In 2025, the city of Hamburg will grow by around 100,200 m2. These additional areas need to be developed. Hamburg will therefore invest 40 million euros to extend the city's infrastructure and ensure connections to electricity, water and sewage. These areas will be removed from speculation and become part of urban reality again. By building a façade, a protective layer is created. Behind it thus: air that can be used, space that can be owned. Within anything can be realized. Bedrooms can be the size of a bed and kitchens, studies, living rooms can expand. Building standards no longer play a role within the walls of a home.
We are talking about the Elbtower. An unfinished office building situated prominently at the entrance to Hamburg on an island in the Elbe. Hamburg can buy back the site including the built mass worth over 300 million euros for the original selling price - minus a security: 117 million euros for 100,200m2 is a good deal. The area will be zoned and redistributed via the heritable building right. A type of land allocation that already exists. The annual returns, about 1 million euros, flow back into maintenance and upkeep.
30% will be housing, 30% non-housing and 40% public.
Space is an essential resource. It cannot be a commodity.
As a result of artificially created demand, the vacancy rate for office buildings in Hamburg is currently 6.6%. This is 2% higher than the German average. At the same time, there is a shortage of living space. If we want to prevent the city from becoming generic and bland, real needs and real users can no longer be pushed aside. Landbanking should be abolished. At the beginning of the 21st century, Germany privatized a large part of its remaining housing stock. Today, 94% of housing is part of the private sector. In order to keep pace with the private market, Hamburg has become private itself. This enables it to take credits, generate returns, make profits and reinvest. In the end, however, debts and risks are always secured by the state. The separation of the private market and the state has been purely fictitious for as long as debt has existed, i.e. since time immemorial.
Cycles of speculation have mutually amplified each other. The current real estate crisis can no longer be ignored, nor countered by the measures that have lead to it. The Elbtower and the Schwabenlandtower are two of many examples where system failure reveals itself. Precisely because speculation is based on scarcity, it has produced half-finished spaces in the wrong places. These failed projects are a burden. However, what failed is not necessarily the building itself, but the abstract financial mechanisms that stand behind it. The unfinished structure can become something that is not yet there, that hasn't even been thought of.
An empty tower is land.
A burden is a chance.
An unfinished house is a home.
