“Buying the Air” – Planning and Land Policy Interventions for Hybrid High-Rises in Frankfurt am Main

Abstract

Frankfurt am Main is well-known for its financial centre of Europe and recognised as the German city with the highest concentration of high-rise buildings (“skyline”). For several years now, this construction class has also been discovered for hotel, residential and hybrid usages. After the events of 9/11, high-rise construction came to a standstill worldwide. Which domestic and international developer would want to build the highest high-rise as an investment landmark in a city? Instead, smaller residential towers at a height of 60–80 m were preferred by investors. Twenty years later, the completion of an initial 15 hybrid-use high-rise towers in the city of Frankfurt am Main is expected by the year 2023. Other German cities such as Berlin, Hamburg and Dusseldorf are following similar strategies to implement vertical allocations of property rights in towers embedded in selected privately owned (semi-)public spaces. The amenities include arcades, pocket parks, seating areas, landscape terraces, rooftop bars and swimming pools. We will discuss the renaissance of high-rises, which is a market-based and marketing-based approach following the monetary policy of the European Central Bank, wooing investors at a time of unprecedented speed of construction of tall, particularly hybrid, buildings. In the case study of the ‘Four’ inner-city revitalisation project, located on plots formerly known as ‘ the forbidden town’ of Frankfurt as this area was blocked to the public for decades, we will pay particular attention to the planning department’s right to regulate. The findings presented here are the result of scientific project work conducted in 2019–2020. The local government has imposed a 30% mandatory quota for affordable, subsidised housing rents and price reduced condominiums as legally binding requirements for tower constructions to prevent vertical gated communities. Our essay deals with the central areas of real estate development: land and capital investment.

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