It's a clear thing: You can't shout “More digitization!” And then dismiss the necessary infrastructure, especially the data centers, far from you. Seen in this way, the city and the people of Frankfurt deserve a compliment, here you not only use the advantages of the digital world, you also accept its physical downside and are proud of the title as the capital of data. A real, even a good relationship with the industry, which with its building applications worth well over 60 million euros last year alone came to seven percent of the city-wide approved investment, cannot be ascribed to the city and its politicians. The majority still knows little what to do with this topic.
That is why the representatives of the mostly foreign-based companies complain that the welcome for a future-oriented industry is likely to be more attentive.
Instead, you have to torment yourself through long approval procedures and various requirements for each project, and the electricity price is at a record level.
On the other hand, city planners and citizens shake their heads at the sight of the façade-free and fenced-in boxes that fill large plots of land in what is actually a small town.
And entrepreneurs warn that the new competition is pushing them out of the city because, thanks to their good income, they can pay land prices that are unaffordable for medium-sized companies.
Missing innovative concepts
It is difficult that the city, in which the new (and in some cases old) coalition members put climate protection above everything and want to make green skyscrapers mandatory, sees so little room for maneuver for itself and even seems only moderately interested in creating it understand. Legally, this position may be correct, and from an economic point of view it also makes sense to bind the industry to itself. But the lack of commitment in dealings with the city deprives it of opportunities. Above all, to develop innovative concepts together with the operating companies, how this necessary infrastructure can be accommodated in a city in a more compatible way than in giant refrigerated boxes. Many would look curiously at this.
At least one would like to believe that the development concept for the data centers announced for this year can actually fill some gaps in the building code, as the planning department promises. This creates a basis for negotiations to wrest concessions from the builders, they say. The concept revolves primarily around the question of which commercial areas one would like to keep the data centers out of and where they should preferably be allowed to build. The short answer is already known: where the others are already. The critics from Seckbach shouldn't like to hear that.