German contest to live in depopulated Soviet-era city proves global hit

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/aug/21/german-contest-to-live-in-depopulated-soviet-era-city-proves-global-hit

by c420 • 11 months ago

41 80 11 months ago

theguardian.com

pavel_lishin• 11 months ago

Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44339123

londons_explore• 11 months ago

The strength of the anti-migrant,

If you live in a town with a shrinking population with a labour shortage, it doesn't really seem to make sense to be anti migrants...

RealStickman_• 11 months ago

These right wing sentiments have never been about facts and logic

armada6512• 11 months ago

Being pro-immigration used to be a right-wing sentiment, because it was a good way to get labor costs down. And it used to be the left-wing labor parties that were against immigration for that very reason.

True left-wing politicians like Bernie Sanders are still against immigration because it lowers the wages of working class people.

mhh__6• 11 months ago

"I don't want my town/area to change demographically beyond my recognition" is a completely self-consistent position, it's just axiomatically taken as wrongthink by people who seem to think everything can be broken down into a logical deduction from high modernist axioms (so-called facts and logic are opinionated, everything requires a numeraire)

t1E9mE7JTRjf• 11 months ago

How a person feels is also a fact. I wonder if you are being selective in facts, as I'm not sure it's a politic (ie left/right matter). We could also look at facts on crime, tax contributions/burdens, etc and see a different yet factual perspective. I think the way forward is not increasing factuality (if that's even a word) but increasing people being heard and then reconciling those different perspectives. Looking for facts to entrench ones own opinions thus seems a step backwards to me.

Correction: spelling

BurningFrog3• 11 months ago

Depends a lot on how law-abiding and civic minded the specific immigrants are.

tzmudzin• 11 months ago

As a law-abiding civic-minded migrant I also feel unwelcome.

m3adow• 11 months ago

In these regions of Germany it has very little to do with that, as there's hardly any immigrants in Eastern Germany, except Berlin of course. It's about prejudice and xenophobia due to the unknown.

aprilthird20213• 11 months ago

It really doesn't though. If a society enforces laws (and civic-minded laws are possible, such as fines for littering etc), it shouldn't matter at all. Every group of people has criminals, hard workers, productive members of society, etc.

Dig1t2• 11 months ago

Well some people don’t feel like all humans are perfectly identical interchangeable units. If you magically swapped the population of Ireland with the population Japan, do you think that the Japanese would suddenly behave like Irish people just because they were now living in Ireland?

Culture and identity are tied to nations, and just dropping millions of people from Africa into Europe doesn’t make them European.

If your answer is that they just assimilate, they often do not. Example: many churches are being replaced with mosques in London. That is not assimilation, that is simply replacing one population with another.

It is okay for a people who have existed for thousands of years to want their own country and culture to survive in its same state, even if the population shrinks for a while. These labor shortages and shrinking populations are not eternal, eventually the population will bounce back.

willvarfar2• 11 months ago

do you have any sources for the church for mosque replacement theory?

rayiner3• 11 months ago

If you live in a town with a shrinking population with a labour shortage, it doesn't really seem to make sense to be anti migrants...

Do you prefer a slow death of your culture, or a catastrophic end to it?

jacquesm• 11 months ago

False dichotomy.

mlinhares3• 11 months ago

Being anti immigrant isn’t about being sensible, it’s about having a bogeyman to blame for all problems people face. It’s much easier to say “brown people took your life away” than to face reality many small and large decisions made by the government and the people have led to the current outcome.

For instance:

A palpable sense of decline has spurred support for the far-right Alternative für Deutschland party, which won nearly 40% of local votes in the February general election.

People that don’t look “right” should seriously consider if this is the right place to live given the circumstances, which is going to make those with many options to never consider a place like this. What will be left? Not much, the rust belt in the US is a good example of towns dying because the population can’t accept outsiders. A friend, that’s a neurologist, moved to a small town in the Midwest, him and another dude were the two only neurologists in many and many miles, the supermarket cashier asked for his ID and if he was in the country legally and isn’t even brown, just cos of his accent.

Couple of months later he moved to a large city that had no shortage of neurologists and will never come back to the countryside. These people will destroy whatever is left before they accept others, so that’s what what will be.

noduerme2• 11 months ago

There are several very different types of anti-immigrant sentiment in the US. They differ by region and they also differ from the feelings in Europe.

1. Basic, racist, "this person is a different skin color".

2. "We're not racist, but they're willing to work cheaper and take our jobs".

3. "They want to keep their own culture and not integrate with ours."

The third one is far less prevalent in the US than it is in Europe. I think this is for several reasons, but chief among them is that immigrants to the US do actually want to integrate into their new society, whereas immigrants to Europe generally do not. Unlike Europe, the US offers the possibility for immigrants to become as "American" as anyone else, regardless of their race or religion. Whereas immigrants to France, for example, can never become "French". This is mutually reinforcing - the French won't let them become "French", and the immigrants naturally react by not wanting to. Even if they do support liberal French cultural values without excessive judgment, which many do not, that is rarely their main reason to move there except in some political cases. The aim of immigrants to the US is not just economic prosperity, but to join the society and to be American (speaking for my own mixed Latin, Arabic and Jewish immigrant family).

This leaves a situation in the US where only (1) and (2) are arguments that have any traction, and those only have traction with a backwards and racist part of the population, aka MAGA. (3) is a much more difficult question, and it would have more traction here if it were true that immigrants to the US were similar to immigrants to Europe, in only seeking economic gains and choosing to remain separate from the societal mainstream.

You seem to be conflating (3) with the previous two. And maybe for some right-wing European nationalists it is. But I'm not a European white man, and myself and my Filipina partner have heard from some of those right-wing Europeans that as long as we want to learn their culture, they have no problem with us.

When JD Vance goes to Europe and scorns their immigration policy, he is using #3 to their faces, but he is appealing to racist voters who claim #1 and #2 at home. Conversely, when a European tells Americans that all anti-immigrant sentiment in Europe falls into the 1 and 2 categories, you are not honestly telling them about #3.

It's the same in Saudi Arabia, isn't it? You can't go get a job in an oil field and go around waving a bible and drinking bourbon. The fact that the West tolerates a lot of different beliefs and ways of life is a good thing, it adds to our diversity and that is our strength. But that tolerance for others has to also be a foundational understanding for newer arrivals who come here. And if it's not, and if they enter into open hostilities with the country that received them, then I don't think all of that can be laid at the feet of ignorant skin-color-based racism.

spwa42• 11 months ago

People that don’t look “right” should seriously consider if this is the right place

Doesn't really matter. Look at birthrates. People that don't exist won't immigrate to Germany. Germany will be begging for immigrants in a few years ... and won't get them. Or, at least, not from North Africa, and I don't really see any other place to get them.

The US will keep having immigrants from South and Middle America for a bit longer but even that is going to slow down dramatically.

towns dying because the population can’t accept outsiders

There also are no jobs there. The population of these towns wants lots of things done ... but won't pay for doing them. If they did, there would be no shortage of US people/Germans doing them.

To be completely honest there is no longer much reason for these cities to exist. And if you're an old person enjoying your pension there, that really sucks. If you're young, you move away. Just like the rust belt.

benterix5• 11 months ago

It’s much easier to say “brown people took your life away” than to face reality many small and large decisions made by the government and the people have led to the current outcome.

Tangential note: While I agree, there is something missing. You basically shift the blame from one group of people to another. This might be right to a certain extent, but doesn't take into account the enormous influence of things people don't have any control over (at least not people in Germany, even collectively). In other words, it's possible (although impossible to prove as economy is not a provable science), that no matter what individual people and the government would do, Germany would be still in the current situation, or not much different, especially in the long run (short term you can print some money but will have to face consequences anyway).

laughing_man2• 11 months ago

What if you live in a town with a shrinking population with a jobs shortage?

anovikov2• 11 months ago

Almost as if in America, people vote rationally! One town where 66% of population is on medicaid and life expectancy is 10 years under the national average, just voted 88% for Trump. Sure enough, in Germany the highest anti-migrant vote is in areas where there are no migrants at all.

usr11063• 11 months ago

Depopulated sounds like nobody is living there, something like Pripyat. This town is said to have lost over 50% of its former 53,000 so still over 25,000 left. And apartments in GDR were rather small.

Not a native speaker, but is depopulated really the right word here or just clickbait? At least I was expecting something else. Heavily shrunk of course.

DaSHacka• 11 months ago

I guess the difference between "unpopulated" and "depopulated" is the former means no one at all, while the latter just means the population had a (meaningfully significant) decrease.

dotancohen5• 11 months ago

Does decaffeinated coffee have zero caffeine? Do deboned fish have zero bones? Does debugged software have zero bugs?

usr11063• 11 months ago

Not zero, but an only insignificant residual because zero is hard to achieve in real life. Also Pripyat has some illegal inhabitants.

(I don't think debugged software is a commonly used term, so no need to discuss the meaning)

Edit: Genuine question: Would native speakers call Detroit depopulated? The shrinkage seems to be about the same ratio.

kortilla2• 11 months ago

If decaffeinated coffee had half the caffeine of regular coffee it would most certainly not be called that. Same with deboned fish.

The expectation using those terms is that only a negligible amount remains if any at all.

popalchemist2• 11 months ago

You're thinking of "unpopulated." "Depopulated" means the population has DEcreased.

usr11063• 11 months ago

Unpopulated is static, no change implied.

Depopulated implies change, people used to live there. For me it meant no significant number left.

aprilthird20213• 11 months ago

is depopulated really the right word here or just clickbait?

I would consider depopulated to be correct

benterix5• 11 months ago

Not a native speaker, but is depopulated really the right word here

Straight from the dictionary:

depopulate (v): to substantially reduce the population of (an area)

niemandhier2• 11 months ago

It’s good that they try new ways to attract people. Very few people want to live in these areas.

An example to illustrate how dire this situation is: I was contacted multiple times by small East German universities that literally told me, I could immediately start a professorships there. Apparently the selection process is at the moment almost a formality, since they just don’t have any applicants for the positions..

schoen3• 11 months ago

Did you have a PhD or prior experience as a professor? Or was this just like "you're a smart and knowledgeable person, so you're welcome to come be a professor at our institution"?

The second is culturally hard for me to imagine in Germany, but if so, that could show even more strongly how extreme the situation is!

anovikov2• 11 months ago

It most certainly means that "under a normal run of things it's a huge competition from qualified PhDs to become a full tenured professor so it means years on poorly paid intermediate positions, here there are <1.0 candidates per position so you are automatically approved".

benterix5• 11 months ago

No, the second would be both absurd and illegal, not the parent but we're talking about lack of competition here, not the end of civilization.

niemandhier2• 11 months ago

I have a phd and I am working as a professional scientist, my abysmal publication list disqualifies me under normal conditions from getting a professor position.

rayiner3• 11 months ago

This place looks so cute.

cyberax2• 11 months ago

And at the same time, Berlin is struggling with skyrocketing housing costs.

I wonder why people can't put two and two together and keep digging themselves deeper and deeper into a hole.

jansan• 11 months ago

People of Berlin made a particularly stupid decision when they voted against any construction on the vast empty area known as the Tempelhofer Feld. They could have had anything they wanted, like car free residential area with lots of green, but they decided that no new housing is what they want.

schoen3• 11 months ago

To be fair, they use it quite a lot for exercise and recreation, so it's not like a completely disused open space. Other very expensive cities also have relatively huge parks (like Central Park in New York or Golden Gate Park here in San Francisco). I've heard people try to estimate the real estate value of Central Park, which may be somewhere around $1,000,000,000,000.

The size of Tempelhofer Feld is apparently almost exactly the same as that of Central Park, although it's probably much less used compared to Central Park. It looks like Central Park might get somewhere around four times as many visits.

cyberax2• 11 months ago

They could have had anything they wanted, like car free residential area with lots of green, but they decided that no new housing is what they want.

And the people of Berlin actually made a smart decision not to dig the hole faster.

edg5000• 11 months ago

I live in the Netherlands and got lucky with my housing situation, but given the prices here and the fact that I work mostly remove, I would have seriously considered moving to East Germany. I saw apartments for sale for 25k there. What I read everywhere is that there aren't many jobs available locally and the area is relatively sparsely populated, never really recovering from the damage done during the war and the years under Soviet rule.

ludicrousdispla• 11 months ago

Here is the jobs board for those interested...

https://www.fachkraefteportal-brandenburg.de/eisenhuettensta...

noduerme2• 11 months ago

Turns out they didn't need all that lebensraum after all?

German contest to live in depopulated Soviet-era city proves global hit

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