"Stadtbild" debate - if you want to see a prime example of unprecedented decline, look no further than Frankfurt:
Record crime rates, neglect, traffic chaos
No other city in Germany has as much violent crime, drug problems, neglect and traffic chaos as "EURO's worst City". Frankfurt's decline is impossible to ignore – in public places, in the city centre, on public transport and, above all, in the station district, 'the most dangerous slum in Germany' (The Sun, UK).
"Germany's crime capital"
Statistics that identify Frankfurt as the “crime capital” are generally relativized by political leaders. Allegedly, the airport is to blame because crimes committed at the airport are attributed to the city of Frankfurt. What is relevant for the safety of citizens is not customs offenses at the airport, but rather violent crime in the city. If you ask AI:
"Which city in Germany has the highest rate of violent crime?"
Google Gemini gives the following answer:
"According to the detailed evaluations of the PKS currently available, the city with the highest rate of violent crime (i.e., violent offenses such as robbery, assault, and threats) is usually Frankfurt am Main, measured by the frequency rate."
The first red-green coalition was formed in Hesse in 1985, followed by the Greens' first participation in government in Frankfurt in 1989.
It is striking that cities where the Green Party has been part of the governing coalition for years – such as Berlin, Bremen and Frankfurt – appear particularly frequently in reports on clan crime and ‘no-go areas’ and have been among the frontrunners in police crime statistics for decades.
In federal politics, the Green Party is repeatedly criticised for blocking the deportation of criminal asylum seekers to Afghanistan, Syria and other countries of origin, or for refusing to expand the list of safe countries of origin – measures that would facilitate deportations and strengthen internal security. There is a hypothesis that these offenders prefer to settle in cities where organised crime structures already exist – where they can find support and contacts.
At the state level, critics complain that organised crime has been able to grow so strongly in Germany because political decisions have severely restricted the police's scope for action. The Green Party is particularly singled out in this context: it is accused of repeatedly blocking initiatives to expand telephone/video surveillance, analysis software or data retention – with the result that clans, mafia and biker gangs feel little serious pressure.
For other observers, however, local drug policy is the main cause of the high crime rate in Frankfurt. Where drug use is openly tolerated, drug addicts and dealers are attracted – and crime inevitably rises.
"Hellhole" Station District (the Sun, UK)
Frankfurt's reputation as “Germany's drug capital” has a long tradition. In the 1980s, the city attracted drug addicts and dealers from various regions of Europe and was considered a hotspot for drug-related crime in Germany – much like today. At that time, an open drug scene developed in one of the most beautiful places in the center of Frankfurt – in the park on Anlagenring in front of the Alte Oper.
Today, Frankfurt's drug scene has shifted a few hundred meters westward—to the station district, which, thanks to its central location and well-preserved buildings, could be one of Frankfurt's most beautiful residential areas.
Instead, this district has degenerated into 'the most dangerous slum in Germany' as the British tabloid “The Sun” writes. “The Sun” has described Frankfurt as the EURO's worst City during the European Championship and warned English fans about the conditions in Frankfurt's city center.
Even headlines like these have so far had little effect on changing political course. Recent decisions could make this district even more attractive to drug addicts, leading to a concentration of drug addicts and dealers from all over Europe.
Thousands of tourists and businesspeople who have to pass through the station district on their way from the train station to the city center take home a very negative impression due to the drug addicts lying around, the dealers standing around, the trash, and the stench, and Frankfurt's negative reputation is becoming increasingly entrenched.
There is another way – Amsterdam shows how
A comparison with Amsterdam, another European metropolis with a large red-light district, highlights the problems in Frankfurt particularly clearly.
The station district in the morning: mountains of rubbish pile up in all the streets of the district, drug syringes lie around in masses, it stinks of faeces and urine.
For the international press (The Sun, UK), it is a “hellhole”; for any normal person, it is a disgrace and a prime example of Frankfurt's decline; for red-green politicians, it is “multicultural diversity.”
While Amsterdam's “De Wallen” district is considered a clean and safe tourist magnet despite prostitution, the British tabloid The Sun ran headlines about Frankfurt's railway station district: “Germany's most dangerous slum,” “Zombieland,” and “Hellhole.” German media regularly refer to it as “Germany's most dangerous place” (FAZ), a “place of neglect” (HR), or a “Europe-wide notorious open drug scene” (Spiegel).
Every day, thousands of tourists stroll relatively carefree through Amsterdam's well-kept streets – in Frankfurt, on the other hand, visitors report the opposite: dealers on every corner, open drug scenes, addicts lying around, mountains of trash, and a pungent smell characterize the picture. Instead of conveying international flair, Frankfurt's station district is now considered by many observers to be a cautionary example of how political failures can turn an entire city center into a hotspot.
"Hell holes" also in public transport
The decline of Frankfurt is not only evident in the station district, but also in the city center and, above all, in local public transport.
An article in Stern magazine on Oslo's car-free city center stated:
"Experts agree that if cars are to be pushed back, local public transport must be expanded at the same time“
The Green Party transportation officials of the last 20 years have still not come to this simple realization. They are focusing solely on bike lanes. They are allowing public transportation, which is considered the most important tool for bringing about a transportation revolution everywhere else in the world, to fall into disrepair.
Subway station in Frankfurt
Visitors from Asian, Arab, or Northern European cities who enter a Frankfurt subway station must feel like they are in a Third World country:
Dirty, smeared walls, floors littered with chewing gum, torn ceiling panels, overflowing trash cans, puddles of urine in the corners, and even mattresses where homeless people and alcoholics sleep.
The scandalous condition of our subway stations, the inadequate coverage and frequency, and the technological backwardness of our public transport system are a direct consequence of the misguided green transport policy of the last 20 years.
In backward Frankfurt, you have to buy a ticket from a ticket machine from the IT Stone Age, click through endless menus on a filthy monitor, and research which fare you need in an overly complex fare system.
If you want to see how to bring about a transport revolution, you need to look to Oslo, Stockholm, Copenhagen, or the major cities in the Netherlands.
Due to the failure of green transport policy in terms of expanding public transport, we are not years but decades behind these cities.
All of these cities focus on clean, safe, comprehensive, high-frequency, and competitively priced public transport, as well as a dense cycle path infrastructure in flat regions, combined with tunnels and a city toll in Oslo and Stockholm.
In the world's progressive cities, passengers enter clean stations similar to those found at airports. When boarding and alighting, they hold their EC/credit card or smartphone up to a scanner – that's it, the fare is calculated automatically.
All these cities have an identical strategy: before they started closing roads or removing lanes, they offered motorists a competitive alternative in every respect in the form of public transport.
Subway station Stockholm
This is what a subway station looks like when a city's transportation policy is managed by serious, competent transportation policymakers: safe, clean, competitive, and technologically up to date.
This is the only way to convince drivers to use public transportation. Stockholm has a particularly clever approach. It has introduced a city toll, which gives the excellent public transportation system a significant price advantage over cars.
Traffic Chaos
Since 2006, the Green Party has been responsible for the transport department, with one exception. In these 20 years, not a single effective measure has been implemented to noticeably reduce the volume of traffic that floods into the city from outside every day.
Others have Park&Ride facilities on the outskirts of their cities, where you can leave your car and switch to the subway. They have moved traffic underground with tunnels to create car-free city centers and car-free riverbanks. And they have promoted the most important of all instruments for bringing about a transport revolution—a modern, practical, comprehensive, clean, safe, and competitive public transport system.
Frankfurt, on the other hand, has none of these advantages. Tunnels are rejected on ideological grounds ("they attract traffic", public transport is left to rot, and we don't have any park-and-ride facilities on the outskirts of the city. We are not years but decades behind Oslo, the leading metropolis in this respect, on the road to a car-free city center.
Now an ideology is coming into play that believes it can make up for the failures of the last decades without investing in public transport, tunnels, or park-and-ride facilities — the “push strategy.”
This means nothing other than the systematic harassment of society's high achievers through the withdrawal of traffic areas, increased traffic density, and the deliberate creation of traffic jams. The aim is to force a so-called “traffic evaporation” (switch to other modes of transport), a change in the “modal split.” These terms are intended to suggest that this is a serious transport policy.
Hundreds of thousands of commuters, who keep the city running with their daily work, are forced by politicians who have never held a relevant job to switch to a dilapidated, uneconomical public transport system due to constant traffic jams and artificially restricted traffic space.
Hundreds of thousands of tradespeople, logistics workers, service technicians, transporters, and delivery service employees who depend on a functioning transport infrastructure to feed their families are prevented from doing their jobs when the transport infrastructure is paralyzed.
Ironically, it is a Green Party transport official who is implementing this emissions-generating “strategy.” According to AI, traffic jams increase disproportionately, even exponentially, as traffic density rises. This does not prevent him from taking 50% of the traffic space on the most important roads away from the ever-increasing volumes of traffic flowing into the city center from outside.
More traffic jams, noise, exhaust fumes—for years
The green advocates of this “push strategy” dream that commuters will immediately abandon their cars and switch to other modes of transport if traffic space is taken away from them and traffic jams are created.
This so-called “traffic evaporation” does exist. But it takes place over many years. And it only occurs to a limited extent (10-25%, see AI analysis below) if it is not combined with other measures such as city tolls, tunnels, and an expansion of public transport. For a ridiculous “traffic evaporation” of perhaps 15%, green transport politicians are crippling our transport infrastructure and causing enormous damage to the economy and the environment.
As soon as traffic jams become bearable again, cars will return because Frankfurt lacks the so-called “perfect alternative (perfect public transport),” as cars are more convenient, practical, cheaper, and safer than public transport. As long as there is no “perfect alternative,” we will have a city center that is permanently covered in traffic jams.
The damage to the economy is enormous: according to AI calculations, five minutes of additional travel time due to traffic jams on the way to and from work alone cause annual losses of more than EUR 120 million in lost revenue for the 70,000 tradespeople in Frankfurt, assuming that 70% of them have a customer appointment every day (charging rate EUR 65).
Emissions protection and the “quality of life in the city center” repeatedly promised by green politicians no longer play a role. According to KI, an additional 5 minutes of driving time due to traffic jams on the way to and from work for the 220,000 car commuters alone causes an additional 20,000 tons of CO2 per year. This is accepted just as much as the unbearable noise from honking horns, which is always and everywhere present in a city center covered with traffic jams.
This transport policy is detrimental to the economy and to those who keep the economy running – low-income earners who cannot afford to live in Frankfurt and are forced to move with their families to distant suburbs where housing is cheaper.
We asked the AI platform Google Gemini: "How long will it take for the desired ‘traffic evaporation’ to occur and for 50% of road users to switch to other modes of transport if 50% of the space in the city center is taken away from them?" The answer:
Reducing traffic volume by 50% or more (as in Oslo) requires the following in addition to space restrictions:
1. Perfect alternative: A superior, fast, and comfortable public transport infrastructure with high frequency and affordable prices.
2. Financial incentives/barriers: An effective toll or congestion pricing system (city center toll) that makes car use expensive.
3. Elimination of through traffic: Bypass solutions (such as tunnels) that filter out traffic that does not necessarily need to stop in the city center.
Only the combined effect of restrictions, pricing, and a significantly improved alternative can lead to a modal shift of 50% or more. Without these accompanying measures, land withdrawal alone would likely lead to a prolonged traffic congestion problem without achieving the desired modal shift rate. "
This AI analysis by Google Gemini shows that there will be no significant ‘traffic evaporation’ in Frankfurt because not even one of the three boundary conditions is met. Because of a ridiculous ‘traffic evaporation’ of 10-20%, green ‘traffic experts’ are destroying the livelihoods of many citizens in trade and logistics. They are causing hundreds of millions of euros in damage to the economy and increasing CO2 emissions by tens of thousands of tonnes. Frankfurt will have traffic chaos in its city centre for years to come because all the relevant measures that would eliminate these traffic jams (especially the expansion of public transport) have years of planning and implementation deadlines.
Another consequence will be the desolation of the city centre.
In Oslo, you drive underground to the city centre and go shopping in the car-free city centre above – trade remains intact despite the transport revolution.
In Frankfurt, however, trade is being deprived of its livelihood because traffic jams are permanently shifting shopping behaviour to shopping centres on the outskirts of the city. According to a 2020 analysis by the Chamber of Industry and Commerce, around 40% of shoppers came by car in 2020. If you deprive retailers of almost half of their sales potential by driving residents from the outer districts out of the city centre and forcing them to shop in the shopping centres on the outskirts, they have no chance against Amazon & Co.
The beginnings can already be seen on the Zeil and in Oeder Weg. Shops are closing down, new ones are opening and then closing down too, and in the end all that remains are lowered shutters.
What can Frankfurt's citizens do about this?
Of course, we must withdraw our votes from those politically responsible at the ballot box. If Frankfurt wants to avoid complete ruin, if Frankfurt wants to become Frankfurt again—a safe, clean city and the preferred business location in Germany—then this is only possible with a fundamental change of course in city policy.
However, it is questionable whether this will lead to any noticeable changes. Frankfurt traditionally votes green, and the Greens are likely to remain part of a coalition in the city council in the future. Red-green or black-green – as the past has shown, it makes little difference. In this respect, a fundamental change of course is unlikely.
That is why one should follow the advice of Green Party mayor Eskandari-Grünberg and move away. She recommended that Frankfurt residents who were concerned about their children's educational opportunities due to the high proportion of migrants in their schools should leave Frankfurt.
Moving away is actually the best option—because nothing will change in Frankfurt as long as Eskandari & Co. are calling the shots. Every other major city has overtaken Frankfurt in the criteria relevant to citizens – safety, cleanliness, transportation infrastructure – over the last 2-3 decades. Even as a staunch Frankfurt resident, you have to acknowledge this with envy.
Anyone who is successful in their career and receives offers from companies in other cities should therefore seize the first opportunity to leave Frankfurt. This is especially true for families with children. Raising children in a ‘drug and crime hotspot’ is not a good option. The risk of them coming into contact with crack dealers from the station district, who have no qualms about luring even children into addiction, cannot be dismissed.
Many Frankfurt residents have long since adapted to the circumstances. Those who can afford it send their children to private schools. Many parents accompany them to school or pick them up to avoid dangerous situations in public spaces. Public swimming pools, where criminal gangs like to demonstrate their power, are often avoided; people prefer to drive to neighbouring communities. At night, many pick up their children from clubs and events by car to protect them from potential risks on public transport or on the streets. Those who live on the ground floor take additional security measures with bars and alarm systems.
Come here or stay away?
Those who are forced to come here for professional reasons will find better living conditions, a higher quality of life and greater security in a peripheral community.
Moving to Frankfurt as an entrepreneur?
Companies should also carefully consider whether Frankfurt is a suitable location in the long term. A city with a disastrous image, the highest crime rate and a political establishment that is prepared to accept considerable economic damage for minimal transport policy effects does not send a positive signal to investors or skilled workers. International airports and good transport links are also available in Hamburg, Düsseldorf and Munich – cities that are considered to be significantly safer, cleaner and more liveable. Frankfurt, on the other hand, has one of the highest trade tax rates in Germany, a largely paralysed transport infrastructure, regular traffic chaos and a run-down, backward public transport system.