Conservation-Tax

I had stimulating conversations with many colleagues on the subject of cultural decay in cities and villages (vacancy) – the future solution is “preservation tax”. This is only possible from now on and the idea does not claim to be applicable as aid packages for existing empty centers as we perceive them from all cities in Europe, but especially here in Germany. As the dying of the cities and the shattering of village and social structures.

Shopping centers outside the cities lure with undreamt-of (free) parking facilities, convenience for cars with or without a family. Everything in one place, with music, artificial light, a uniform calm radiation and background noise from babbling waterfalls, distorted advertising with beautiful, hairless figures and their decor (wig, fabrics only barely cover the purity of the beige plastic of the skin) . Everyone is obviously happy because you know what to expect. Here you are treated like a king, no matter how big the bell bag. Everyone has the same rights, the rules for shining LED light are the same for everyone.

What do we see in the city that, thanks to the shopping center on the outskirts, has less traffic but more jobs, more companies and more turnover – in a word – is proud of its economy. Empty. Incredible, because the numbers speak different words. The surrounding villages come to the city for shopping, the shopping city. In the center, where space is traditionally expensive and parking spaces are scarce, we see the other side of the coin.

So canals are being built by the city, connections made for the new shopping center, the inner-city companies are thinking about relocating to the new, modern shopping center for a short while, sometimes staying in the center for traditional or other reasons. The customers don’t stay. Customers can’t. Why bother with so much lack of service? Why can’t you just park for 1 hour for free, enough time for errands and a coffee with a cake. Why can’t you go shopping and have everything delivered by the center entrepreneur, why can’t you just become a proud member of the maintenance community and let the stupid people move to the shopping city. Unfortunately, you feel stupid yourself because you risk a penalty if you park briefly inappropriately for the corona test, if you choose to collect it yourself in the branch instead of delivery, if you think differently than the price-performance ratio dictates.

Why all the effort? Idealism? No.

Change has to be lived, allegedly that helps more than preaching. I am still in the experimental status. On the one hand I want to preserve and preserve it, on the other hand I don’t want to support a system that doesn’t take itself seriously enough to look at real cultural change. In plain language, this means that we have known for years that vacancies in city centers are an issue. We know we have to act. AND we act. Desperate, a lot, medially and uncompromisingly. From the many conversations between different industries, one of the city architects gave birth to the idea of ​​charging a kind of maintenance tax from shopping centers (new, retroactive laws work badly ;-)). It’s about the medium term, it’s about the long term. The short term destroys our social centers. In a nutshell, you can see it in our vacation behavior – when we travel to cities – where do we expect beauty, flair and an atmosphere in which one wants to stay? Downtown. This must be preserved at the expense of those who are said to have the better economic solution.