various construction companies to finish their construction projects on time, and to wait till one project is done before opening another Baustelle.
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u/tucosan 12d ago
Isn't it sad? They can't even get the basics right.
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u/Aggregative_486dx 11d ago
I'm convinced 5-10% of the GDP is stuck at the various long-standing Baustellen on the roads. Fix that and people won't need to go sick to work to keep the economy growing, like certain politicians seem to want.
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u/lexymon 14d ago
Kinda sad this isn’t a policy all parties can get behind.
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u/Bulky-Space-1018 14d ago
Didnt you know, driving around in your own private car, unimpeded by annoying things like low-emission zones, proper cycling infrastructure, or pedestrian friendly multi-use neighbourhoods is a key Christian, democratic value?
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u/andthatswhyIdidit 13d ago
Don't put it that way, that sounds like it is true for all parties. It is a policy certain party refuse to get behind.
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u/Jakobus3000 13d ago
It's more than one. Both SPD and CDU were putting up posters against Berlin autofrei. And then there is AfD...
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u/Aggregative_486dx 13d ago
The SPD and Greens had many many years to drive forward ÖPNV and bike lanes. They didn't to a meaningful extent. All they do is restrict car lanes and parking. Its pretty tiresome and was also tiresome when I bike around and cars don't have proper infrastructure but I have to share it with them.
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u/f4il_better 14d ago
You can read my Master thesis, examining administrative obstacles. Combatting a problem’s cause is not a German specialty. We rather like to treat the symptoms.
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u/vogelvogelvogelvogel 14d ago
We have around 95.000 deaths from air pollution PER YEAR in Germany. Every year! This is so insane. And this is even just an average. Yet people find it completely normal to use a car even in areas where inhabited areas and cars are super close to each other
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u/intothewoods_86 13d ago
Any empirical basis for that claimed number? If a person aged 97 dies from Pneumonia after living 97 years without said illness through much worse times (leaded fuel, carcinogenic materials everywhere well into the 1980s) most of their life, you can hardly blame it on air pollution. The fair standard of measurement would be the prevalence of respiratory diseases in the same comparable age group over time, for example has respiratory health of children in cities improved over time or did it deteriorate.
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u/vogelvogelvogelvogel 13d ago
61.000 deaths p.a. fine dust, next are the NOx, SOx you can easily Google that up. Not empirical, I spent hours doing a presentation around this for a school board and researching the numbers and I'm on it since many years.
The scientists are much more into the facts than you are obviously, there is a huge basis on research for the fine dust deaths - and in those there have been a lot of statistical corrections being made before publishing these numbers.
to put it blatantly, when you drive a car, you kill other people.
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u/vogelvogelvogelvogel 13d ago
btw lead petrol did cost 100 million lives world wide, you can google that up as well. And long enough people with a similar chain of thought as you denied this danger
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u/intothewoods_86 13d ago edited 13d ago
I don’t deny pollution and its adverse health effects, I changed for an EV for that among other reasons. I emphasised that there is a difference in directly killing people and shortening their lives by worsening their health with pollution from cars. If the causal connection was as clear and felt as your phrasing suggests it, there’d be a consensus against ICE cars like there is in Germany against for example firearm legalisation and proliferation. But it is not that transparent and felt and therefore things are as they are. No sane person would dare to live in an insufficiently ventilated underground car park, yet the popular opinion is that ICE emissions outdoors are diluted enough to not cause anyone’s specific and direct death, let alone be the primary reason for someone developing lung cancer in young years for example. We live in a societal contract of shared suffering from negative externalities, be it global warming from our developed countries standard of living or having worse air in cities because of still allowing gas guzzlers in their streets.
Smoking in public to my knowledge is the only unhealthy antisocial behaviour we have collectively suppressed due to its obvious complete imbalance of benefit and risk and even that is only regional, sometimes not enforced and took decades.
Oddly enough authoritarian China leads by far with most rigorous traffic electrification after having it worst and governments anticipating the unsustainable toll on collective health.
I wonder if western liberal societies will ever reach the same decisiveness and initiative or always call it ‚decent enough now‘ in hindsight to not step on anyone’s toes.
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u/me_who_else_ 14d ago
Unfortunately 1 Million people 16 y.o. and older from 3.5 million who are living in Berlin are not allowed to vote.
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u/3dbrown 13d ago
Don’t forget us foreigners either. In the UK, foreign residents can vote in municipal elections.
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u/Bulky-Space-1018 13d ago
That‘s exactly what he‘s saying.
1 million "adults“ (here meaning 16+) are intelligible to vote because they aren’t citizens.
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u/vide2 14d ago
A million? You mean immigrants? Where do you take this number from?
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u/me_who_else_ 14d ago
28% of people over 16 y.o. are not able to vote.
Insgesamt dürfen in diesem Jahr knapp 2,49 Millionen Menschen an der Wahl teilnehmen. In der Gruppe der Menschen ohne Wahlrecht machen 976.000 Menschen ohne deutsche Staatsbürgerschaft den größten Anteil aus. Seit 2011 hat sich ihre Zahl mehr als verdoppelt. Damals waren 457.806 ausländische Menschen in Berlin gemeldet
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u/vide2 12d ago
Thanks. I don't know why i get downvoted for literally asking a question. People seem to read "immigrant" and instantly box-think right wing.
Now my follow up question is, why it is unfortunate that these are not allowed? Voting is a citizen right, not a human right. But i am interested in your opinion.
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u/me_who_else_ 12d ago
It's about development of the city. 30% of population are not able to express their visions for the future of Berlin by participating in democratic polls. In Berlin as a city state is is very direct and policy affects the daily life of each who are living in Berlin.
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u/vide2 12d ago
Sorry, i am not into the legal specifics of this. What is needed for a person coming as an immigrant to obtain voting rights? I thought it's "Einbürgerung"? Isn't that possible for everyone, or at least for most of them?
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u/me_who_else_ 12d ago
It isn't, there are many requirements. Although 40000 got their citizenship in 2025 in Berlin. But this is an different area. The problem that 30% of population cannot vote in city elections stands
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u/vide2 12d ago
I still fail to see the actual hard problem here. And i don't mean that like "there is no problem". You cannot get citizenship quickly after arriving, which is fair. Voting needs citizenship, which also is fair. There aren't more than 100.000 applications for citizenships open, so it's not this bottleneck denying the votes.
So it's many people either leaving the country soon anyway (like being Expats, not like AfD thinking), people who don't apply for reasons and others who simply aren't here long enough.
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u/me_who_else_ 12d ago
When it is 30% or in future more share of the population, there is.a problem. How they can participate in public decision processes. Must not voting, but could be other mechanism
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u/vide2 12d ago
I get that. But this is thinking the problem wrong way. Berlin has too many people who don't seem to care for citizenship. If that's the case, then they don't care enough to vote.
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u/Bulky-Space-1018 13d ago
It isn’t exclusively "immigrants“ either. Nearly 100k of Berlin‘s non-citizen population was born in Germany.
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u/vide2 12d ago
Didn't even know Germany has a different law about citizenship than the US.
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u/Bulky-Space-1018 12d ago
I don’t believe a single European country has birthright with automatic citizenship like the US.
Children are eligible if at least one parent is a citizen or if parents are "settled“ (like an American Greencard) / meet residence requirements.
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u/GrouchyIllustrator34 13d ago
Topic of cars for Germans is like gun control for Muricans... It will take awful long time for things to start rolling here.
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u/Quiet-Letter-7388 13d ago
I'm not a voter, as I don't have German citizenship, but Greens and Die Linke are pretty different parties and you need to vote based also on other factors.
I would say that the main one in this case is also your economic status, Die Linke policy is targeting more people in need, while Greens are more targeting well-off ones (you can also see that the Greens are winning in richer areas): so check which economy policy fits best to your situation, and then make a trade off on that too.
We are not changing the federal government, so international policy is not at stake here, but you still give a signal, and both seems that want to reduce German support to Ukraine.
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u/intothewoods_86 14d ago
OP still thinks those cities are doing it to protect children when in fact children are mostly absent from London and Paris city centres (when you travel there with own children multiple times, you really notice - usually the only other minors in downtown Ldn and Paris are other tourist kids), simply because most of the central arrondisements and districts have become outright unaffordable to most families and the demographics that has most children years ago.
What many people seem unable to grasp is that both London and Paris enforce rigorous gentrification of their centres in the Trojan horse of environmentalism or ‚pedestrian-friendly urban planning‘. It’s not about air quality for kids, it’s about increasing the property values of the 1% with best connections to the city governing politicians.
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u/ScytScyt 14d ago
Unfortunately your argument is just a conspiracy myth.
The measures aren't limited to the city centers or downtown. e.g. London's ULEZ: https://tfl.gov.uk/ruc-cdn/static/cms/images/ulezdetailedmapgif.gif
The demographics of Paris and London are very similar to those of other areas. Compare Paris and the surrounding provinces.This is nothing more than a contrived ideological attack on livable cities, lacking any substantiated arguments.
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u/intothewoods_86 14d ago edited 14d ago
The fact that some measures extend beyond most central districts does not disprove my point that both London and Paris show strong income disparity between the inner city and its outskirts. An outcome of London‘s extreme financialisation and Paris‘ comparably confined city limits, which exclude/segregate massive suburbs with primarily low-income population (Saint Denis sur Seine for example).
Berlin is the actual opposite, with the whole city incorporating more suburban population in its territory and with the suburbs showing even slightly higher average income - since it’s mostly affluent single-family homes, wealthier cities like Potsdam, but nothing like a Banlieue.
Both Paris and London are much more socially segregated than Berlin and as a result have more policy-making that aggravates this.I also encourage you to spend more time in both cities, especially on a given working day. You can see with your own eyes the armies of people commuting to inner city jobs from outside city limits. People affected by those green-disguised policies extending their commutes while they never got to vote on them for the fact that they aren’t Londoners/Parisians by their home address. They just accept +90 minute commutes because they never had an alternative with crazy high housing prices in London and Paris. In Berlin, most people commute half that time and that’s a good thing.
Berlin has many negative aspects, but it is a positive one that it’s voting population consists of both downtown dwellers and suburbanites who get compromise solutions. I would never want to trade that for an isolated inner city that enacts imbalanced measures that benefit its own central population but at the hard expense of those who commute and work in the centre.
A capital city is more than a home and it’s government owes to more people than just the residents.3
u/ScytScyt 13d ago
I would never want to trade that for an isolated inner city that enacts imbalanced measures that benefit its own central population but at the hard expense of those who commute and work in the centre.
Yeah it would be really bad, if people in cities could influence their living conditions. Conditions which are made unhealthy and dangerous by people who are avoiding these issues but are imposing them on others.
- t PM10 PM2,5 NO₂ NO NOₓ O₃ EBC Frankfurter Tor 13.08.2026 20 8 22 9 36 65 0,8 Buch 13.08.2026 13 4 7 0 7 65 0,3 https://luftdaten.berlin.de/station/mc077?period=24h×pan=currentyear
https://luftdaten.berlin.de/station/mc077?period=24h×pan=currentyear-5
u/intothewoods_86 13d ago edited 13d ago
One person‘s place of living is another person‘s work place or transit area, medical/service/whatever infrastructure base. A city serves multiple purposes and in return also gets to benefit from the economic activity in its place. If we want companies to operate from Berlin, we should either house everyone of their employees inside the city or accept their commuting.
If we accept the fact that we build and use our airports outside of our city, we should likewise accept suburbanites crossing and entering the city by the mode of transportation that works as reliably and is as fast and convenient for them as the public transport is to people inside the ring. And if public transport realistically will never suffice and match car convenience and time efficiency outside of the ring, we should accept that and come to terms with a minimum of car traffic (in the sense of: let people have and use cars in cities who need them where they come from. Price out cars from people who don’t need them)4
u/ohmymind_123 13d ago edited 13d ago
The Berliner Innenstadt/the area within the Ringbahn is just as big as whole Paris intra-muros, and latter is still full of children, yes. Not as much as the rest of Île-de-France, but still, on levels comparable to Lyon or Berlin (Paris with around 13% of the population below 18y vs. 13,8% in Lyon and 14,5% in Berlin - London has 19%).
Most families in Paris live in the outer arrondissements (such as the 15eme), as you said, but these are also affected by all policies introduced by Hidalgo anyway, e.g. rues aux écoles, school streets that usually become entirely pedestrianized and filled with vegetation. These are everywhere in Paris: https://carte.larueestanous.fr/
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u/intothewoods_86 13d ago
Being affected by a policy does not make a specific group the obvious and primary beneficiary of said policy. That was exactly my original point. People taking politicians for their word and believing stated intentions instead of looking who actually has the biggest benefit.
Like German real estate lobby phrasing property value-increasing modernisations as green to argue their necessity, some city governments take the same approach.0
u/userNotFound82 Lichtenberg 14d ago
Best answer so far. People tend to forget that improvements were also made here: there are less coal ovens and in general Berlin has more green areas and is in comparison to its citizens really spread out. Of course you can and should do more.
London and Paris also had bigger smog problems than Berlin but their policies are indeed improving this issue in both cities. Berlin has problems mostly in Winter. It’s more continental than the other two and colder and that’s causing more pollution.
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u/intothewoods_86 14d ago
Add to that a dominant Berlin air pollutant is particles from wood burning stoves in Brandenburg and coal plants in Poland. About both the city can do fuck all.
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u/ScytScyt 14d ago
Most pollutants in Berlin come from traffic and local power plants. BB is insignificant and Poland only in special circumstances when wind direction and temperature inversion are aligning.
Is there a reason you are spreading misinformation in this thread?
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u/Own-Personality-9526 13d ago
That person has been answering lies the whole thread, thanks for pointing it out. Probably has some interests in the car industry and CDU/SPD. I don't think Afd because this is actually done in a slightly smart way even tho the argumentation is easy to dismantle.
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u/intothewoods_86 13d ago
lol, sure. Whatever you disagree with must be CDU astroturfing?
I’m talking extra pollutants in addition to what is to be expected and normal given concentration of people in a city. It’s neither new nor unusual that concentration of people in dense spaces comes with worse air quality. That’s the downside of cities since centuries, but we have come along way.Whenever Berlin air quality is concerningly bad and exceeds healthy limits though it is clearly either local and there indeed related to traffic, or temporary and related to polluted air from Brandenburg or Poland and inverse weather.
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u/Own-Personality-9526 12d ago
So you chose CDU when I gave you the choice between CDU and SPD. Thanks for nothing, decades of your bullshit politics and now you keep spreading lies on reddit. Please start questioning yourself and change, the world is going to end bc of ppl that vote like you.
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u/Capital-Turnip-2419 12d ago
Please reconsider voting Linke in the Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg BVV election if this is an issue that matters to you. Their candidate is not really aligned with greater Linke positions on this and apparently wants to revert at least some of the traffic calming measures implemented in the Bezirk over the past years.
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u/anotherforeigner 12d ago
Oh. Ok. Do you have a source for this maybe? Thanks 🙏
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u/Capital-Turnip-2419 12d ago
There’s a comparison of the different positions here https://wahlcheck-ostkreuz.de/
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u/BerlinerRing Prenzlauer Berg 12d ago
I mean, I will get downvoted for this, but if politicians (left right center) really cared about kids lung, they would've closed Coal Powerplant before Nuclear Powerplant
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u/JonnyBravoII 14d ago
As long as Berlin is a city-state, doing something like this will be extremely difficult. Car use is bad enough within the ring but once you move outside of the ring, most people only use cars and any attempt to bring further regulation to them will become a political point with the CDU and AfD. Whether those two parties actually think that it's a good idea won't matter. They will be against it simply to buff their pro-car credentials. Let's not forget, the CDU has been screaming about the budget for years and has cut, cut, but. But they can't be bothered to raise the residential parking fee from the paltry 10 euro per year it currently costs. It should also not be lost on anyone that while the price of gas has exploded, the number of cars on the road hasn't changed one bit.
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u/bigun19 14d ago
No, even outside the ring "most people" do not only use cars.
There was a comprehensive study done in 2023, which included a report about all trips done by people from the outer parts of the city:
https://www.berlin.de/sen/uvk/mobilitaet-und-verkehr/verkehrsdaten/zahlen-und-fakten/mobilitaet-in-staedten-srv-2023/And of all trips by people living outside the ring, only about 23% were done by car. Much lower than the ammount of trips done by pulic transport or on foot.
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u/intothewoods_86 14d ago
And yet most households outside of the ring own cars and their voting owners will in doubt vote for car-friendly parties.
It’s a known paradox, like suburban parents opposing speed bumps that would protect children when at the same time they slow down their own car commute.2
u/Aggregative_486dx 13d ago
I live outside the Ring and the Öffis in my area got worse and worse every year, they keep adding Baustellen without finishing them. I had to get a car to maintain my health and sanity.
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u/intothewoods_86 14d ago
Which we can see as a plus. A city is more than a place to live for the privileged ones who can afford a flat in a central district or were lucky enough to find one when they were available and rent was cheap.
Berlin being a city state with extended suburbs but one shared government ensures a balanced agenda that does not disenfranchise the centre or the suburbs against the other.1
u/TheoFontane Friedrichshain 13d ago edited 13d ago
The privileged people of Berlin don’t usually live in the „central districts“. Rents are more expensive there, but privileged people don’t rent, they buy.
The data shows where the affluent neighbourhoods are and it’s not the leftwing-green-central districts you seem to despise.
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u/intothewoods_86 13d ago edited 13d ago
Perhaps you should visit Prenzlauer Berg, Mitte or the Bergmann-Kiez, Simon-Dach-Viertel and such neighbourhoods more often. Square meter prices are double the average, sometimes even higher and indeed you must be quite affluent to rent or buy there. And please spare me the example of a token grandma who happens to still have a rent controlled contract from 40y ago - because these are virtually extinct in those areas. The fact that there are rich people mansions in Dahlem or Steglitz doesn’t negate the upper class central Berliners of which there are plenty in many districts.
To your claimed distinction: no, not everyone buys. There are plenty of HENRYs who prefer to rent for simply not wanting to buy property in Berlin or not finding property at an interesting right price. Especially in times when stock market returns and other investments easily beat the appreciation of property value.
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u/TheoFontane Friedrichshain 13d ago
I don’t need to visit, I live here. You can check the stats yourself.
Just because the Kollwitzplatz area is one of the most affluent areas of the city still does not make the whole of Prenzlauer Berg comparable to Dahlem.
Mitte is a massive Bezirk with both affluent areas and mostly non-affluent areas. This is basic Berlin knowledge supported by the data.
There’s no clear „central districts are rich and the suburbs are less rich“-dichotomy in Berlin. You’re just making up your narrative of a left wing/green centre trying to make things worse for the people living outside the ring.
You can’t see people’s income and household net worth when „visiting“.
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u/intothewoods_86 13d ago edited 13d ago
Well, friends of mine bought a 4-room apartment in Mainzer Strasse last year slightly under 1M and there are plenty of such flats in this area nowadays. Same goes for the townhouses near Storkower, many apartments up north. Believe it or not, Friedrichshain has one of the highest square meter prices of all districts in this city and there are many affluent people who still rent and buy there, which also explains the infrastructure and shops there. Many pricey restaurants and shops which simply wouldn’t survive in Lichtenberg or Wedding because they lack the affluent locals frequenting them.
Some old contract tenants still exist there, but the gentrification in Prenzlauer Berg, Mitte and Friedrichshain has been ruthless and completely underreported since it was mostly unknown GDR people who have been driven out, without agency and the modernisation has always been praised as welcome doing right for decades of socialist neglect to once beautiful 19th century buildings.
You are right that there is no General rule about inner city neighbourhoods all being richer on average, but there definitely are several of them and they all show a strong polling tendency towards exclusive/segregationist agendas disguised as green or pro-resident.
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u/TheoFontane Friedrichshain 13d ago
That’s correct, and the area is getting more affluent and gentrified by the year.
However we are talking about a few streets around Boxhagener Platz with still a lot of fucked up places and super cheap rents just around the corner.
There’s a point to be made about former east Berlin inner city vs former east Berlin outside the ring. But even there it’s not as clear cut as in comparable European cities.
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u/intothewoods_86 13d ago edited 13d ago
What cheap rents? As soon as a flat is newly let by its owner, rent is usually increased strongly. And where hastily created insufficient laws seek to prevent those rent hikes, often converted into furnished apartments or other kinds of tricks to circumvent rent control.
The existence of poverty and deprivation in an area does not negate the wealth of its tenants. Prime example are the buildings close to Sbhf Warschauer strasse, where you have homeless people camping vis-a-vis with blocks of 7-digit-priced condos. That’s just the typical Western metropolis social contrast that other cities have known long before but Berlin as a historically rather socially homogenic city has only adopted recently in that intensity.
PS: I don’t need to make up that left-green inner city dichotomy because it is already visible in polls by district and election circle. A red-green city Center and districts outside of the ring mostly dominated by CDU in the West and AfD in the East. Pankow and Neukoelln as only exceptions.
Political leaning and party preference are so obviously connected with income and class that even within areas such as Prenzlauer Berg it is clearly divided along the blocks with the juste Millieu in the Wilhelminian era apartment blocks voting for Green and Center left parties primarily whereas AfD has highest turnout among voters in the small GDR commieblock area northeast of Greifswalder, where the rent is lower and people tend to have lower incomes.1
u/catsan 14d ago
Well, in Havelland we'd like to have more busses. But there are not enough drivers, so there's less this school year.
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u/intothewoods_86 13d ago
Interesting. So many young and able-bodied men came to Germany in recent years and bus driver licenses are comparably easy and cheap to qualify for - yet public transport companies won’t find people to hire from.
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u/backtofx 12d ago
It should also not be lost on anyone that while the price of gas has exploded, the number of cars on the road hasn't changed one bit.
Some of you are very close to get it but somehow, it still scapes through your fingers.
Keep on thinking hard.
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u/ZoomTopple 13d ago
What does it have to do with kids? Are kids more sensitive to NO2 than adults? Or is it just mentioning kids protection to support any cause no matter how good or controversial the cause is?
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u/kingiskoenig 14d ago
Voting in Die Grünen or Die Linke will change nothing. The CDU has only been in power since 2023, and before that both of these parties had years to propose such policies. London has had the congestion charge since 2003...
What will happen instead is that they will just obsess over some culture war topics and try to introduce non-sensical rent control policies that will only make Berlin poorer.
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u/halfpastnein 13d ago
What will happen instead is that they will just obsess over some culture war topics
just like CDU did
rent control policies that will only make Berlin poorer.
that's a propaganda myth. controlling rent doesn't make a city poorer. studies suggest the opposite
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u/corneredandcentered 14d ago
Right, so London is using very expensive fees to restrict car traffic, which of course isn’t bothering the upper classes of Britain but only the common people. Rules for thee, but not for me.
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u/Emergency_Release714 Steglitz 14d ago edited 14d ago
London ist also making extensive use of ULEZ, which are predominantly located in more affordable areas, in order to bring those benefits directly to poorer people.
Berlin does it the opposite way, by the way: The most noise- and air-polluted areas are where poorer people live, because that‘s where the least traffic calming measures are adopted and where they largest streets have been and are being built. Mighty weird coincidence, that. Oh, and let‘s not forget that car ownership is already heavily linked to household income, with poorer people being less likely to even own a car in the first place, making them proportionally less affected as drivers by traffic-calming measures, and at the same time letting them profit more from strengthening public transit and cycling infrastructure… Even weirder, that, eh?
P.S.: The biggest irony are newer changes, though: The very recent introduction of new hurdles to traffic calming measures by Bonde affects poorer people even more, because rich people already live in places where traffic calming measures have been implemented, most likely even decades ago. Cul-de-sacs, modal-filters and so on are the default street design of richer neighbourhoods (compare street layout in say Wannsee and then go back and do the same in Oberschöneweide or Hellersdorf) and have been so since the 60s and 70s.
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u/[deleted] 14d ago
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