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I grew up in the German town of Baden-Baden, which has the highest millionare percentage in all of Germany, and this is exactly what that town turned into: > S
by PavlovsCat 13y ago
I grew up in the German town of Baden-Baden, which has the highest millionare percentage in all of Germany, and this is exactly what that town turned into:
> Street life in these places is reduced to a trance-world of consumerism, of conformity and atomisation in which nothing unpredictable or disconcerting happens, a world made safe for selling mountains of pointless junk to tranquillised shoppers.
No special laws needed (other than one to disallow gather in public to drink alcohol, just for B-B, to move the homeless out of sight). It has 5000 shops for jewelry and designer clothes, while the last place where you could buy a CD closed in the 90s.
Sorry, I don't have a point, but this whole article struck me as a description of the spirit of that town. It's carcass now, while steadily getting even prettier on the outside, and rotting even further from the inside. A race to the rock bottom of lameness and soullessness.
But hey, that's just Baden-Baden, it's always been lame... to see that spirit seep into cities like Hamburg or even (some parts of) Berlin, now that is creepy. Where-is-the-nest-and-can-we-please-burn-it creepy.
- TillE 13y agoI'm not aware of anything of this nature in Berlin. The city has changed in the past few years for sure, with Tacheles gone and the police evicting the last few remaining squats, and rents rising all around. But the local government of Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg at least seems keen to protect its character as the most interesting part of the city. People can always go to Charlottenburg if they want boring and clean.
- PavlovsCat 13y ago> Tacheles gone and the police evicting the last few remaining squats, and rents rising all around so it begins, IHMO. Bergmannstrasse and Mitte seem to change quite rapidly in that direction, for example.