Wohnsuburbanisierung in Verdichtungsräumen der neuen Bundesländer: eine vergleichende Untersuchung im Umland von Leipzig und Schwerin

Abstract

Five years after German reunification, the conurbations in the new Länder have undergone significant changes to the development of land, mainly through new large scale and car-orientated structures in the countryside surrounding the cities. Compared with the suburbanisation process which has successively been taking place in the old Länder of Germany since the 60ies, the rate of suburbanisation with its dynamics and extent is markedly different from previous similar developments in Germany. Retail trade and commercial suburbanisation have already passed a first zenith in the new Länder of Germany in the mid 90ies. The slightly delayed residential suburbanisation of 1992 shows a further rising tendency and reached a dimension in 1994 which was similar to that in the old Länder of Germany in the 60ies. This process is taking place here against the background of a simultaneous drop in the population development and therefore results in an extremly strong deconcentration of the population. Family migration is predominant; the vast majority of all households migrating from the city to the surrounding regions had one or more children. Furthermore, the residential suburbanisation is taking place in an extremely selective manner: more than one half of the professional inhabitants had a uni versity degree and more than one third occupied executive positions. The net household income was generally more than DM 5 000.-. The number of households with two or more cars increased noticeably in the new residential settlements around the cities, sometimes to more than 70%. Due to the fact that the majority of the urban-rural migrants continued to work in the city and mainly used a car to get to their place of work, the road traffic also increased dramatically. The residential suburbanisation was subject of a comparative study around the conurbation of Leipzig (1 mio inhabitants) and in the rurally dominated region of Schwerin (115 000 inhabitants). The different forms of the residential suburbanisation were mainly linked to the development of differentiated residential property markets: in the regions around Leipzig, multistorey tenement buildings were generally being built: The area around Schwerin was more marked by the construction of family homes. It can be expected that the residential suburbanisation will increase in the new Länder in the coming years.