Will the pandemic mean that there will be an escape from the metropolises?

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Until recently, the world's major metropolises were places of longing for millions of people.

New York, Rio, Tokyo: people of all walks of life, origins and stages of life live close together.

But everything that makes big cities attractive - the hustle and bustle, the diversity, the masses of chance encounters - is now suddenly a potentially fatal source of danger.

So has the dream of city life died this year 2020?

And is now the great escape to the periphery?

In fact, this has long since started, largely unnoticed by the public.

The pandemic could now accelerate this development.

The trend reversal came with the new millennium

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The phenomenon of urban flight, known in specialist circles as suburbanization, has been a topic of concern for researchers for decades.

In contrast, today's trend towards urbanization in the big cities is relatively new.

“In the 1990s, the tendency in Germany was more towards suburbanization,” says Brigitte Adam from the Federal Institute for Building, Urban and Spatial Research (BBSR).

The institute is headquartered in the picturesque Deichmannsaue Castle in Bonn.

The magnificent building itself was, in a sense, a product of suburbanization when the Deichmann banking family from Cologne bought the site in the first half of the 19th century.

She wanted to hold receptions there outside of her busy home metropolis.

The reason for suburbanization in the 90s, however, was more profane: there was space in the suburbs, but not in the cities.

Only at the turn of the millennium did this trend reverse, suddenly more building space was shown in cities and it was possible to find apartments again.

And also attractive, as urban planning focused on significantly different points.

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"Especially immediately after the war, cities were built to be car-friendly," explains Claudius Schaufler, team leader for Smart Urban Environments at the Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Engineering.

“That might have been practical, but it didn't make the inner cities particularly liveable.” In the past 20 years, however, a lot has happened, also because former industrial sites have been converted into residential areas.

The city is more livable again.

The phase of life is crucial

Is this trend now reversing because of Corona?

Anyone who speaks to experts quickly learns that this reversal has actually taken place a long time ago.

The skyrocketing prices in cities have recently led to people preferring to use the cheaper living space in the suburbs, even without pandemics.

In fact, individual large cities have only grown due to new arrivals from abroad in recent years, internal migration is negative overall, in some cases by more than 10,000 people per quarter.

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The big difference to the suburbanization movements of the 90s is that the emigration is more unintentional today.

Young people who move in displace families.

For the latter, the urban housing market has become more difficult in recent years because the living space in the cities can no longer meet demand.

This is usually not a problem for young people, as they are content with smaller apartments, but it is for a family of more.

“Accordingly, the decision between suburbs and city centers depends a lot on the phase of life in which you are,” explains Schaufler.

Young people move to the city to study, then move out with their own families, to return in old age and use the good urban infrastructure.

“So this emigration is also strongly dependent on the generations,” he says.

Newcomers as price drivers

However, mobility is not unlimited, as the expert emphasizes.

The generation quickly turns into a question of layers.

“You have to be able to afford these changes, the lower classes stay where they are,” he says.

The surrounding area definitely benefits from this, as Reiner Braun reports.

He is the CEO of the real estate research company Empirica, which has also been monitoring migration movements for a good ten years.

"Nobody really wants to go to a city like Pforzheim, but since it is conveniently located between Karlsruhe and Stuttgart in terms of transport, many people migrate there," he says.

Medium-sized cities are also growing, and the local property owners are happy.

However, the residents of these cities are often less enthusiastic about the newcomers.

Because that would suddenly also increase rents and purchase prices in the municipalities that had been spared from the great price explosions of previous years.

The question of space is gaining in importance

The problems from the metropolises are being outsourced.

“It would only help if more is finally built there,” says Braun.

However, he sees a number of obstacles of an ideological and ecological nature: "In many places there is also a hard not-in-my-backyard mentality".

So suburbanization in Germany will probably continue for the time being.

And in fact, it is conceivable that the corona pandemic could also act as a driver here.

Hardly anyone expects people to really flee the narrowness of the cities.

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But if the trend towards home office should actually establish itself in the long term, it will place completely new demands on living space.

Many have noticed in the past few months that their apartment is not suitable for living and working side by side, and nobody wants to have their workplace at the kitchen table all the time.

You were lucky if you could convert a room into a makeshift office.

But there were few in the often small inner-city apartments.

The demand for larger apartments and houses could therefore increase, ideally with a garden and balcony.

"And you can find them mainly in the surrounding area, if you want it to be affordable," says Reiner Braun from Empirica.

Whereby the old broker mantra “location, location, location” should not be left out.

New roles for the road

Because no one will move from Berlin to Falkensee or from Munich to Germering only if they suspect that they will have to work from home again in the event of the next health emergency.

After all, the commuting distances are no shorter than before.

"But if I only have to drive the two hours into the city center once or twice a week and not every day, then that suddenly becomes much more attractive," says Braun.

Brigitte Adam sees it similarly: "In the surrounding area of ​​Berlin, the cities in particular benefit from the suburbanization, which is due to the S-Bahn, connections are very important to the people."

Not everyone sees the city exodus as the only possible response to the pandemic.

Claudius Schaufler from the Fraunhofer Institute believes that cities will change in order to make life more bearable even in times like these.

The main reason why the ceiling fell on many people's heads was that they only had their own apartment as a place of retreat.

Accordingly, it is important to rethink public space in the big city: "Then people can avoid the stress at home from time to time." For him, flexibility in use is crucial.

In the future, streets could be used for commuter traffic in the morning and afternoon, for restaurants at lunchtime and as a lounge in the evening.

Such flexible use is unlikely to stop the train from the city.

Because more apartments are not created as a result.

This article was first published in July 2020.