Speckgürtel – the name alone does not invite you to proudly tell your friends and relatives about the new relocation plans. In the countryside it is reasonably idyllic and in the big city mostly interesting, but between the worlds, in the midst of terraced house and garden gnome, life is neither one nor the other. Nothing is modern here, let alone sophisticated.

Anna Sophie Kühne

Editor in the economy of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.

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The residents are outdated, the infrastructure is poor, the rows of shops are decaying. This was more or less the swan song for the outskirts of large cities, in which the media and city dwellers have been equally convinced and arrogant for years.

But the pitch of the singing has changed: In recent years, the suburbs have become much more popular as a place to live – and now the shops are coming back.

It started with real estate prices. Since rents and purchase prices are rising not only in the metropolises, but also in medium-sized cities, people are forced to look beyond the borders of the city. At the latest when starting a family, most of them have had to realize that two rooms, kitchen and bathroom with child are not enough and that the small park three blocks away may not be optimal as a children's playground and local recreation area. More space and a private garden are needed, but in the vicinity of the center, this often remains a dream even for high earners.

Bacon belt grows faster than urban area

This makes life in the suburbs – because it is reasonably affordable – more attractive again. This can be measured in terms of population and commuter numbers, even in medium-sized cities such as Hanover, where prices are still far behind Frankfurt, Munich or Berlin. Between 2015 and 2020, the number of commuters to Hanover increased by around 11,000 to 130,000, while the population in the surrounding municipalities grew steadily and disproportionately to the state capital, a trend that exists in many cities in Germany.

Then came the pandemic, and with it the realization: An additional study would be good, a private garden would be really nice. The home office became fashionable and with it the tolerance of longer commutes, because you don't have to cover them every day anymore.

Pandemic has changed the demands

About one in four Germans now works from home at least once a week, as the Ifo Institute determined a few months ago, and in some industries such as management consulting or the IT sector, the proportion is even beyond 70 percent. Employees from the big city who have the option of working from home are 13 percent more likely to have moved than those who do not use a home office, according to another Ifo study from February.

The demands on housing have also changed with the pandemic. Around half of those surveyed with concrete relocation plans had stated that the Corona pandemic had made them less willing to compromise on their own living conditions. In short, the suburbs have recently gained wealthy residents.

Purchasing power shifts to the surrounding countryside

All of this shifts the economic balance of power between the city and the surrounding area. Cima is a company that advises cities on urban development. Time and again, it measures how much money is available for consumer spending in retail. This is an important location factor for companies – and purchasing power is shifting to the surrounding area. This can be seen again in the example of Hanover. A special evaluation for the F.A.S. shows: In the neighboring municipalities, purchasing power has recently grown more strongly than in the state capital itself, in the city of Burgdorf, which has a population of 30,000, by as much as 6 percentage points.