Status: 04/24/2021 8:40 a.m.
Downtown Hamburg is in crisis. Fewer and fewer people go to the city to go shopping. Now we need courageous visions for a new Hamburg city center, comments Daniel Kaiser.
It’s a tragedy. Where there used to be Kaufhof and Sport-Karstadt there are only huge haunted houses – “Lost Places” as a symbol of the state of our inner city. The development had been around for a long time. Now everyone can see: we need a new inner city. It has to feel different in the end. It has to look different. We need more apartments. Far too few people live in the city. It shouldn’t be the case that the sidewalks are folded up at eight in the evening.
City center as a building block against the housing shortage
First attempts to think about a few apartments in new building projects are just a drop in the ocean. The retail trade and companies whose rents could be counted on for 100 years are falling out more and more. Authorities have to turn zoning plans upside down and put pressure on them. The city center can be a building block to remedy the housing shortage in Hamburg. Imagine what it is like when people live on Gänsemarkt or on Spitaler Strasse. Like in old times!
More culture for a “downtown feeling”
We need more culture. City retail will lose the battle against the Internet. Who else goes shopping on Mönckebergstrasse? Theaters, main churches and galleries should open their doors and out into the squares, new clubs back into the center. Petula Clark sang “Downtown” about the colorful and exciting life in the city. This “downtown feeling” has to be restored, which is at home with us so far on St. Pauli and in the Schanze. Culture can now help immediately to fill the huge empty department stores. Let the young, wild creatives take over!
Less traffic, less parking
Trees in the squares and small green oases are part of a liveable city center. We need less traffic. Less parking space. Even if you admit that the plans for the Autostadt Hamburg have landed in a dead end. First attempts with car-free roads only with delivery traffic were encouraging.
The corona crisis relentlessly exposes the weaknesses of our Hamburg city center. Now is the time to act. Other cities like Melbourne have shown the way. A new, lively city center has emerged there. Now is the chance. We now have to radically rethink our inner city. Otherwise she will die.
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