Hi everyone, I have been living in Berlin for a few years now, and have loved the city. However, the latest changes, both political and economic, lead to a quality of life decrease that I can’t ignore.
For example, new bike lanes are out of the question, and even almost-finished ones are to be converted back to parking spaces. I usually ride my bike through the city, and this leads to a real decrease in safety and quality of life for me.
Another example from the same cause is the A100 extension, by which the number of apartments will go down again, important culture areas will be razed, to make room for cars to drive into the city.
A different cause but maybe still a political decision from many years ago is to not build enough apartments, to the point where it feels impossible and discouraging to look for a new apartment, let alone one in an area with more of what Berlin has to offer, i.e. cultural events, restaurants, cafés etc.
Public transport is horrible outside the Ring, many busses are either late or don’t arrive, and many go to 20-minute intervals outside of working hours.
Anyone else feel this way?
The changes by the CDU are very frustrating/upsetting. All the people who chose to not vote or voted CDU as a protest fucked us. Also if the 30% of people living in Berlin who can’t vote, could have voted, the result may have been different.
I don’t think about whether the vote could have been different, the fact is that the majority of the voters seem to love having parking spaces and priority for their cars vs letting people walk and bike to places. It could easily be that they vote for less bike-friendly areas in all of Berlin but then block local initiatives since then their own children are affected.
Even so, for the last many years when CDU was not in power in Berlin’s local government, the SPD and Greens only pushed forward certain initiatives very slowly. SPD can’t even be called bike-friendly frankly.
hey, there are ups and downs anywhere - yes, the new state government’s plans are painfully dumb, but Berlin is hard to administer, so not too much will happen in the short time until the next elections in 2026
in the meantime, at least the federal government is finally somewhat less conservative than it used to be - cities like Vienna and Amsterdam have better local governments, but absolute shitheads in the national governments
Anyone else feel this way?
Our new CDU-led government is much worse than I expected; analysts earlier where saying that CDU basically conceded almost everything to SPD but Senate actions refuted this. This is definitely a conservative government implementing a regressive political programme.
So yes, I’m upset, but will I uproot myself because of a three-year setback? No, it can’t work like that. In the previous place I lived I was politically active for 12 years before I conceded and left. And I was a younger person with less to give up than now.
It’s not on the cards for me to be a nomad, giving up on my life every time an election doesn’t go my way. It has to get much worse than three years of CDU rule.