Should you have been wrong?

At the turn of the millennium, if you read studies and books that talked about the future, almost everyone would agree that most of that future would take place in gigantic cities.

If the study that the Berlin Institute for Population Development recently published together with the Wüstenrot Foundation is to be believed, the situation in Germany, at least, is completely different.

If you move within Germany, you move to the countryside - and not just to the suburbs near the big cities, which have mostly become unaffordable for medium-sized companies.

But really far out.

According to the study, the rural communities have gained almost two-thirds of their residents since 2020 through relocation.

Without immigration from abroad, according to the study,

Nicholas Mak

Editor in the Feuilleton.

  • Follow I follow

The only ones who are still leaving the country in large numbers for the big city are the so-called “educational migrants”, people under thirty;

young families who would rather see their children grow up in meadows and by streams than in city playgrounds, and older people are also increasingly moving to the countryside.

According to the authors, it may be that Corona and working from home have strengthened this trend, but the reversal began even before Corona - primarily as a reaction to the enormous increase in rental and purchase prices in the city due to land and building speculation.

Revitalization of the village squares

In fact, looking at the country as a whole, there is no housing shortage, just a problem with the distribution of living space: in the cities, the price-gougers are now even crowding out the classic wealthy middle classes.

Meanwhile, in the countryside, magical villages stand empty because there is no longer any work there – or no one wants to do the work that is there.

How can that change?

The Frankfurt Architecture Museum is showing a great show entitled “Schön hier.

Architecture in the Country”, which gives an overview of all the changes that are happening in villages in particular, unnoticed by the city dwellers.

A catalog has also been published that reads like a basic work for the rediscovery of the often frowned upon country: Excitingly renovated old and newly built houses made of wood can be seen, in which extended families and flat-sharing communities can live and work, as in the Breton town of Erdeven;

intelligently revitalized village centers like that of the Swiss village of Cressier, where LVPH architects have implanted a new center in the scattered houses, intended to bring back the vibrancy of old village squares.

The high-density built village houses in the French village of Batilly, where the elderly are not shunted off to a home, but each is cared for in their own mini-house with a garden.

In addition: sports facilities, youth clubs, elementary schools, bowling alleys, beer gardens,

Will that be enough?

Perhaps the new country architecture encourages people to think of life in phases, rather than clinging to the popular belief that one can only be either city dweller or provincial.

If you study in the city, maybe later you can move to the country with small children for a few years and, thanks to the internet and new, real express trains, you can still go out in the city every weekend – and move back there later.

Perhaps the 21st century will not be that of the metropolises, but one in which one remembers a strange past in which city and country were still considered irreconcilable, vital opposites.