Berlin is special in many ways. It has a national reputation for being dysfunctional and ramshackle (but also quirky and sexy and vibrant). This is often broadc

Berlin is special in many ways. It has a national reputation for being dysfunctional and ramshackle (but also quirky and sexy and vibrant). This is often broadcasted dismissively, but of course has complex historical reasons. Just from the top of my head: - During the West/East divide, West Germany was financially kept alive through major subsidy from the outside, which created political and organizational structures not designed for self-sufficiency. After the unification those subsidies from the national state were all but halted, plunging the city into debt - A ruthless debt management approach has kept the city from spending ever since, which has resulted in a lot of administrative functions stagnating or slowly deteriorating by e.g. not hiring Things are improving now, slowly, due to the Capital City effect and the startup boom, but it's important that Berlin is special within in Germany in many ways. In most European countries, if you make a GDP-per-person stat, it falls considerably if you remove the capital city from the equation (say almost 20% in France). Germany is perhaps the only industrial country in the world where it goes up instead. Note: The Tesla factory, despite being called "Giga Berlin" by Tesla, is being built in the state of Brandenburg, which is not the state of Berlin. Brandenburg has a different complex situation.