Large housing estates in Germany’s major cities: a last bastion of affordable housing?

Abstract

The affordable housing crisis in many major German cities has sparked a new wave of suburbanization. In thriving cities such as Berlin, Cologne, Munich, Frankfurt, and Hamburg, rental prices in central locations have reached unprecedented highs. Amid this situation, large housing estates (LHEs) built between the 1950s and 1980s on city outskirts are often regarded as the last strongholds of affordable housing. The sharp rise in housing prices within Germany’s major cities has reshaped the traditional perception of these residential areas as centers of social disadvantage and conflict. Nevertheless, rents within these LHEs have also been increasing over the years due to neoliberal policies promoting financialization and privatization. In this context, this article analyzes rent levels in LHEs across major German cities and compares them to the average rents within their respective urban areas. Using a geodata‐based methodology, we first identify LHEs that were built between 1949 and 1990 and that meet a minimum threshold of 1,000 inhabitants. Our study covers all German cities with populations exceeding 100,000 residents. Subsequently, fine‐grained raster data from the 2022 census is employed to calculate average rent levels at settlement scale. Our analysis revealed statistically significant differences between the average rent levels in LHEs and the overall citywide average. The article concludes with reflections on strategies to preserve affordable housing in the affected urban areas.