Source: Claudius Pflug
Yes, says Michael Fabricius
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The detached house no longer fits in with the times.
We live in a global era of urbanization and - pandemic or not - cities will keep growing.
However, they cannot do that if there is a belt of single-family houses around them, which blocks the design space.
The single-family house on the outskirts preserves the status quo.
It says: Up to here and no further!
But where the city cannot develop any further, the housing shortage also grows.
The dream of owning a home with a garden and a double garage is beautiful, but it can only be reached with a disproportionately high amount of effort - namely via kilometers of asphalt surfaces and supply channels that have a lot of space
and need material.
The structures themselves also consume too many resources compared to apartment buildings, measured by the number of square meters inhabited.
They are only really efficient in the latest versions.
In the case of older models, however, the energy certificate is usually in the red area.
In comparison to dense residential areas, single-family houses consume space and energy, even if they are heated with green electricity.
Yes, why shouldn't environmental and climate protection be used as an argument?
An urban housing estate, for example based on the garden city principle, can be expanded as desired and also built in such a way that it offers a pleasant living and relaxing atmosphere, ideally with its own lively city center.
Such an urban settlement is worthwhile to connect to a public transport network by S-Bahn and U-Bahn.
In single-family housing estates, on the other hand, the bus doesn't even come at night.
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Single-family houses are built super-individualism, quasi the opposite of the sharing economy, and they hardly fulfill any social function.
At most, the specialist retail center with construction and supermarket on the main road or the nursery at the motorway exit form a kind of meeting point.
The home also has a demographic problem.
Because mobility within this type of building is low, often only one or two people live in it for decades.
The real estate market is losing its elasticity.
The residents of such quarters are the loudest protesters when it comes to infrastructure for urban expansion, new railway lines, schools or even kindergartens.
Once you have logged into your own home, it is not uncommon for you to understand other urban happenings at the garage entrance.
It is therefore right not to plan any new single-family housing estates on the edge of the metropolitan areas, but to develop the city as a city.
But even in the country there are no examples of successful urban development for single-family housing estates.
There are often no local centers and short distances.
The planners urgently need to change that.
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The author lives in a condominium with a garden in a mixed-development district of Berlin.
Source: Claudius Pflug
No, says Nando Sommerfeldt
It all sounds very reasonable, what the green city planners in Hamburg have come up with.
Of course, it is more efficient to build multi-storey buildings in the cities and on their edges.
You create more living space in the long term and ensure that the prices for buying and renting do not rise any further.
So why not just let the family house die quickly - one might think.
The Germans don't mean that: They love the single-family house (short: EFH), although many do not live in it or not yet.
For most, the house with a garden remains the big goal.
Many generations have dedicated half their lives to it.
For most Germans, owning a home is an important symbol of wealth and family.
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For a long time I didn't care about this seemingly bourgeois living classic.
An attic apartment with a large terrace seemed more desirable to me.
This is the case for many people between the ages of 18 and 30.
But the EFH gene seems to be dormant in our DNA.
And for most of them it wakes up at some point.
Many people between the ages of 30 and 50 consider realizing this idea of life.
Your dream is alive.
So the population would have to be politically forced to give up the dream.
First it was the combustion engine, then the oil heating, now the house is no longer ecologically well-liked.
The city planners have no sense of dreams.
They regard the single family home as a cost factor.
They celebrate the sharing economy.
Society must benefit from everything.
The individual degenerates into anachronism.
But even if these city planners are right: They are not up to their ideas.
If not single-family houses but multi-family houses had been built on the outskirts of Berlin, Hamburg or Munich in the past ten years - the metropolises would have already sunk into infrastructural chaos.
Even today a big city like Berlin is completely overwhelmed.
There is a lack of public transport, schools, kindergartens, medical practices, and and and.
You cannot master the situation - although “only” single-family houses are being built.
What happens if there is an apartment building on the same space instead of a home?
Then there is chaos.
My emotional, but also rational advice to politicians is therefore: Forget the idea of the building ban.
Leave the topic to the one who knows it - the free market.
Investments in multi-family house projects are already worthwhile for sellers and financiers alike.
The single-family house districts will not grow wild anyway.
If the prognoses are correct that in many places every fifth house will soon be empty because the owners have died, the prices for these older houses are falling.
Younger families will realize their dream there.
The market finds a solution - without the single-family home having to die.
The author lives with his family of five in a house with a garden on the outskirts of Berlin.
This text is from WELT AM SONNTAG. We are happy to deliver them to your home on a regular basis.
Source: Welt am Sonntag