I looked at the thumbnail and was really worried.... But in all honesty, I do really like Hanover and I think most of the hate is really undeserved. There are so many nice places in Hannover and actually very few ugly ones. Maybe the centre of the city but most of the ugly brutalist buildings were renovated even there.
I lived in Hannover for many years until I had to leave for working in western parts of Germany. I lived in Oststadt part. All little shops are in walking distance, the city center too, if you need it, I was able to use the UBahn to the university, if the weather was fine I used the bicycle a lot, the Eilenriede forest is a great and large area for biking, I owned a whole year ticket for the zoological garden, a nice place to relax when you're stressed. Last but not least, my high school was located at the banks of the Maschsee lake. For some time of the year the city becomes known worldwide when it hosts the large industrial and computer fairs. I was very happy there. And I wonder why many people don't like the city. And I bet, there are some nice places in Ludwigshafen too. At least it's not far from Mannheim and from the Weinstraße on the other side with its old wine villages.
Pointing out all the major bad planning decisions made in Ludwigshafen over the decades would probably require several videos, but this is a nice summary. One point to add may be that those decions not only resulted in a city with many planning issues, but also in significant amounts of debt making it hard to correct past mistakes.
Well, that's only half the story, though. Given that Ludwigshafen is the home of the world's largest contiguous chemical plant, any notion those decisions alone resulted in that debt is a whitewash of the ability to industry to minimize their taxable revenue. Which is why it's entirely ludicrous that the BASF complains about the looming traffic disaster. If they'd pay a fair share of taxes and not distribute their earning strategically over sundry subsidiaries, Ludwigshafen would have way more financial leeway.
@@ohauss Each community has to plan with the taxes it actually gets and not with the taxes it wishes it could get. In Ludwigshafen there have been decades of mismanagement that not only led to the current financial woes but also to the traffic desaster. The elevated roads Ludwigshafen struggles with actually are Bundestraßen, i.e. under normal circumstances the federal government would pay for these. But unfortunately the roads weren't good enough when they were on the ground, so Ludwigshafen decided to elevate them thereby taking over the responsibility for the elevated segments. Unfortunately the city was financially unable to actually maintain those roads properly, so they started to decay until we got to the desastrous situation we have now which ties in nicely with the next example. To get one of those roads back to ground level Ludwigshafen needs to flatten the Rathaus center which it built in the late 70s, then sold to ECE in the early 80s while renting the tower containing the city hall from ECE and now had to buy back from ECE for a significant amount of money just to destroy it which is expensive as well. Long story short, the city has a history of wasting huge amounts of money, another one of those projects - the partially constructed and now largely abandoned subway system - was even mentioned in the video.
@@ohauss Ludwigshafen is in the top 40´s of tax income in Germany. They had more in the past, but obvioulsy did not spent it in a sufficient way. But even today, they still have more than the mayority of other german cities.
@@Raider_MXD "The elevated roads Ludwigshafen struggles with actually are Bundestraßen, i.e. under normal circumstances the federal government would pay for these. But unfortunately the roads weren't good enough when they were on the ground, so Ludwigshafen decided to elevate them thereby taking over the responsibility for the elevated segments. " That is plain and simply incorrect. For Bundesstraßen going straight through a city, (so-called "Ortsdurchfahrten"), the municipal authorities are responsible for the construction and maintenance even of Bundesstraßen. §5(2) Bundesfernstraßengesetz: "(2) 1Die Gemeinden mit mehr als 80 000 Einwohnern sind Träger der Straßenbaulast für die Ortsdurchfahrten im Zuge von Bundesstraßen." And BASF are the ones wailing most loudly when there's a problem with the streets...
I love how here in Heidelberg, which is like 15 km away from Mannheim, we call Mannheim the ugly city, but we also all forget that Ludwigshafen even exists.
As a Bulgarian, this city has very strong “Eastern European” vibes, albeit it in the Western part of Germany. If you pause at 4:41, you’ll even see a Bulgarian “Баничарница” and hot meals store!
Basically, Ludwigshafen was also always a city for workers so not far from the idea of the Eastern Bloc. Those who had the money moved away, to Mannheim across the Rhine or to the surrounding area. The factory owners or managers never lived in Ludwigshafen.
Yeah it's a great bulgarian bakery in the city centre. When I went to school there I was used to buy a Banichka at least every week. Great bakery with very low prices^^
It looks eerily similar to Charleroi in Belgium : it is also a young industrial city with some elevated highways in the middle of the city. It has an unfinished metro used by trams and shopping streets that are deserted because of a modern mall. The only big difference is that it's way poorer. It is still slowly recovering from the industrial decline.
The post world war economical rise rebuilt phenomenon - same thing with Frankfurt. It was completely devastated to ground zero and instead of trying to build it up the way it had used to be it was completely "remastered" opening the gates to the new age of business. It's a shame because this cities had their own character and charme all being lost in favour to the economy
You can't compare Frankfurt to Charleroi or Ludwigshafen 😅 I like those old German towns like Bamberg or Heidelberg, but Frankfurt is a great city in its way, too.
Charleroi's industry were coal mines and iron works which disappeared decades ago. That's an excuse. But the BASF is still going strong and SHOULD make the city wealthy. Apparently the city council never managed things well. Alone the idea to build another shopping center, after the first one failed. What did they think?
@@ppd3bw The city council isn't the only issue. Yes, BASF SHOULD make the city wealthy. But like many big companies, BASF likes to distribute its revenue over sundry subsidiaries, so that large parts of their profit are achieved in low-tax countries.
Ludwigshafen is like one of those so-bad-it's-good-movies. It's so incredibly ugly and ill-designed that the uglyness transforms into a bizarrely pleasing aesthetic. Some places feel like a portal into an alternate reality in which Ludwigshafen outranked even Frankfurt but was later partially destroyed, probably due to some chemical emergency at BASF. This is best experienced by taking tram 6 from Mannheim. After crossing the river you enter this tunnel and pass through a station that looks like a real metro station, except something about it is slightly odd. As though it's not quite at the right scale but you can't describe what it is that feels wrong about it. Then the tram carries on, turns an incredibly tight curve and is suddenly wizzed back into reality, running at street level right though a generic city street, back in reality again. I kind of adore it.
@F T Ach ja, das gute alte Rathaus Center.. Geplant war ursprünglich dass die Straßenbahn unterirdisch unter der Bismarckstraße verläuft und erst am Berliner Platz wieder hoch kommt. Viele tolle Ideen, Visionen und Intentionen aber am Ende hat leider immer das Geld oder der Wille gefehlt die Sachen zu Ende zu führen…
As someone who grew up in Lu I can say without a shadow of a doubt that I rly didn't expect to ever see english language content about that shithole. The shopping street btw isn't deserted because of the shopping mall right next to it, which itself is quite desolate and in decay, it is deserted because of Mannheim's Planken shopping street which is where everyone goes these days. Most people from Lu never really do anything in Lu itself, it's a glorified suburb. If you want to do anything from partying to going out to eat you do it in Mannheim, which in itself isn't the best city either but it's the best we got. It has gotten so bad that I and most of the people I grew up with never say we are from Ludwigshafen when someone asks, we all just say Mannheim.
I disagree with you. Many people do things here. Also partying and stuff like that. The shopping mall is also pretty full but has not as many shops as cities like Karlsruhe which is pretty sad
I grew up in Schonau in early 70's and then moved to the United States. I still have family there and they tell me it's not nice as I remember growing up. Things change over time.
70s architecture, a dilapidated and badly designed railway station, half-finished Stadtbahn… that's unironically sounds to me like a must-see. Thank you for recommending, especially that I'll be relatively nearby in July so now there is a plan
I was in Ludwigshafen some time ago and was fascinated by all these places that were seemingly stuck in time. Sadly many iconic buildings were or will be demolished, such as the Rathaus center. I enjoyed riding their U-Straßenbahn sections (or rather what's left of it) and their tram network in general. The station below the rathaus center will probably be demolished together with the building itself. Below the active platforms there are two dead ones. They belonged to the tram tunnel that closed in 2008. Prior to this closure, only one weekday, rush hour only line ran there. The U-Strab station HBF is a very characterful place that gives you a ride back to the 70s and is a silent reminder of the very ambitious (and insane) construction plans Ludwigshafen had. For fans of underground structures a place to go.
I absolutely adore the U-Strab and hate the thought of it being demolished alongside the Rathaus Center. Both are important landmarks and should function as memorial sites to warn future generations about the dangers of bad urban planning. Well, at least we still have the Hauptbahnhof to enjoy.
@@ludwig4851 Applying that same logic we’d have to demolish the palace of versailles. Or even the newly reconstructed Berlin Palace. Ok, to be fair the latter one I‘d be on board with.
@Charly @F T Echt schade dass sie das Rathaus Center abreißen. Ganz klar Kulturgut und schützenswert. Das mit der 2008 geschossenen Station in der C Ebene unter dem Rathaus Center habe ich kürzlich erst erfahren, obwohl ich hier seit 20 Jahren lebe. Die Station am Danziger Platz die teil der Linie war, ist ja gleichzeitig geschlossen worden.
Ha, you did my hometown! I think your judgement is fair, but let me add that the inner city and the "Rathaus Center" used to be bustling in the 80s, and even the main station was doing o.k. Some of Ludwigshafen's most "iconic" and beloved (by me and the locals) buildings from the 50's and 60's were demolished in the last decade. When I lived there in the 1970s and 80s, Ludwigshafen was the richest city in Germany thanks to BASF, which meant that there were very well funded schools, lots of swimming pools, an ice rink and all kinds of municipal sports facilities in great repair, as well as good museums, a theatre, nice parks and so on. The hinterland is quite nice, so many people from Ludwigshafen spend their weekends walking in the Pfälzer Wald or in the winyards around the Weinstraße. (One of the Ludwigshafen tram lines ends in Bad Dürkheim an der Weinstraße, home of the world's largest wine cask and the world's larges Weinfest.) Of course it always was an "ugly" factory town, and the elevated highways made commuting easy, so the higher-ups in the BASF tended to move to the surrounding towns and villages, taking their taxes with them, which is probably the reason for the city's (nowadays) empty coffers despite the high GDP. It seems large companies themselves don't pay a lot of tax these days, and BASF has moved many of its blue collar jobs abroad. (Supposedly, they are still paying their remaining workers relatively well, compared to other countries and German regions, but globalisation is what it is).
It's pretty sad to see how Ludwigshafen has sort of accepted its fate and now keeps demolishing even its most prolific buildings. The Rathaus, albeit not representative of our current taste in architecture, was a teriffic structure that functioned as a symbol of prosperity. It's a city almost entirely shaped by the 1960s and 70s, which is rare to that extent, yet it totally disowes that heritage.
@@ft4709 Well, the Rathaus couldn't really be saved as far as what I gathered from the news. Especially the tower. They even have to build the tower back level by level, same way they once build it, like removing all windows level by level and starting at like the 8th storey they're gonna use those small demolition trucks that look like dino jaws to pick away at the structure.
Ich könnte da nun viel erzählen, habe mal an der UNi eine Arbeit über die Geschichte der Wohnbebauung der Stadt geschrieben. Eins muss man eben sagen, es gibt wegen der Lage keine wirklich hochwertigen Viertel, weil alle Besserverdiener einfach nach Mannheim gezogen sind. Daher hatte Ludwigshafen schon immer einen eher ärmlichen Charakter, auch wenn man in den 70er Jahre viel Geld investiert hat, das hat man in der DDR auch und ähnlich sieht es nun hier aus. Was Rewboss nicht gesehen hat, sind die Arbeitersiedlungen, die die BASF in den letzten 150 Jahre gebaut hat. Das ist wirklich etwas Besonderes, die BASF hat sogar ein ganzes Dorf mit heute 10 000 Menschen erbaut das ist schon was Einzigartiges und zeigt, wie eng die Stadt mit dieser einzigen Firma verknüpft ist.
I was stationed in Worms; lived on the "economy" in Abenheim. For some reason, I always loved Weinheim. I thought it the perfect place. I also loved Ludwigshafen. To tell the truth, there wasn't a part of Germany I didn't like.
I went to vocational school in Ludwigshafen once. Our teacher said that one of the reasons LU is so ugly and poor is because the BASF chose to pay taxes at another location of theirs. LU used to be wealthy in the 70s, but then a new law came allowing companies to choose in which city they want to pay taxes in. (ofc they need a branch there)
Honestly apart from the ugly cement buildings and the mostly dead city centre the real problem here is the humidity. When I moved to Ludwigshafen I didn't know that I was moving to the most humid part of Germany. Ludwigshafen does have some nice areas, like along the Rhine, the park island and the old buildings in the Southern district of the city that weren't bombed during WWII. The greatest advantage is living in a hotpot of ethnicities, rent is cheaper than in the surrounding areas and it's so well connected with public transport. You can go to the Pfälzer Wald and wine country by train in under 30 minutes, you jump onto a tram and you're at the Neckar River in 10-15 minutes and Mannheim just over the river has access to all the long distance trains and the regional express trains. You get a lot of living value for a lower price in such a massive metropolitan area. Those are definitely the positive parts of living here
What really struck me coming from the cold north of Germany is how insanely hot it was all the time, warm, rainy winters, brutal, borderline mediterrean summers. It's hard to overstate how noticable the Rhine river's microclimate is in that part of Germany. Loved it though, and my plants loved it more
@@ladyvader3173 Yeah it's because that part of the Rhine Valley is known as the "Rhein-Neckar-Senke", it's a geological depression/dip where the area around the river is very flat and the surrounding topography is higher. Along that part of the Rhine that's the case, plus you have the Neckar river through Mannheim flowing into it too, so you have a flat area of two big cities with a combined population of 600 thousand people. City centres already trap a lot of heat in the summer and then you add the river and the topography to it and you get those horrible summers and winters with hardly any snow. I could personally live with this way better if it wasn't for the humidity. It makes it so much worse.
As someone from that area one of the most important things as to why it looks so deserted is this: Why go to Ludwigshafen if Heidelberg is not even 30 minutes away? The ugliest city being not even 20 kilometers away from the most beautiful city isn't a coincidence.
Hallo Andrew, ich ergänze hier einfach mal ein bisschen ... leider diesmal in Deutsch Die Bismarkstraße (Fußgängerzone) war schon vor der Pandemie und meinem Umzug im Jahr 2007 eigentlich nichts viel mehr als 1 Euro Shops und Bäcker. Die Straße ging mit dem Niedergang der deutschen Kaufhäuser mehr und mehr den "Bach runter". Im Rathaus Center hattest du vielfältige Auswahl, dazu dann noch den Kaufhof. Auf halber Strecke Richtung Berliner Platz war dann Horten (an der Querstraße rechts) und am Berliner Platz in der "Tortenschachtel" Kaufhalle. Horten wurde zum Kaufhof und schloß irgendwann ganz ... Kaufhalle und die Tortenschachtel war ein Kapitel für sich (inzwischen nach jahrelangem Leerstand abgerissen ... und Neuplanung schon längst überfällig - der Investor war glaub ich zwischendrin sogar insolvent) Das Shopping-Center "Walzmühle" ist dann im Anschuss sowas von gefloppt (inklusive dem Multiplex-Kinos was sogar einige Säle mindestens zeitweise ungenutzt lies) Rathaus-Center und RheinGalerie sollten ursprünglich mal miteinander verbunden werden ... ist aber auch gescheitert ... deswegen auch wohl nur der südliche Eingang ... der nördliche wäre dann mit der Verbindung zum Rathaus gekommen. Spätestens an dem Punkt der Einführung der "Netzfunktion" für Jeden mit dem Rhein-Neckar-Ticket bist du spätestens dann wenn du in mehrere Läden wolltest und evtl. sogar was gesucht hast sowieso nach Manneim mit der Straßenbahn. Das hat dann auch nochmal zu einigen Schließungen in der Ludwigshafener Innenstadt geführt. Das Hochstraßendebakel hätte übrigens noch größer ausfallen können, den die "Süd" (die abgerissene Hochstraße) hätte eigentlich während des Abrisses der "Nord" die Umleitung machen sollen ... jetzt betet die halbe Region, dass es die Nord noch solange mitmacht, bis die Süd wieder in Funktion ist ... sollte die Nord früher schlapp machen wäre das mehr als nur ein worsed case ... das währe der verkerliche Zusammenbruch, da dan zwischen Mannheim und Ludwigshafen neben der Autobahnbrücke A6 und der Rheinfähre in Altrip keine Rheinquerung ohne Verkehrshindernisse angefahren werden könnte und die A650 endgültig im Niemandsland endet (eigentlich geht die über die Süd und die Adenauer-Brücke direkt nach Mannheim und dort wahlweise in Richtung Stadt oder über Fahrlach runter zur A656 und zur A5
Oh je, ich meine ich konnte damals, als ich in Ludwigshafen gearbeitet habe, was direkt an der Rheingallerie war also am hinteren Ende, schon erkennen, wie es um die Stadt beschert sein muss. Aber, dass es so schlimm ist, hätte ich echt nicht gedacht. Falls du in Ludwigshafen wohnst, viel Glück, dass ihr es doch noch packt und wieder eine funktionierende Struktur aufbauen könnt. Die Pandemie muss der Stadt ja den endgültigen Todesstoß gegeben haben, oder?
@@ohauss Tja - und der Fahrlach Tunnel an sich ist genau genommen ja auch nur eine Notlösung, denn ursprünglich war eigentlich geplant die A65 bis zum Anschluß an die B38a zu führen ... Leider haben da zu viele "Grüne" und NIMBY´s erfolgreich Terror gemacht, um das zu verhindern. Somit gibt es für den Schwerverkehr keine alternative Straßenverbindung über den Rhein im Süden von Mannheim und Ludwigshafen. Die Rheinfähre Altrip ist keine Alternative - weder von der Kapazität, noch von der Anbindung her. Durch den Ausfall des Fahrlachtunnels herrscht vor Allem in Mannheim täglich Alarm ... Ich muß fast jeden Tag mit dem Lkw mindestens einmal - oft auch mehrfach da durch, umpf ...
Warum sich hier überhaupt jemand zum pendeln das Auto gibt werde ich wohl nie verstehen. Klar wenn man in nem Kaff wohnt dann ist das was anders, aber so viele Stadtteile und Vororte in der Metropolregion sind mit Bus, Straßenbahn und Zug verbunden, bevor ich mir die Rush Hour mit dem Auto gebe fahr ich lieber 100 mal mit der Straßenbahn und co. Im Gegensatz zu den Anbindungen die ich im Darmstädter Schlafstadtgürtel hatte wo ich aufgewachsen bin, ist die Metropolregion was das angeht voll der Luxus. Mich hat mal ne Kommilitonin morgens mit dem Auto mit nach Heidelberg zur Uni genommen. Und unsere Vorlesung war erst um 10, aber das war das reinste Verkehrschaos zwischen Lu und HD und da war die Südliche Hochstraße noch offen. Dagegen sind die 23 Minuten mim Zug plus 10 Minuten Bus oder Straßenbahnfahrt geradezu erholsam gewesen.
Dear Andrew, I'm pleasantly surprised how fair and accurate your video was regarding the city center. But the city center is not the whole city. All but one part of the city used to be independent villages and even a town until they were incorporated into the city (and most of them against the will of the people during the Nazi regime). There are remnants of a baroque residence and a pilgrimage church in the former town of Oggersheim. To be fair, DB's planning of the main train station was grandios but it worked fine with TEE and Intercity trains once every hour into all directions until the ICE arrived on the stage. ICE trains are longer than ICs and TEEs used to be - too long for Ludwigshafen's train station - and because of the triangle rails they couldn't extend the platforms. So DB just kicked Ludwigshafen out of the network. This was not the city's fault. The elevated motorways are the city's fault. In the 1950s they fell into the modernist, car-friendly trap. And the city was rich, very rich at that time. So they decided to plan and construct them on their own. They didn't think about maintanance and they didn't predict the poor finances. The newer, northern one has been in disrepair for 20ish years, the older, southern one was in pretty good shape until they rerouted all heavy vehicles in order to save the northern from total collapse before the scheduled demolishing in a few years. But at a routine check they discovered very severe damage and had to close it. Ludwigshafen as a city has two problems. 1. Mannheim is a better shopping destination. You can find any shop you can find in Ludwigshafen and more. The big chains (e.g. Galeria and C&A) had shops in Mannheim with double the size of their Ludwigshafen counterparts. Some chains (e.g. Karstadt) never came to Ludwigshafen. Before the Rathaus Center was closed Bismarckstraße was very busy but since then the shoppers moved one street over to Ludwigsstraße and one further to Rheingalerie - Mall. 2. Ludwigshafen provides many services to the surrounding towns and villages (museums, theater, courthouse, swimming-pools, schools [about half of the students in Gymnasiums and Realschulen do not live in Ludwigshafen]) and don't get any money from the towns and villages. Those are more attractive to people with higher income, so most of the money from income tax of people working in the city goes to the surrounding villages. In the city there live unproportinally high numbers of longtime unemployed people or people with low income, which strains the city's finances even further. On another note: Ludwigshafen is a very green city with many parks. It is part of Germany's largest tram-net from Bad Dürkheim in the west via Ludwigshafen and Mannheim to Weinheim and Heidelberg in the east. Rent is far cheaper than in Mannheim. All in all Ludwigshafen is a very liveable city. Weinstraße with dozens of wine-villages, hundreds of vineries, and a Weinfest somewhere every weekend is but half an hour away. And beyond Weinstraße lies Pfälzerwald, Germany's largest forest, Speyer with its medieval city center and the largest romanesque church north of the alps is close by. I was born and raised there and only because of my husband I moved to a village just outside the city limits. I could not imagine to live elsewhere. CU twinmama
Yeah Andrew, the mainstreet used to be marginally more bustling like 10 years ago when I moved here, but I wouldn't say it was so much the pandemic or even the Rhein Gallerie that sucked the live out of it. Once the Rhein Gallerie opened some shops moved there, but it was already dying before that. What really seemed to give it the last nail into the coffin was when it became clear that the Rathaus Center was going to get demolished. Even with the Rhein Gallerie there still were some shops in the Rathaus Center which gave people reason to go to that part of the city centre (the train, bus and tram hub Berliner Platz is at the other end of it). Slowly surrounding shops closed and then all the shops in the Rathaus Centre.
The center used be way more lively in the past, but over time the people from the surrounding areas in Rheinland-Pfalz abandoned Ludwigshafen and instead used the convenient elevated roads of Ludwigshafen to bypass the city and drive to Mannheim for their shopping trips.
I grew up in Ludwigshafen and never questioned the aesthetics back then, I even like(d) the 70s concrete stuff. Since moving out I started to have reference and it is in fact not the most beautiful place in Germany. Thanks for being so sachlich with it!
I was born in Ludwigshafen in 1971 and left 1979 to Greece where my parents came from. But i am nostalgic about Ludwigshafen even I lived there only 8 years. I remember it's parks and the elementary school i was going.
To be fair, sacrificing walkability and public transport to the 20--Century horrors of automobile traffic has lead to a general decline, in almost every city and town, everywhere.
I have worked in Ludwigshafen for nearly forty years, and while I agree that it is not a choice spot to live, and that city planning has been abominable, If you came again, I could show you its positive features...while it's true that most of the city center was bombed out in the war, the areas just north and south of the center, have much of the same Gründerzeit architecture that is typical for most German cities, and within city limits, there are surprisingly many green and agricultural surfaces...throughout the city beautiful large plane trees (Platanen) and fragrant rosebushes in the oddest places. It's a city actually best explored by bicycle rather than either on foot or by car....
Ludwigshafen, have you been to Pirmasens? There was another area, The train ride from Saarbrücken to Trier. I’m not sure which village this is attached to. There’s a very large run-down area; quite sad. I grew up in a bad area near Chicago, I was surprised to see such conditions in Germany.
Oh dear… I used to live in Mannheim and comfort myself by comparison to Ludwigshafen… I see you life in Ascherbersch?! I love that area. I have spent a lot of time in Klingenberg. I’m a Brit, too, btw. Nice to hear your humour throughout the video.
Also you can trace a lot of inner city decay to the absolutely idiotic Rheingalerie mall. A lot of the shops in there were part of the Fußgängerzone. which now has become a dire view. What's even stupider is that on each end of the Fußgängerzone there already were malls. Which now both also decay. That is a lot to fix for the new local governance. Every decision since the 1970s seems to have been the worst one.
As someone who grew up in Ludwigshafen, I have to say that the video is very well researched and summarized. The problem analysis is also very precise. Nevertheless, I can recommend everyone to visit here, the city is far from pretty but anything but boring.
This video inexplicably (but luckily for you of) was in my recommended list and as I'm from Mannheim of course I had to give it a watch. As neighboring cities they unsurprisingly have kind of a rivaling socio-economic status (i.e. we mutually make jokes at the expense of each other) and the feudal system here in Germany only adds to the possibilities of satirical remarks. I think your view of the city represents the impression a casual visitor may get very well and you nicely shine a light on different aspects of a city that not necessarily deserves the title as Germany's ugliest city. As a citizen of Mannheim, to me Ludwigshafen feels like a little adoptive brother that, while it wasn't loved as much as Mannheim in the past, has a special kind of almost quirky charm and thus deserves a place in my heart. If you're still in the vicinity, you might want to check out the "Blaue Adria" (Blue Adria) in Altrip - a beautiful cluster of lakes amidst a sanctuary that was once a Rhine meander where swimming is free in some parts (nudism is exercised in the headland of the Adriaweiher if you're a devotee like me). I like the style of this video and wish you all the best for the future! :)
Small point of information regarding the "how to get there": If you're watching this in Summer 2022, the main tram station in front of Mannheim Hbf is closed for remodeling. There is a tram station at the back entrance called Hauptbahnhof Süd, but it's probably easier to just take the S-Bahn to Ludwigshafen until the construction work is done.
As a fan of Bald and Bankrupt, you should absolutely do more of this! Show the decaying and grittier side of Germany, interspersed with the beautiful towns. Great analysis of the urban planning and how we got here. Rename your channel to 'Ponytailed and Solvent'.
Yeah, anyone calling that the worst train station in the world hasn't seen the typical American suburban rail station where if you're lucky there's a few blocks of urban walkability at the other end of a 5000-space surface parking lot from the platform.
@@nlpnt Can you give an example for me to look up? Never been to the US; but I'd be curious how it stacks up. The extent of my knowledge is basically: "Chicago is bad."
When I lived in Mannheim for a view years I worked in Ludwigshafen. And man was it ugly. It was exceptionally off-putting compared to what I had seen before or after. Personally I think if most buildings look like concrete cubes placed next to a chemical factory, chances are you won't fall in love with your landscape
As someone from Mannheim, I see Ludwigshafen not really as a city, but more like a district around the huge BASF plant, which is the size of like 3 normal sized districts.
One thing about Ludwigshafen is that the more you get out of the city Centre, the more beautiful it looks. The old BASF workers homes at the Feierabendhaus is a good example for that. Gartenstadt looks beautiful too. One bad thing I have to talk about is the crime rate tho. Knife attacks and muggings are happening daily. Places like the Berliner Platz are no go areas after 9pm
I've recently visited the city for the first time with a colleague as part of an introduction meeting with city officials. We knew about the bad reputation of the city so we weren't really surprised about the city's landscape as we drove over the elevated highway. But it was still bad to look at. Now interestingly enough the meeting we had was held at the replacement building for the city hall that's about to be demolished. The replacement building itself was really old, roughly from the 70s and kinda makeshift in the interior. The outside facade also had many holes in it, which was weird since the facade was made from stone slabs. The city officials also openly said that the city is broke, money wise, and apparently has a bit of a Nazi problem. Also interesting to note, while there is this new shopping mall just on the river bed, there is also another one I had to walk through on my way to the meeting, it's directly next to the inner city and the 'Mitte' railway station but despite its size and location only had like two stores open, the rest being abandoned.
When the shopping mall Walzmühle at the Mitte railway station was built the city already had two malls - Rathauscenter and Bismarck-Zentrum - that struggled to attract shops, so adding a third one was a odd decision. Walzmühle was half empty for most of its existence and the the final nail in its coffin was the construction of the Rheingalerie.
The Walzmühle that's like a whole chapter in and of itself. When I moved here over 10 years ago there was still at least half the mall's worth of shops. They used to have a big real Supermarkt in there, but as far as I heard the management company wanted too high a rent so the supermarket just let their contract run out and closed up shop in that location. During the pandemic they turned it into our vaccination centre. When getting ny jabs it was super odd to sit next to where I used to go up the escalators while doing the shopping. If this trip of yours was recently the replacement building you were in was probably down by the Berliner Platz? That used to be a Sparkasse building.
@@CarinaCoffee the office was on the Bismarck Straße near the Mitte station, but it wouldn't surprise me if they had to split the different city departments between different buildings
@@crazyjack3653 The former Sparkasse building that now houses a big part of the city council is next to the Berliner Platz tram station. If you walk from the Mitte train station towards the Berliner Platz it's the building right behind the tram stop. In the background it meets with a high-rise building called "Moschhochhaus" which has a neon sign for the Rheinpfalz Zeitung on it. If it is the old Sparkasse building I wouldn't be surprised about the not ideal interior reno, I think it was within 6 to 12 months after I noticed them renovating it that the city council moved in. And well, they're only supposed to be there for a few years.
@@Raider_MXD jeder bürgermeister musste halt seim amdemkem himterlassem. ludwig die ganze infrastruktur, schulze seine waltmühle und die lohse. lohse CDU und van vliet SPD haben nochmals dazu beigetragen.
The 1960s/1970s architecture has indeed aged badly - but one could have guessed that concrete surfaces don't get prettier with age. I live in Marl in the northern Ruhr area and we have a unanimous council decision to demolish and rebuild the ugly and dilapidated town hall from that period. However, the heritage agency has thrown a spanner in the works - in our case, the whole thing now has to be extensively renovated in accordance with the heritage requirements at three times the cost in twice the time it would have taken to demolish and rebuild. It will cost more than 150 million and the city has no money - that's why, for example, the urgently needed new construction of a primary school is delayed
There are soooo many beautiful places in Ludwigshafen. I grew up there and I loved my childhood and teenage years in Friesenheim with its big Ebertpark and many swimming lakes. After school, I would take my bike to the Maudacher Bruch for a little workout. Everything is easy to reach via bike. Indeed was it bombed during the world war and my grandpa died on the last day of the war due to a bomb smashing into the BASF. Also, my dad's family home was bombed to the ground. When I grew up we owned a huge "Schrebergarten" near the BASF. (Garden with veggies, herbs, fruits, and flowers). I never perceived Ludwigshafen as ugly as a kid. Attending the Geschwister Scholl Gymnasium I would go to the Parkinsel for my weekly electric organ lesson and I loved the surroundings. If you know the hidden beauty of Ludwigshafen and the lovely bike tracks through the gardens and fields, Ludwigshafen does not appear so ugly at all. I also remember the times in summer when some of the big parks would be lit up with beautiful colored lights and the many times during the year, somewhere would be a "Kerwe". In winter we would take our sled into the parks for a little kids' snow time. It was always something on in Ludwigshafen, every season something different. Our childhood was definitely amazing there.
There are parts that look quite normal or even good (Rheinpromenade, BASF Business Services building, Berliner Platz), but rest of the city is just dominated by the modernism in a worst sense. There is a lot of that in every big city, but here there is almost no alternative. And this absurdly gigantic viaduct through the heart of the city... just putting that underground would help a lot. But now it is definitely not easy to do.
When elected as the ugliest city in Germany, I was wondering if Wolfsburg, Pforzheim and Peine just lost the competition since Ludwigshafen is bigger. But I can fully approve the verdict. The best view one can have there is to the opposite side of river Rhein to see Mannheim ;-)
There's a joke here that the best part about Ludwigshafen is the bridge over to Mannheim. No one come at me for that, I moved here off my own volition, I try staying out of that Ludwigshafen vs Mannheim stuff 😅 both cities have their drawbacks and positives in my pov.
Wolfsburg has a plus in the Porschestrasse, a successful pedestrianized main street (named for an auto designer in a city whose sole reason for existing is cars). Plus it's the wealthiest city in Germany (unless VW has a particularly bad year?); Eisenhuettenstadt is just as young and industrial and politically-embarrassingly-former named, but broke.
The post apocalyptic thriller film people have to move quickly, at least were the Rathaus Center is concerned, they're gonna start demolition on the first part of that massive thing in the third quarter of this year and they're _planning_ to be finished by 2025 with the last part when that elevated street will also be demolished. It's supposed to be succeeded by the Helmut Kohl Allee (former chancellor that hailed from here) and according to the local city paper they plan to use some of the building materials from the Rathaus Center for the construction of that road.
The Rhein Galerie is also dying, as mentioned in other comments, many habitants go to Mannheim instead.. The Ludwigshafen Hbf was also the most modern in Germany at its beginning:) Thumbs up to your good summary and research:)
Yeah, unless you live closer to the main station, most of us city centre dwellers actually use Ludwigshafen Rhein Mitte (City Centre Station the one just outside Berliner Platz right next to the Rhine river).
I have done an internship for a company and we used to be in Rathaus Center a couple of times as part of the demolition of this whole building). The abandoned offices and especially the shopping mall below gave me Lost places vibes although it’s in the center of a city!
Im from Ludwigshafen and the pools you showed in 4:03 to 4:23 used to be filled with water with ducks swimming around and even sea roses only a couple years ago. Idk why they shut it off though, probably too expensive
Nice video. Although I live close (Heidelberg) to Ludwigshafen, I´ve only passed by it in trains on my way to Kaiserslautern and I always asked myself why the heck they have such a huge train station with barely no train services. Now I know.
The worst station I have seen in Germany is Kölnmesse Deutz. Those 60s/70s glossy, orange-tiled walls. The tunnel connecting platforms is like a sine or cosine graph, and the platforms don't follow a sequential order. Escalators only go down. If you run for an imminent train it's stairs only. It is viscerally unpleasant and very unintuitive. I was the sort of local (Hamburger) tour guide for my international friends for a convention there and I looked as useful an idiot tourist who doesn't understand German. If anyone has a worse station in DE I would be curious to learn about it.
I only went there a few times but in my opinion Ludwigshafen is consisting primarily of BASF and companies which supply it or take care of logistics, the size of the factory site is massive especially for German standards.
Der ganze Leerstand liegt auch an der Strahlkraft Mannheims nur ein paar hundert Meter über dem Rhein. Abgesehen von der besseren Anbindung ist dort (bzw. hier, komme aus MA 😅) eine überregional bekannte Einkaufsstraße, die Planken, der Magnet, der die Leute von Odenwald bis Pfälzerwald lockt, und da fällt Ludwigshafen eben als quasi Durchfahrtsstraße etwas hinten runter. Da hat die Rheingalerie auch nicht viel dran ändern können.
Dankeschön Ich lebe in Lu und bin ein wenig entäuscht von diesen ganzen Aussagen. Ja, Lu hat seine hässlichen Ecken, aber es gibt auch sehr schöne Stellen. Friesenheim zum Beispiel und Rheingönnheim.
@@MsLolle13 welche Aussagen meinst du jetzt konkret? 😅 Hab ja nichts negatives über Lu verloren, nur dass die Stadt halt drunter leidet dass Mannheim direkt nebendran ist.
9€ Ticket also took me there. Having studied urban planning for some time I expected it to be horrible but amusing. It was actually depressing but interesting, but I share your optimism, that there is actual potential, but the fact that the city's majority has been developed post war, just makes it taking too much time until further modernization reaches state of the art urban design.
Yay! Another "Destination" style video. Are you planning on making a full set of "proper" destination videos this year. I sure hope so, they are dearly missed by at least one of you viewers! Also, as you say, I'm not sure Ludwigshafen is bad enough to warrant the title of ugliest city in Germany, but it isn't exactly picturesque either. Hopefully they will be able to improve it when the Rathaus Center is removed, though I don't see the slick new shopping mall as a good direction. It might be nice on its own, but it really doesn't help the rest of the city. Honestly I think improving the main shopping district would've been better, maybe with a nice shopping center/public library/town hall building in place of the Rathaus Center.
Well, for a while, they had three shopping centers within walking distance of the main shopping district. What could possibly go wrong? Whoever had that bright idea was either on drugs or a fan of having a broad choice of Döner joints and cell phone shops...
There is a public library halfway down the road between the Rathaus Center and the Berliner Platz (the tram, bus and train hub at the other end of the mainstreet). I think it was just before the pandemic that they actually brought in rejuvenation planners that came up with a concept on how to pump back life into the city centre area, but shop owners and investors didn't really follow that plan so it flopped.
@@CarinaCoffee Ah, I didn't know about the library. I've never been so I was just shooting blind, so to speak. But thanks for informing me :) Too bad about the rejuvenation plan, but at least it seems there are good intentions from city hall. Maybe next time there wont be a global pandemic to overcome as well. :)
Many years ago I was involved in the Pasadena Sister Cities Committee. Our German sister city is Ludwigshafen. I had the occasion to visit Ludwigshafen on three separate occasions. I wouldn’t characterize the city as ugly but just rather drab. Perhaps I was spoiled by having lived earlier in one of Germany’s loveliest cities, Luebeck. I cannot think of any reason for any tourist wishing to spend any time in Ludwigshafen, but it is relatively close to any number of attractive destinations, including Mannheim, Heidelberg, and Speyer.
Oh, Lübeck is so beautiful! I live only an hour or so away, and it's always nice visiting. However, the loveliness ends at the two river arms surrounding Lübecks old town (roughly - Holstentor for example is beyond them and such a wonderful place). Especially the western part is mostly a rather bland, typical northern German post-war town. There's quite a lot of rivers and canals all over the place though, and a lot of green areas, especially to the south and east. There's also a train station - impressive, old hall - but rather impractical to use. So, all in all, the historic city center island with its Kontorhäuser and the five main churches is truly something else, incredibly beautiful and THE prime example of historic brick architecture, but surrounding it is just a slightly above-average medium-sized town.
@@InterFelix The neighbourhoods directly surrounding the city center largely consist of late nineteenth-early twentieth century buildings, to me that is more than slightly above average, certainly compared to many other German cities. Something should be done about the (non subdivided) windows in most of them though, because they look really out of place in buildings of that age.
@@patrickreuvekamp oh, okay! It's been a while since I've been there, and my experience is limited to the north-west, so I might certainly be wrong. Thank you!
There is another Ludwigshafen on the shore of Lake Constance or Bodensee, also called Bodmann-Ludwigshafen. I have been there lately, it is a pretty little town.
An Urban legend says that the Americans had plans to drop a nuclear bomb on Ludwigshafen, but the Nazis surrendered before the bomb was finished. Looking at Ludwigshafen now, dropping a nuke on it would hardly make it any worse than it already is.
It's not an urban legend: there is good evidence that the Americans actually discussed the possibility of dropping nuclear bombs on Berlin and on Mannheim and Ludwigshafen.
I remember the smell when passing Ludwigshafen, daily on my way to school in Mannheim. There was a huge(50k employees) BASF plant there in the early eighties and some sort of paper mill. Sorry but after even remembering the smell 40 years later, I can't envision it as a beautiful place......ever. Lol
I worked at the _"Thoraxklinik",_ a lung hospital in Heidelberg. One of the best in the world. We even had Arab sheikhs with their entourage as patients. But maaany of our patients were _(former)_ BASF workers with lung cancer. Because they worked with chemicals without any protection back then, for whom you have to work in a jump suit with masks and all possible forms of protection, in a secluded area today. Well, either they didn't knew any better back then or the company just gave a huge f**k. The good thing though is that they often had forms of lung cancer that were better to treat then smokers cancer. Meaning they had a much higher healing chance/rate. While most of the smokers died from their cancer, the BASF workers didn't have a death sentence. Still smoking was prevalent among all patients. I used to have my smoking breaks with people dying from smoking. Well it didn't got me off too. I'm glad I'm living in Heidelberg _(born and raised, not a student)_ because we have the best treatment available for many forms of cancer. Heidelberg is the seat of the _'German Cancer Research Center"._ en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Cancer_Research_Center?wprov=sfla1
@@yannick245 Ich bin Amerikaner, der war im FFM geboren sind. Ich hab Heidelberg gern, sehr schön Stadt Heidelberg ist. Als Jung, habe ich drei Jahre aufgewachsen im Frankenthal ( ganz in der Nähe von Ludwigshafen). Gruße aus Texas.
@@yannick245 I used to work at a hospital myself here in the States. I think people nowadays are just too afraid of the inevitable. Death is the only sure thing in life. Nothing to be afraid of.
Well, there is just a tiny area with pre 1945 buildings opposite the city library, otherwise the area between the two bridges is devoid of any historic sights. Still it is worth mentioning that Ludwigshafen has a nice painting gallery with the Miro wall, better preserved quarters beyond the bridges and with the Friedrich Ebert Halle and the church in Oggersheim indeed even two noticeable landmarks.
Oh now we need a Ludwigshafen vs Gießen video or better yet, one that compares the ugliest places in the Ruhrgebiet and then we get a battle royale video. Too bad TH-cam got rid of the voting feature but we could still all vote in the comments.
I see the similarity to Charleroi too, but Ludwigshafen got a good idea. They only forgot that their city will not gain inhabitants forever especially because of the decline of pure industry. I live in Wuppertal, a very very cramped city and we got some elevated traffic too until the city thought they have to redesign the central station. Now its a - good looking - mess of a station. Wonderful, every bus which departs need two f more minutes to leave the hub. Its a disgusting failure and I dont know why people condone this. Edit: Cos I watched to the end I've to say: "Kunden aus Aschaffenburg, zahlen Hash nen Achter-Kurs" ;D
If you were someone ignorant to Germany geography you'd automatically assume Ludwigshafen was in the former DDR just by looking it at it. Just a shame Halle Neustadt isn't a city in it's own right or else it could have definitely taken the title
@@herrsan For “-hof” I am hearing him pronouncing it “haawwf” where I feel a short “hof” sounds more German, with less foreign accent. But I may be wrong.
Shame you didn't make it to the Prinzregentenstraße on the other side of the Rathaus Centre - that bit didn't get bombed too much and is optically very pretty (even if it has a bad reputation, exaggerated imo)
Mind that there are at least two Ludwigshafen in Germany: Ludwigshafen am Rhein, the one in this video Ludwigshafen am Bodensee which is a small town at the north-west area of Lake Constance between Überlingen and Radolfzell. The big Ludwigshafen/Rhein is a huge industrial town and a centre of the chemical industry. However I think the Wilhelm-Hack-Museum of modern art is often worth a visit. Ludwigshafen is in a quite difficult situation since there are a number of much older and quite prominent towns nearby like Mannheim, Heidelberg, Ladenburg, Schwetzingen and Weinheim. One of the reasons why Ludwigshafen appears to be a bit isolated can be found in its history: for quite some time it was part of an exclave of Bavaria and maybe a bit too far away from Munich to deserve more attention.
In vielen deutschen Städten ist Blockrandbebauung offenbar ein Fremdwort. Die Gebäude stehen irgendwie in der Gegend rum, statt als Häuserblöcke organisiert aufeinander Bezug zu nehmen. In Darmstadt ist mir das bei einem Besuch negativ aufgefallen, es sieht dort einfach furchtbar aus.
I lived in Mannheim for nearly two years and worked in Ludwigshafen. And, yes sir, I will confirm the claim of Ludwigshafen being the ugliest city in the wor...Germany. Well, ok I haven't visited every single city in Germany, so I'm lacking experience legitimacy of announcing it the worst. But I can confirm it is very ugly. And it's once better half Mannheim once was a jewel. But since I moved away in 2015 it continually went worse, especially with people tossing their garbage on the streets and homeless people sleeping in the city center. And I think it would not be unfair to say Mannheim is on the way to beat Ludwigshafen in its bad reputation and ugliness
@@youtubesuchtig1113 na ja, jetzt nicht in der Bauweise. Da ist monnem ja recht schön. Aber eher in der Hinsicht, wie die Umwelt auf die Stadt einwirkt
This reminds me quite a lot of Charleroi here in Belgium. The only differences being that Charleroi is a 19th century industrial city (which grew a lot post-WW2 though), its main station isn't confusing and that the industry is no longer there. But apart from that: a once hustling and bustling city center with loads of small shops filing for bankruptcy after a brand new shopping center opened ? Check. Plans for an extensive metro network that was cancelled and now the very 70's looking poorly lit concrete stations are served by a modest tram network ? Check. A city that has a very high unemployment rate even though it's one of the major cities of the country ? Check.
And where is the ugly part of this city? I didn't see one! There's a city much more uglier than Ludwigshafen - it's Pforzheim. - the more you come to the center of it, the less green and the more grey - once someone said to me "I've never seen so much grey in a city" - though the the gold-/jewellery-industry decreases, they still focus on it - the highest rate of unemployment in Baden-Württemberg, ironically the lowest rate is in the district Enzkreis (the district around Pforzheim) - they complain that there are many shops and even some buildings are empty, but there aren't many parking lots - instead of filling empty shops or buildings, they prefer to build new ones - horrible traffic-chaos - even my cousin from the area of munic complained about it. The worst is when you drive through and it happens that you have red light at every traffic light - on the one you wait for green you can see at the next one that the light there is green and when you get there it's red. For decades they had the excuse that Pforzheim was bombed in the 2. worldwar. Bad excuse - other cities were bombed much more and recovered much better!
The quirk is that they have three UBahn stations without a network. The rolling stock and trains are only regular trams. Sadly, it is not in a good condition, but interesting to see. There was a trend where mayors of smaller cities thought that they need a Ubahn network and they calcaluted with an bigger population that it made sense to propose a network. So they started building maybe three station underground. However, the oil crisis and miscalculation years prior brought to a screetching halt that the other part of the network were left unbuilt or still being used as tram stops.
Iirc the billboards at LU HBF still showed Merkel's 2005 election ads a few years ago. It also doesn't help that the HBF is extremely empty at all times. Really scary place. The (now closed) tram station Rathausplatz takes the cake though, what you don't see in your vid is that it had a faint smell of urine and the floor was sticky. Also the mold-patterned tiled walls. And the hole in which a kiosk used to be, now covered in school children's graffiti. The design of the signs and colourscheme transformed the station into a time travel machine back into the 70s/80s, i have a love/hate relationship with it. BUT all the stigma of "ugliness" keeps the housing costs affordable here even in the city center, so keep em coming :)
On a related note, I'd love to know DB's stats on one-way trips to Wolfsburg vs. round trips. If everyone going there is picking up their new car they don't need a train ticket home.
I guess beauty indeed is in the eye of the beholder. I kind of feared it's going to be my own city (I believe it was actually in the xtra3-list, too).😅 In fact, the concrete-architecture did remind me of my childhood in a way and I actually kind of liked it and didn't feel repulsed by it or like I am seeing the perfect setting for a horror movie/film. Somebody must feel at home there, as well. Though I have to say that our shopping centre does have several entrances/exits. But it's right in the city centre and pedestrian zone, where you just have several options of where to go. Although I think most of the doors just lead to the same street (as our pedestrian zone is in fact one street only) just a few metres apart from each other. (At least?) One of the doors leads to a different street/walkway.
I wondered why this city's name sounded familiar. I was stationed in West Germany and we had to conduct operations once near Manheim. Plus, of course, my knowledge of W.W. II history also probably comes into play for knowing the name. Overall, a good video about this city.
You'll find the ugliest cities usually where the most bombs were dropped in WW2. After the war noone had time to think about nice architecture. We needed houses. Fast. Because of that many cities in the industrial Ruhr area are really, really ugly. They can be charming in their own way, though.
@Rewboss: Wie wär' es mal mit einem Tripp nach Ostbayern: z.B. die Bischofsstädte Regensburg und Passau; Landshut mit dem Turm von St. Martin; oder die Gäubodenmetropole Straubing?
I've lived in Ludwigshafen since 1994. Fortunately, in one of the few nice parts. Downtown LU has gone down the sewer in the last 28 years. All the good shops left long ago. This video is accurate. Ludwigshafen is simply an poor, ugly, industrial zone of Mannheim.
The ugly parts of Mannheim look just as ugly as Ludwigshafen, and Mannheim has just as many ugly parts. The key difference is, that the nice parts of Mannheim are much nicer than Ludwigshafen and there are more of them in Mannheim. Nothing to brag about however.
Ludwishafen has ugly bits, however if you go to Parkinsel, which is a 15min walk from where this video was filmed, it is a beautiful park/island next to the Rhein river!
Du musst dir unbedingt Emmerich am Rhein anschauen. Ja Emmerich hat eine sehr schöne Brücke und die "Rheinpromenade" ist auch schön, aber blendet man das aus, gibt es keine Hässlichere Stadt als Emmerich am Rhein. Alleine die Gegend um den Bahnhof... Hilfe, dagegen sieht Ludwigshafen aus wie ein Paradies. You absolutely have to visit Emmerich am Rhein. Yes, Emmerich has a very beautiful bridge and the "Rheinpromenade" is also nice, but if you ignore that, there is no uglier town than Emmerich am Rhein. The area around the railway station alone... Help, Ludwigshafen looks like a paradise in comparison.
haha, nice idea. actually, just before Covid, I had the idea to visit "the least visited towns in Germany" with my family as a sort of joke with our own tourism habits, as I drew tired of sightseeings. I and my wife visited a couple of unusual small places in Brandenburg and Mecklenburg-Vorpommen for that sake, but once Covid came, we kind missed it. And now, with the 9 EUR ticket I came back with the idea again but haven't still made it :D
One thing that is missing here is that Ludwigshafen is, since 30 years or so, newfound home of a ever growing number of welfare scroungers, locals and also way too much from all around the world, but they keep coming in this city for what so every reason. That means, combined with the worlds most generous social transfer system, it costs the working society a lot of money, which lack for investment in the city itself. And since the government makes no try to stop this growth, the city becomes poorer and poorer.
I love post apocalyptic sceneries in summer where the weeds grow and where no noises are. It’s so relaxing to stroll around there with a bottle of beer and have no one around. - I’m a great fan of British Brutality btw.
I can only recommend Baden-Baden. Its a lovely small city in the south near the French Border. It was declared UNESCO World Heritage Cite last year. Unlike Ludwigshafen, it was almost not affected at all during the second world war. This most certainly shows as the architecture in the city center is absolutely mesmerizing, the cuisine is amazing ( several Michelin restaurants) and the parcs and nature surrounding the city outstanding.
Being born and raised there, a lot of your criteria apply to Leverkusen as well, at least as far as the city centre goes. The more you move away from the Rhine towards the east, the prettier it becomes, though.
I came across that place in the first aerial shot every time I had an exam at the Chamber of Industry and Commerce which is located just behind the pink high rise building. 😅
In the 90s the City of Völklingen near the French border was awarded as the "ugliest German City"....but today there are a couple of cities you can consider to be the ugliest ones, such as Neumünster, Mönchengladbach, Fürth, Wuppertal, Offenbach, Bremerhaven, Salzgitter, Eisenhüttenstadt....and of course Ludwigshafen.
about huge plazas, how does it come that some plazas are a burden to the pedestrian and other plazas are place for social interactions, parties hanging out and so on. in Freiburg we have this "platz der alten synagoge" which is on first glance a wide stone plaza, but unless you visit it very early in the morning its basically overfilled with people doing nothing but sitting on the ground, wich is made of stone and most likely very hot or very cold depending on the season
Oh, we have such sights to see: the Berliner Platz hole, the abandoned Rathaus Center, the nonexistent bridge (nobody knows how to pay for a new one), you forgot the derelict Eberthalle (again, nobody knows how to finance the badly needed renovation), and so on
As someone from Hannover im so happy that Ludwigshafen exists
(Just to be clear, i love Hannover but it has a horrible reputation)
I looked at the thumbnail and was really worried....
But in all honesty, I do really like Hanover and I think most of the hate is really undeserved. There are so many nice places in Hannover and actually very few ugly ones. Maybe the centre of the city but most of the ugly brutalist buildings were renovated even there.
Shame on you. Hannover has become a pretty, green city with a high quality of life. Ein “Schäm dich” aus der Oststadt.
I lived in Hannover for many years until I had to leave for working in western parts of Germany. I lived in Oststadt part. All little shops are in walking distance, the city center too, if you need it, I was able to use the UBahn to the university, if the weather was fine I used the bicycle a lot, the Eilenriede forest is a great and large area for biking, I owned a whole year ticket for the zoological garden, a nice place to relax when you're stressed. Last but not least, my high school was located at the banks of the Maschsee lake. For some time of the year the city becomes known worldwide when it hosts the large industrial and computer fairs. I was very happy there. And I wonder why many people don't like the city.
And I bet, there are some nice places in Ludwigshafen too. At least it's not far from Mannheim and from the Weinstraße on the other side with its old wine villages.
It‘s Not Bad at all. It just has a Bad reputation and it is maybe Not that exciting compared to other german Cities that size
@@davinnicode
Not that exciting ... perhaps ... depends on what's exciting for individuals ... but a good place for relaxing and sports activities 🖐😉
Pointing out all the major bad planning decisions made in Ludwigshafen over the decades would probably require several videos, but this is a nice summary. One point to add may be that those decions not only resulted in a city with many planning issues, but also in significant amounts of debt making it hard to correct past mistakes.
Well, that's only half the story, though. Given that Ludwigshafen is the home of the world's largest contiguous chemical plant, any notion those decisions alone resulted in that debt is a whitewash of the ability to industry to minimize their taxable revenue.
Which is why it's entirely ludicrous that the BASF complains about the looming traffic disaster. If they'd pay a fair share of taxes and not distribute their earning strategically over sundry subsidiaries, Ludwigshafen would have way more financial leeway.
@@ohauss Each community has to plan with the taxes it actually gets and not with the taxes it wishes it could get. In Ludwigshafen there have been decades of mismanagement that not only led to the current financial woes but also to the traffic desaster. The elevated roads Ludwigshafen struggles with actually are Bundestraßen, i.e. under normal circumstances the federal government would pay for these. But unfortunately the roads weren't good enough when they were on the ground, so Ludwigshafen decided to elevate them thereby taking over the responsibility for the elevated segments.
Unfortunately the city was financially unable to actually maintain those roads properly, so they started to decay until we got to the desastrous situation we have now which ties in nicely with the next example. To get one of those roads back to ground level Ludwigshafen needs to flatten the Rathaus center which it built in the late 70s, then sold to ECE in the early 80s while renting the tower containing the city hall from ECE and now had to buy back from ECE for a significant amount of money just to destroy it which is expensive as well.
Long story short, the city has a history of wasting huge amounts of money, another one of those projects - the partially constructed and now largely abandoned subway system - was even mentioned in the video.
Haha you'd think it's America or something, god forbid
@@ohauss Ludwigshafen is in the top 40´s of tax income in Germany. They had more in the past, but obvioulsy did not spent it in a sufficient way. But even today, they still have more than the mayority of other german cities.
@@Raider_MXD "The elevated roads Ludwigshafen struggles with actually are Bundestraßen, i.e. under normal circumstances the federal government would pay for these. But unfortunately the roads weren't good enough when they were on the ground, so Ludwigshafen decided to elevate them thereby taking over the responsibility for the elevated segments. "
That is plain and simply incorrect. For Bundesstraßen going straight through a city, (so-called "Ortsdurchfahrten"), the municipal authorities are responsible for the construction and maintenance even of Bundesstraßen.
§5(2) Bundesfernstraßengesetz: "(2) 1Die Gemeinden mit mehr als 80 000 Einwohnern sind Träger der Straßenbaulast für die Ortsdurchfahrten im Zuge von Bundesstraßen."
And BASF are the ones wailing most loudly when there's a problem with the streets...
I love how here in Heidelberg, which is like 15 km away from Mannheim, we call Mannheim the ugly city, but we also all forget that Ludwigshafen even exists.
Mannheim really is ugly, especially compared to beautiful Heidelberg
The Mannheimer Altstadt and town centre is rather pretty - the rest is best not mentioned.
Dafür boxen wir Ludwigshafener euch die Zähne aus
@@AlphaKurdefühl dich nicht krass
Germany: oh look at this ugly city, it's so car-centric and designed inconveniently.
USA: hold my beer
omg exactly 😂 that elevated highway junction from hell reminded me of home 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸
Germany: You call that beer??
As a Bulgarian, this city has very strong “Eastern European” vibes, albeit it in the Western part of Germany. If you pause at 4:41, you’ll even see a Bulgarian “Баничарница” and hot meals store!
What does Banicharnica mean? Is it just a Bulgarian bakery or is it the Bulgarian term for an Imbiss/Hole-in-the-wall restaurant?
Basically, Ludwigshafen was also always a city for workers so not far from the idea of the Eastern Bloc. Those who had the money moved away, to Mannheim across the Rhine or to the surrounding area. The factory owners or managers never lived in Ludwigshafen.
Yeah it's a great bulgarian bakery in the city centre. When I went to school there I was used to buy a Banichka at least every week. Great bakery with very low prices^^
Really? Looks a lot like cities I've seen in the US
Funny seeing another Bulgarian on a Rewboss video. Поздрави!
It looks eerily similar to Charleroi in Belgium : it is also a young industrial city with some elevated highways in the middle of the city. It has an unfinished metro used by trams and shopping streets that are deserted because of a modern mall. The only big difference is that it's way poorer. It is still slowly recovering from the industrial decline.
The post world war economical rise rebuilt phenomenon - same thing with Frankfurt. It was completely devastated to ground zero and instead of trying to build it up the way it had used to be it was completely "remastered" opening the gates to the new age of business. It's a shame because this cities had their own character and charme all being lost in favour to the economy
You can't compare Frankfurt to Charleroi or Ludwigshafen 😅
I like those old German towns like Bamberg or Heidelberg, but Frankfurt is a great city in its way, too.
God I hope it's not too much like Charleroi. I pity whoever has to suffer in the depths of a Charleroi-like hell
Charleroi's industry were coal mines and iron works which disappeared decades ago. That's an excuse. But the BASF is still going strong and SHOULD make the city wealthy. Apparently the city council never managed things well. Alone the idea to build another shopping center, after the first one failed. What did they think?
@@ppd3bw The city council isn't the only issue. Yes, BASF SHOULD make the city wealthy. But like many big companies, BASF likes to distribute its revenue over sundry subsidiaries, so that large parts of their profit are achieved in low-tax countries.
Ludwigshafen is like one of those so-bad-it's-good-movies. It's so incredibly ugly and ill-designed that the uglyness transforms into a bizarrely pleasing aesthetic. Some places feel like a portal into an alternate reality in which Ludwigshafen outranked even Frankfurt but was later partially destroyed, probably due to some chemical emergency at BASF. This is best experienced by taking tram 6 from Mannheim. After crossing the river you enter this tunnel and pass through a station that looks like a real metro station, except something about it is slightly odd. As though it's not quite at the right scale but you can't describe what it is that feels wrong about it. Then the tram carries on, turns an incredibly tight curve and is suddenly wizzed back into reality, running at street level right though a generic city street, back in reality again. I kind of adore it.
Gimme jo weed bro
@F T
Ach ja, das gute alte Rathaus Center..
Geplant war ursprünglich dass die Straßenbahn unterirdisch unter der Bismarckstraße verläuft und erst am Berliner Platz wieder hoch kommt.
Viele tolle Ideen, Visionen und Intentionen aber am Ende hat leider immer das Geld oder der Wille gefehlt die Sachen zu Ende zu führen…
Words of poetry 🥹🥰
As someone who grew up in Lu I can say without a shadow of a doubt that I rly didn't expect to ever see english language content about that shithole. The shopping street btw isn't deserted because of the shopping mall right next to it, which itself is quite desolate and in decay, it is deserted because of Mannheim's Planken shopping street which is where everyone goes these days. Most people from Lu never really do anything in Lu itself, it's a glorified suburb. If you want to do anything from partying to going out to eat you do it in Mannheim, which in itself isn't the best city either but it's the best we got. It has gotten so bad that I and most of the people I grew up with never say we are from Ludwigshafen when someone asks, we all just say Mannheim.
PREACH
I disagree with you. Many people do things here. Also partying and stuff like that. The shopping mall is also pretty full but has not as many shops as cities like Karlsruhe which is pretty sad
If you know your town, you'll always know where you can go. And a beer was always cheaper here than in Monnem.
Well, if you wanna Party you can always visit the Loft or the Musikpark, Well you can shoot yourself to safe time and nerves but theoretically 🤷😅
I grew up in Schonau in early 70's and then moved to the United States. I still have family there and they tell me it's not nice as I remember growing up. Things change over time.
70s architecture, a dilapidated and badly designed railway station, half-finished Stadtbahn… that's unironically sounds to me like a must-see. Thank you for recommending, especially that I'll be relatively nearby in July so now there is a plan
It´s a trash city. Source: I live here lmao
Welcome
I was in Ludwigshafen some time ago and was fascinated by all these places that were seemingly stuck in time. Sadly many iconic buildings were or will be demolished, such as the Rathaus center. I enjoyed riding their U-Straßenbahn sections (or rather what's left of it) and their tram network in general. The station below the rathaus center will probably be demolished together with the building itself. Below the active platforms there are two dead ones. They belonged to the tram tunnel that closed in 2008. Prior to this closure, only one weekday, rush hour only line ran there. The U-Strab station HBF is a very characterful place that gives you a ride back to the 70s and is a silent reminder of the very ambitious (and insane) construction plans Ludwigshafen had. For fans of underground structures a place to go.
I absolutely adore the U-Strab and hate the thought of it being demolished alongside the Rathaus Center. Both are important landmarks and should function as memorial sites to warn future generations about the dangers of bad urban planning. Well, at least we still have the Hauptbahnhof to enjoy.
Especially because we want to encourage more transit use!
They should just be modernised and more of the old ones opened!!!
@@ft4709 yea no thx people actually live their and don´t want to be some kind of museum
@@ludwig4851 Applying that same logic we’d have to demolish the palace of versailles. Or even the newly reconstructed Berlin Palace. Ok, to be fair the latter one I‘d be on board with.
@Charly @F T
Echt schade dass sie das Rathaus Center abreißen.
Ganz klar Kulturgut und schützenswert.
Das mit der 2008 geschossenen Station in der C Ebene unter dem Rathaus Center habe ich kürzlich erst erfahren, obwohl ich hier seit 20 Jahren lebe.
Die Station am Danziger Platz die teil der Linie war, ist ja gleichzeitig geschlossen worden.
Ha, you did my hometown! I think your judgement is fair, but let me add that the inner city and the "Rathaus Center" used to be bustling in the 80s, and even the main station was doing o.k. Some of Ludwigshafen's most "iconic" and beloved (by me and the locals) buildings from the 50's and 60's were demolished in the last decade.
When I lived there in the 1970s and 80s, Ludwigshafen was the richest city in Germany thanks to BASF, which meant that there were very well funded schools, lots of swimming pools, an ice rink and all kinds of municipal sports facilities in great repair, as well as good museums, a theatre, nice parks and so on. The hinterland is quite nice, so many people from Ludwigshafen spend their weekends walking in the Pfälzer Wald or in the winyards around the Weinstraße. (One of the Ludwigshafen tram lines ends in Bad Dürkheim an der Weinstraße, home of the world's largest wine cask and the world's larges Weinfest.)
Of course it always was an "ugly" factory town, and the elevated highways made commuting easy, so the higher-ups in the BASF tended to move to the surrounding towns and villages, taking their taxes with them, which is probably the reason for the city's (nowadays) empty coffers despite the high GDP. It seems large companies themselves don't pay a lot of tax these days, and BASF has moved many of its blue collar jobs abroad. (Supposedly, they are still paying their remaining workers relatively well, compared to other countries and German regions, but globalisation is what it is).
Things is, many of remaining blue collar workers don't live in Ludwigshafen either.
It's pretty sad to see how Ludwigshafen has sort of accepted its fate and now keeps demolishing even its most prolific buildings. The Rathaus, albeit not representative of our current taste in architecture, was a teriffic structure that functioned as a symbol of prosperity. It's a city almost entirely shaped by the 1960s and 70s, which is rare to that extent, yet it totally disowes that heritage.
@@ft4709 Well, the Rathaus couldn't really be saved as far as what I gathered from the news. Especially the tower.
They even have to build the tower back level by level, same way they once build it, like removing all windows level by level and starting at like the 8th storey they're gonna use those small demolition trucks that look like dino jaws to pick away at the structure.
Ich könnte da nun viel erzählen, habe mal an der UNi eine Arbeit über die Geschichte der Wohnbebauung der Stadt geschrieben. Eins muss man eben sagen, es gibt wegen der Lage keine wirklich hochwertigen Viertel, weil alle Besserverdiener einfach nach Mannheim gezogen sind. Daher hatte Ludwigshafen schon immer einen eher ärmlichen Charakter, auch wenn man in den 70er Jahre viel Geld investiert hat, das hat man in der DDR auch und ähnlich sieht es nun hier aus. Was Rewboss nicht gesehen hat, sind die Arbeitersiedlungen, die die BASF in den letzten 150 Jahre gebaut hat. Das ist wirklich etwas Besonderes, die BASF hat sogar ein ganzes Dorf mit heute 10 000 Menschen erbaut das ist schon was Einzigartiges und zeigt, wie eng die Stadt mit dieser einzigen Firma verknüpft ist.
I was stationed in Worms; lived on the "economy" in Abenheim. For some reason, I always loved Weinheim. I thought it the perfect place. I also loved Ludwigshafen. To tell the truth, there wasn't a part of Germany I didn't like.
I went to vocational school in Ludwigshafen once. Our teacher said that one of the reasons LU is so ugly and poor is because the BASF chose to pay taxes at another location of theirs. LU used to be wealthy in the 70s, but then a new law came allowing companies to choose in which city they want to pay taxes in. (ofc they need a branch there)
Honestly apart from the ugly cement buildings and the mostly dead city centre the real problem here is the humidity. When I moved to Ludwigshafen I didn't know that I was moving to the most humid part of Germany.
Ludwigshafen does have some nice areas, like along the Rhine, the park island and the old buildings in the Southern district of the city that weren't bombed during WWII.
The greatest advantage is living in a hotpot of ethnicities, rent is cheaper than in the surrounding areas and it's so well connected with public transport. You can go to the Pfälzer Wald and wine country by train in under 30 minutes, you jump onto a tram and you're at the Neckar River in 10-15 minutes and Mannheim just over the river has access to all the long distance trains and the regional express trains.
You get a lot of living value for a lower price in such a massive metropolitan area. Those are definitely the positive parts of living here
What really struck me coming from the cold north of Germany is how insanely hot it was all the time, warm, rainy winters, brutal, borderline mediterrean summers. It's hard to overstate how noticable the Rhine river's microclimate is in that part of Germany. Loved it though, and my plants loved it more
@@ladyvader3173 Yeah it's because that part of the Rhine Valley is known as the "Rhein-Neckar-Senke", it's a geological depression/dip where the area around the river is very flat and the surrounding topography is higher. Along that part of the Rhine that's the case, plus you have the Neckar river through Mannheim flowing into it too, so you have a flat area of two big cities with a combined population of 600 thousand people. City centres already trap a lot of heat in the summer and then you add the river and the topography to it and you get those horrible summers and winters with hardly any snow. I could personally live with this way better if it wasn't for the humidity. It makes it so much worse.
A "hotpot" of ethnicities is not an advantage at all.
BASF in Oppau and Ludwigshafen is all there is, really. That and the Rheingallery.
As someone from that area one of the most important things as to why it looks so deserted is this: Why go to Ludwigshafen if Heidelberg is not even 30 minutes away? The ugliest city being not even 20 kilometers away from the most beautiful city isn't a coincidence.
True! hahah
Dont forget Mannheim
Hallo Andrew,
ich ergänze hier einfach mal ein bisschen ... leider diesmal in Deutsch
Die Bismarkstraße (Fußgängerzone) war schon vor der Pandemie und meinem Umzug im Jahr 2007 eigentlich nichts viel mehr als 1 Euro Shops und Bäcker.
Die Straße ging mit dem Niedergang der deutschen Kaufhäuser mehr und mehr den "Bach runter".
Im Rathaus Center hattest du vielfältige Auswahl, dazu dann noch den Kaufhof. Auf halber Strecke Richtung Berliner Platz war dann Horten (an der Querstraße rechts) und am Berliner Platz in der "Tortenschachtel" Kaufhalle.
Horten wurde zum Kaufhof und schloß irgendwann ganz ... Kaufhalle und die Tortenschachtel war ein Kapitel für sich (inzwischen nach jahrelangem Leerstand abgerissen ... und Neuplanung schon längst überfällig - der Investor war glaub ich zwischendrin sogar insolvent)
Das Shopping-Center "Walzmühle" ist dann im Anschuss sowas von gefloppt (inklusive dem Multiplex-Kinos was sogar einige Säle mindestens zeitweise ungenutzt lies)
Rathaus-Center und RheinGalerie sollten ursprünglich mal miteinander verbunden werden ... ist aber auch gescheitert ... deswegen auch wohl nur der südliche Eingang ... der nördliche wäre dann mit der Verbindung zum Rathaus gekommen.
Spätestens an dem Punkt der Einführung der "Netzfunktion" für Jeden mit dem Rhein-Neckar-Ticket bist du spätestens dann wenn du in mehrere Läden wolltest und evtl. sogar was gesucht hast sowieso nach Manneim mit der Straßenbahn. Das hat dann auch nochmal zu einigen Schließungen in der Ludwigshafener Innenstadt geführt.
Das Hochstraßendebakel hätte übrigens noch größer ausfallen können, den die "Süd" (die abgerissene Hochstraße) hätte eigentlich während des Abrisses der "Nord" die Umleitung machen sollen ... jetzt betet die halbe Region, dass es die Nord noch solange mitmacht, bis die Süd wieder in Funktion ist ... sollte die Nord früher schlapp machen wäre das mehr als nur ein worsed case ... das währe der verkerliche Zusammenbruch, da dan zwischen Mannheim und Ludwigshafen neben der Autobahnbrücke A6 und der Rheinfähre in Altrip keine Rheinquerung ohne Verkehrshindernisse angefahren werden könnte und die A650 endgültig im Niemandsland endet (eigentlich geht die über die Süd und die Adenauer-Brücke direkt nach Mannheim und dort wahlweise in Richtung Stadt oder über Fahrlach runter zur A656 und zur A5
Joke's on you - der Fahrlachtunnel ist auch zu und wird nach neuestem Stand erst 2023 wieder geöffnet...
Oh je, ich meine ich konnte damals, als ich in Ludwigshafen gearbeitet habe, was direkt an der Rheingallerie war also am hinteren Ende, schon erkennen, wie es um die Stadt beschert sein muss. Aber, dass es so schlimm ist, hätte ich echt nicht gedacht. Falls du in Ludwigshafen wohnst, viel Glück, dass ihr es doch noch packt und wieder eine funktionierende Struktur aufbauen könnt. Die Pandemie muss der Stadt ja den endgültigen Todesstoß gegeben haben, oder?
@@ohauss Tja - und der Fahrlach Tunnel an sich ist genau genommen ja auch nur eine Notlösung, denn ursprünglich war eigentlich geplant die A65 bis zum Anschluß an die B38a zu führen ...
Leider haben da zu viele "Grüne" und NIMBY´s erfolgreich Terror gemacht, um das zu verhindern. Somit gibt es für den Schwerverkehr keine alternative Straßenverbindung über den Rhein im Süden von Mannheim und Ludwigshafen. Die Rheinfähre Altrip ist keine Alternative - weder von der Kapazität, noch von der Anbindung her.
Durch den Ausfall des Fahrlachtunnels herrscht vor Allem in Mannheim täglich Alarm ...
Ich muß fast jeden Tag mit dem Lkw mindestens einmal - oft auch mehrfach da durch, umpf ...
Warum sich hier überhaupt jemand zum pendeln das Auto gibt werde ich wohl nie verstehen. Klar wenn man in nem Kaff wohnt dann ist das was anders, aber so viele Stadtteile und Vororte in der Metropolregion sind mit Bus, Straßenbahn und Zug verbunden, bevor ich mir die Rush Hour mit dem Auto gebe fahr ich lieber 100 mal mit der Straßenbahn und co.
Im Gegensatz zu den Anbindungen die ich im Darmstädter Schlafstadtgürtel hatte wo ich aufgewachsen bin, ist die Metropolregion was das angeht voll der Luxus.
Mich hat mal ne Kommilitonin morgens mit dem Auto mit nach Heidelberg zur Uni genommen. Und unsere Vorlesung war erst um 10, aber das war das reinste Verkehrschaos zwischen Lu und HD und da war die Südliche Hochstraße noch offen. Dagegen sind die 23 Minuten mim Zug plus 10 Minuten Bus oder Straßenbahnfahrt geradezu erholsam gewesen.
@@CarinaCoffee ich setz mich in keinen zug solange die maulwindelpflicht gilt
Dear Andrew,
I'm pleasantly surprised how fair and accurate your video was regarding the city center. But the city center is not the whole city. All but one part of the city used to be independent villages and even a town until they were incorporated into the city (and most of them against the will of the people during the Nazi regime). There are remnants of a baroque residence and a pilgrimage church in the former town of Oggersheim.
To be fair, DB's planning of the main train station was grandios but it worked fine with TEE and Intercity trains once every hour into all directions until the ICE arrived on the stage. ICE trains are longer than ICs and TEEs used to be - too long for Ludwigshafen's train station - and because of the triangle rails they couldn't extend the platforms. So DB just kicked Ludwigshafen out of the network. This was not the city's fault.
The elevated motorways are the city's fault. In the 1950s they fell into the modernist, car-friendly trap. And the city was rich, very rich at that time. So they decided to plan and construct them on their own. They didn't think about maintanance and they didn't predict the poor finances. The newer, northern one has been in disrepair for 20ish years, the older, southern one was in pretty good shape until they rerouted all heavy vehicles in order to save the northern from total collapse before the scheduled demolishing in a few years. But at a routine check they discovered very severe damage and had to close it.
Ludwigshafen as a city has two problems. 1. Mannheim is a better shopping destination. You can find any shop you can find in Ludwigshafen and more. The big chains (e.g. Galeria and C&A) had shops in Mannheim with double the size of their Ludwigshafen counterparts. Some chains (e.g. Karstadt) never came to Ludwigshafen. Before the Rathaus Center was closed Bismarckstraße was very busy but since then the shoppers moved one street over to Ludwigsstraße and one further to Rheingalerie - Mall. 2. Ludwigshafen provides many services to the surrounding towns and villages (museums, theater, courthouse, swimming-pools, schools [about half of the students in Gymnasiums and Realschulen do not live in Ludwigshafen]) and don't get any money from the towns and villages. Those are more attractive to people with higher income, so most of the money from income tax of people working in the city goes to the surrounding villages. In the city there live unproportinally high numbers of longtime unemployed people or people with low income, which strains the city's finances even further.
On another note: Ludwigshafen is a very green city with many parks. It is part of Germany's largest tram-net from Bad Dürkheim in the west via Ludwigshafen and Mannheim to Weinheim and Heidelberg in the east. Rent is far cheaper than in Mannheim. All in all Ludwigshafen is a very liveable city. Weinstraße with dozens of wine-villages, hundreds of vineries, and a Weinfest somewhere every weekend is but half an hour away. And beyond Weinstraße lies Pfälzerwald, Germany's largest forest, Speyer with its medieval city center and the largest romanesque church north of the alps is close by.
I was born and raised there and only because of my husband I moved to a village just outside the city limits. I could not imagine to live elsewhere.
CU twinmama
Yeah Andrew, the mainstreet used to be marginally more bustling like 10 years ago when I moved here, but I wouldn't say it was so much the pandemic or even the Rhein Gallerie that sucked the live out of it.
Once the Rhein Gallerie opened some shops moved there, but it was already dying before that. What really seemed to give it the last nail into the coffin was when it became clear that the Rathaus Center was going to get demolished.
Even with the Rhein Gallerie there still were some shops in the Rathaus Center which gave people reason to go to that part of the city centre (the train, bus and tram hub Berliner Platz is at the other end of it). Slowly surrounding shops closed and then all the shops in the Rathaus Centre.
The center used be way more lively in the past, but over time the people from the surrounding areas in Rheinland-Pfalz abandoned Ludwigshafen and instead used the convenient elevated roads of Ludwigshafen to bypass the city and drive to Mannheim for their shopping trips.
I grew up in Ludwigshafen and never questioned the aesthetics back then, I even like(d) the 70s concrete stuff. Since moving out I started to have reference and it is in fact not the most beautiful place in Germany. Thanks for being so sachlich with it!
Ludwigshafen's train station is so confusing that I once missed my connection simply due to the fact that I could not find the right platform in time.
I was born in Ludwigshafen in 1971 and left 1979 to Greece where my parents came from. But i am nostalgic about Ludwigshafen even I lived there only 8 years. I remember it's parks and the elementary school i was going.
To be fair, sacrificing walkability and public transport to the 20--Century horrors of automobile traffic has lead to a general decline, in almost every city and town, everywhere.
So is Ludwigshafen the ugliest city in Germany?
Short answer: Yes.
Long answer: Yeeeeees.
I have worked in Ludwigshafen for nearly forty years, and while I agree that it is not a choice spot to live, and that city planning has been abominable, If you came again, I could show you its positive features...while it's true that most of the city center was bombed out in the war, the areas just north and south of the center, have much of the same Gründerzeit architecture that is typical for most German cities, and within city limits, there are surprisingly many green and agricultural surfaces...throughout the city beautiful large plane trees (Platanen) and fragrant rosebushes in the oddest places. It's a city actually best explored by bicycle rather than either on foot or by car....
Ludwigshafen, have you been to Pirmasens?
There was another area, The train ride from Saarbrücken to Trier. I’m not sure which village this is attached to. There’s a very large run-down area; quite sad. I grew up in a bad area near Chicago, I was surprised to see such conditions in Germany.
Völklingen
Oh dear… I used to live in Mannheim and comfort myself by comparison to Ludwigshafen… I see you life in Ascherbersch?! I love that area. I have spent a lot of time in Klingenberg. I’m a Brit, too, btw. Nice to hear your humour throughout the video.
He actually lives in a small town in the Spessart. Aschaffenburg is just the closest city.
@@ohauss ah, in the description it said Aschaffenberg, I haven’t seen many of his videos, so I didn’t catch that.
Also you can trace a lot of inner city decay to the absolutely idiotic Rheingalerie mall. A lot of the shops in there were part of the Fußgängerzone. which now has become a dire view. What's even stupider is that on each end of the Fußgängerzone there already were malls. Which now both also decay. That is a lot to fix for the new local governance. Every decision since the 1970s seems to have been the worst one.
As someone who grew up in Ludwigshafen, I have to say that the video is very well researched and summarized. The problem analysis is also very precise. Nevertheless, I can recommend everyone to visit here, the city is far from pretty but anything but boring.
This video inexplicably (but luckily for you of) was in my recommended list and as I'm from Mannheim of course I had to give it a watch. As neighboring cities they unsurprisingly have kind of a rivaling socio-economic status (i.e. we mutually make jokes at the expense of each other) and the feudal system here in Germany only adds to the possibilities of satirical remarks. I think your view of the city represents the impression a casual visitor may get very well and you nicely shine a light on different aspects of a city that not necessarily deserves the title as Germany's ugliest city. As a citizen of Mannheim, to me Ludwigshafen feels like a little adoptive brother that, while it wasn't loved as much as Mannheim in the past, has a special kind of almost quirky charm and thus deserves a place in my heart.
If you're still in the vicinity, you might want to check out the "Blaue Adria" (Blue Adria) in Altrip - a beautiful cluster of lakes amidst a sanctuary that was once a Rhine meander where swimming is free in some parts (nudism is exercised in the headland of the Adriaweiher if you're a devotee like me).
I like the style of this video and wish you all the best for the future! :)
Small point of information regarding the "how to get there": If you're watching this in Summer 2022, the main tram station in front of Mannheim Hbf is closed for remodeling. There is a tram station at the back entrance called Hauptbahnhof Süd, but it's probably easier to just take the S-Bahn to Ludwigshafen until the construction work is done.
As a fan of Bald and Bankrupt, you should absolutely do more of this! Show the decaying and grittier side of Germany, interspersed with the beautiful towns. Great analysis of the urban planning and how we got here. Rename your channel to 'Ponytailed and Solvent'.
Compared to many awful places in the U.S., Ludwigshafen doesn't look half bad! (I'm American.)
Yeah, anyone calling that the worst train station in the world hasn't seen the typical American suburban rail station where if you're lucky there's a few blocks of urban walkability at the other end of a 5000-space surface parking lot from the platform.
Lol right, looks like a fairly average US metro area. If any Europeans want to see truly ugly come on over we'll be happy to show you.
@@nlpnt Can you give an example for me to look up? Never been to the US; but I'd be curious how it stacks up. The extent of my knowledge is basically: "Chicago is bad."
Chicago has some beautiful places. Look at Detroit or any mid-size midwestern city.
@@DGARedRaven Stockton, CA. Really, any of the cities in California's central valley.
When I lived in Mannheim for a view years I worked in Ludwigshafen. And man was it ugly. It was exceptionally off-putting compared to what I had seen before or after. Personally I think if most buildings look like concrete cubes placed next to a chemical factory, chances are you won't fall in love with your landscape
As someone from Mannheim, I see Ludwigshafen not really as a city, but more like a district around the huge BASF plant, which is the size of like 3 normal sized districts.
One thing about Ludwigshafen is that the more you get out of the city Centre, the more beautiful it looks. The old BASF workers homes at the Feierabendhaus is a good example for that. Gartenstadt looks beautiful too. One bad thing I have to talk about is the crime rate tho. Knife attacks and muggings are happening daily. Places like the Berliner Platz are no go areas after 9pm
I've recently visited the city for the first time with a colleague as part of an introduction meeting with city officials.
We knew about the bad reputation of the city so we weren't really surprised about the city's landscape as we drove over the elevated highway. But it was still bad to look at.
Now interestingly enough the meeting we had was held at the replacement building for the city hall that's about to be demolished.
The replacement building itself was really old, roughly from the 70s and kinda makeshift in the interior. The outside facade also had many holes in it, which was weird since the facade was made from stone slabs.
The city officials also openly said that the city is broke, money wise, and apparently has a bit of a Nazi problem.
Also interesting to note, while there is this new shopping mall just on the river bed, there is also another one I had to walk through on my way to the meeting, it's directly next to the inner city and the 'Mitte' railway station but despite its size and location only had like two stores open, the rest being abandoned.
When the shopping mall Walzmühle at the Mitte railway station was built the city already had two malls - Rathauscenter and Bismarck-Zentrum - that struggled to attract shops, so adding a third one was a odd decision. Walzmühle was half empty for most of its existence and the the final nail in its coffin was the construction of the Rheingalerie.
The Walzmühle that's like a whole chapter in and of itself.
When I moved here over 10 years ago there was still at least half the mall's worth of shops.
They used to have a big real Supermarkt in there, but as far as I heard the management company wanted too high a rent so the supermarket just let their contract run out and closed up shop in that location.
During the pandemic they turned it into our vaccination centre. When getting ny jabs it was super odd to sit next to where I used to go up the escalators while doing the shopping.
If this trip of yours was recently the replacement building you were in was probably down by the Berliner Platz? That used to be a Sparkasse building.
@@CarinaCoffee the office was on the Bismarck Straße near the Mitte station, but it wouldn't surprise me if they had to split the different city departments between different buildings
@@crazyjack3653 The former Sparkasse building that now houses a big part of the city council is next to the Berliner Platz tram station. If you walk from the Mitte train station towards the Berliner Platz it's the building right behind the tram stop. In the background it meets with a high-rise building called "Moschhochhaus" which has a neon sign for the Rheinpfalz Zeitung on it.
If it is the old Sparkasse building I wouldn't be surprised about the not ideal interior reno, I think it was within 6 to 12 months after I noticed them renovating it that the city council moved in. And well, they're only supposed to be there for a few years.
@@Raider_MXD jeder bürgermeister musste halt seim amdemkem himterlassem. ludwig die ganze infrastruktur, schulze seine waltmühle und die lohse. lohse CDU und van vliet SPD haben nochmals dazu beigetragen.
The 1960s/1970s architecture has indeed aged badly - but one could have guessed that concrete surfaces don't get prettier with age.
I live in Marl in the northern Ruhr area and we have a unanimous council decision to demolish and rebuild the ugly and dilapidated town hall from that period. However, the heritage agency has thrown a spanner in the works - in our case, the whole thing now has to be extensively renovated in accordance with the heritage requirements at three times the cost in twice the time it would have taken to demolish and rebuild.
It will cost more than 150 million and the city has no money - that's why, for example, the urgently needed new construction of a primary school is delayed
As an American I can't see what all the fuss is about. It looks boring, sure, and uninspired. But...well, there's a much lower mark to shoot for.
There are soooo many beautiful places in Ludwigshafen. I grew up there and I loved my childhood and teenage years in Friesenheim with its big Ebertpark and many swimming lakes. After school, I would take my bike to the Maudacher Bruch for a little workout. Everything is easy to reach via bike. Indeed was it bombed during the world war and my grandpa died on the last day of the war due to a bomb smashing into the BASF. Also, my dad's family home was bombed to the ground. When I grew up we owned a huge "Schrebergarten" near the BASF. (Garden with veggies, herbs, fruits, and flowers). I never perceived Ludwigshafen as ugly as a kid. Attending the Geschwister Scholl Gymnasium I would go to the Parkinsel for my weekly electric organ lesson and I loved the surroundings. If you know the hidden beauty of Ludwigshafen and the lovely bike tracks through the gardens and fields, Ludwigshafen does not appear so ugly at all. I also remember the times in summer when some of the big parks would be lit up with beautiful colored lights and the many times during the year, somewhere would be a "Kerwe". In winter we would take our sled into the parks for a little kids' snow time. It was always something on in Ludwigshafen, every season something different. Our childhood was definitely amazing there.
There are parts that look quite normal or even good (Rheinpromenade, BASF Business Services building, Berliner Platz), but rest of the city is just dominated by the modernism in a worst sense. There is a lot of that in every big city, but here there is almost no alternative.
And this absurdly gigantic viaduct through the heart of the city... just putting that underground would help a lot. But now it is definitely not easy to do.
When elected as the ugliest city in Germany, I was wondering if Wolfsburg, Pforzheim and Peine just lost the competition since Ludwigshafen is bigger. But I can fully approve the verdict. The best view one can have there is to the opposite side of river Rhein to see Mannheim ;-)
There's a joke here that the best part about Ludwigshafen is the bridge over to Mannheim.
No one come at me for that, I moved here off my own volition, I try staying out of that Ludwigshafen vs Mannheim stuff 😅 both cities have their drawbacks and positives in my pov.
Wolfsburg has a plus in the Porschestrasse, a successful pedestrianized main street (named for an auto designer in a city whose sole reason for existing is cars). Plus it's the wealthiest city in Germany (unless VW has a particularly bad year?); Eisenhuettenstadt is just as young and industrial and politically-embarrassingly-former named, but broke.
@@CarinaCoffee Ironically, the video advises anyone that wants to visit Ludwigshafen to "go to Mannheim"
Pforzheim is definetly on the upper ranks of uglyness 😜
That really says a lot. I live in Mannheim and I´ve gotta say, it´s one of the ugliest and worst cities I´ve ever seen.
The post apocalyptic thriller film people have to move quickly, at least were the Rathaus Center is concerned, they're gonna start demolition on the first part of that massive thing in the third quarter of this year and they're _planning_ to be finished by 2025 with the last part when that elevated street will also be demolished. It's supposed to be succeeded by the Helmut Kohl Allee (former chancellor that hailed from here) and according to the local city paper they plan to use some of the building materials from the Rathaus Center for the construction of that road.
The Rhein Galerie is also dying, as mentioned in other comments, many habitants go to Mannheim instead.. The Ludwigshafen Hbf was also the most modern in Germany at its beginning:)
Thumbs up to your good summary and research:)
The GDP is mostly influced by BASF and the people commuting their almost no one working at BASF actually lives in Ludwigshafen.
Yeah, unless you live closer to the main station, most of us city centre dwellers actually use Ludwigshafen Rhein Mitte (City Centre Station the one just outside Berliner Platz right next to the Rhine river).
Naturally, the ugliest city in Germany is twinned with one of the most beautiful cities in the US (Pasadena).
I have done an internship for a company and we used to be in Rathaus Center a couple of times as part of the demolition of this whole building). The abandoned offices and especially the shopping mall below gave me Lost places vibes although it’s in the center of a city!
Im from Ludwigshafen and the pools you showed in 4:03 to 4:23 used to be filled with water with ducks swimming around and even sea roses only a couple years ago. Idk why they shut it off though, probably too expensive
Because of the deconstruction of the Rathaus Center maybe
Nice video. Although I live close (Heidelberg) to Ludwigshafen, I´ve only passed by it in trains on my way to Kaiserslautern and I always asked myself why the heck they have such a huge train station with barely no train services. Now I know.
The worst station I have seen in Germany is Kölnmesse Deutz. Those 60s/70s glossy, orange-tiled walls. The tunnel connecting platforms is like a sine or cosine graph, and the platforms don't follow a sequential order. Escalators only go down. If you run for an imminent train it's stairs only. It is viscerally unpleasant and very unintuitive. I was the sort of local (Hamburger) tour guide for my international friends for a convention there and I looked as useful an idiot tourist who doesn't understand German. If anyone has a worse station in DE I would be curious to learn about it.
I only went there a few times but in my opinion Ludwigshafen is consisting primarily of BASF and companies which supply it or take care of logistics, the size of the factory site is massive especially for German standards.
Der ganze Leerstand liegt auch an der Strahlkraft Mannheims nur ein paar hundert Meter über dem Rhein. Abgesehen von der besseren Anbindung ist dort (bzw. hier, komme aus MA 😅) eine überregional bekannte Einkaufsstraße, die Planken, der Magnet, der die Leute von Odenwald bis Pfälzerwald lockt, und da fällt Ludwigshafen eben als quasi Durchfahrtsstraße etwas hinten runter. Da hat die Rheingalerie auch nicht viel dran ändern können.
Dankeschön Ich lebe in Lu und bin ein wenig entäuscht von diesen ganzen Aussagen. Ja, Lu hat seine hässlichen Ecken, aber es gibt auch sehr schöne Stellen.
Friesenheim zum Beispiel und Rheingönnheim.
@@MsLolle13 welche Aussagen meinst du jetzt konkret? 😅 Hab ja nichts negatives über Lu verloren, nur dass die Stadt halt drunter leidet dass Mannheim direkt nebendran ist.
@@macigames das meinte ich ja!
Du hast eines der wenigen Kommentare abgegeben die nicht negativ waren :)
@@MsLolle13 achso alles klar 😂👌🏼
9€ Ticket also took me there. Having studied urban planning for some time I expected it to be horrible but amusing. It was actually depressing but interesting, but I share your optimism, that there is actual potential, but the fact that the city's majority has been developed post war, just makes it taking too much time until further modernization reaches state of the art urban design.
Yay! Another "Destination" style video. Are you planning on making a full set of "proper" destination videos this year. I sure hope so, they are dearly missed by at least one of you viewers!
Also, as you say, I'm not sure Ludwigshafen is bad enough to warrant the title of ugliest city in Germany, but it isn't exactly picturesque either. Hopefully they will be able to improve it when the Rathaus Center is removed, though I don't see the slick new shopping mall as a good direction. It might be nice on its own, but it really doesn't help the rest of the city. Honestly I think improving the main shopping district would've been better, maybe with a nice shopping center/public library/town hall building in place of the Rathaus Center.
Well, for a while, they had three shopping centers within walking distance of the main shopping district. What could possibly go wrong?
Whoever had that bright idea was either on drugs or a fan of having a broad choice of Döner joints and cell phone shops...
There is a public library halfway down the road between the Rathaus Center and the Berliner Platz (the tram, bus and train hub at the other end of the mainstreet).
I think it was just before the pandemic that they actually brought in rejuvenation planners that came up with a concept on how to pump back life into the city centre area, but shop owners and investors didn't really follow that plan so it flopped.
@@CarinaCoffee Ah, I didn't know about the library. I've never been so I was just shooting blind, so to speak. But thanks for informing me :) Too bad about the rejuvenation plan, but at least it seems there are good intentions from city hall. Maybe next time there wont be a global pandemic to overcome as well. :)
Many years ago I was involved in the Pasadena Sister Cities Committee. Our German sister city is Ludwigshafen. I had the occasion to visit Ludwigshafen on three separate occasions. I wouldn’t characterize the city as ugly but just rather drab. Perhaps I was spoiled by having lived earlier in one of Germany’s loveliest cities, Luebeck. I cannot think of any reason for any tourist wishing to spend any time in Ludwigshafen, but it is relatively close to any number of attractive destinations, including Mannheim, Heidelberg, and Speyer.
Oh, Lübeck is so beautiful! I live only an hour or so away, and it's always nice visiting. However, the loveliness ends at the two river arms surrounding Lübecks old town (roughly - Holstentor for example is beyond them and such a wonderful place). Especially the western part is mostly a rather bland, typical northern German post-war town. There's quite a lot of rivers and canals all over the place though, and a lot of green areas, especially to the south and east.
There's also a train station - impressive, old hall - but rather impractical to use.
So, all in all, the historic city center island with its Kontorhäuser and the five main churches is truly something else, incredibly beautiful and THE prime example of historic brick architecture, but surrounding it is just a slightly above-average medium-sized town.
@@InterFelix The neighbourhoods directly surrounding the city center largely consist of late nineteenth-early twentieth century buildings, to me that is more than slightly above average, certainly compared to many other German cities. Something should be done about the (non subdivided) windows in most of them though, because they look really out of place in buildings of that age.
@@patrickreuvekamp oh, okay! It's been a while since I've been there, and my experience is limited to the north-west, so I might certainly be wrong. Thank you!
I suggest you go to Koblenz. It's a beautiful historic city. Especially the "Altstadt", the "Innenstadt" and "das deutsche Eck".
There is another Ludwigshafen on the shore of Lake Constance or Bodensee, also called Bodmann-Ludwigshafen. I have been there lately, it is a pretty little town.
An Urban legend says that the Americans had plans to drop a nuclear bomb on Ludwigshafen, but the Nazis surrendered before the bomb was finished. Looking at Ludwigshafen now, dropping a nuke on it would hardly make it any worse than it already is.
It's not an urban legend: there is good evidence that the Americans actually discussed the possibility of dropping nuclear bombs on Berlin and on Mannheim and Ludwigshafen.
You shouldve visited the Parkinsel thats close to where you were, or Ebertpark thats located in Friesenheim, there are nice places in Lu as well 😁
I remember the smell when passing Ludwigshafen, daily on my way to school in Mannheim. There was a huge(50k employees) BASF plant there in the early eighties and some sort of paper mill. Sorry but after even remembering the smell 40 years later, I can't envision it as a beautiful place......ever. Lol
I worked at the _"Thoraxklinik",_ a lung hospital in Heidelberg.
One of the best in the world. We even had Arab sheikhs with their entourage as patients.
But maaany of our patients were _(former)_ BASF workers with lung cancer. Because they worked with chemicals without any protection back then, for whom you have to work in a jump suit with masks and all possible forms of protection, in a secluded area today.
Well, either they didn't knew any better back then or the company just gave a huge f**k.
The good thing though is that they often had forms of lung cancer that were better to treat then smokers cancer. Meaning they had a much higher healing chance/rate.
While most of the smokers died from their cancer, the BASF workers didn't have a death sentence.
Still smoking was prevalent among all patients.
I used to have my smoking breaks with people dying from smoking. Well it didn't got me off too.
I'm glad I'm living in Heidelberg _(born and raised, not a student)_ because we have the best treatment available for many forms of cancer. Heidelberg is the seat of the _'German Cancer Research Center"._
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Cancer_Research_Center?wprov=sfla1
@@yannick245 Ich bin Amerikaner, der war im FFM geboren sind. Ich hab Heidelberg gern, sehr schön Stadt Heidelberg ist. Als Jung, habe ich drei Jahre aufgewachsen im Frankenthal ( ganz in der Nähe von Ludwigshafen). Gruße aus Texas.
@@yannick245 I used to work at a hospital myself here in the States. I think people nowadays are just too afraid of the inevitable. Death is the only sure thing in life. Nothing to be afraid of.
Fun Fact regarding the Extra 3 segment: The picture they used mainly shows Mannheim
Top class work again. Fantastic video!
Well, there is just a tiny area with pre 1945 buildings opposite the city library, otherwise the area between the two bridges is devoid of any historic sights. Still it is worth mentioning that Ludwigshafen has a nice painting gallery with the Miro wall, better preserved quarters beyond the bridges and with the Friedrich Ebert Halle and the church in Oggersheim indeed even two noticeable landmarks.
Good video! More videos of this type, please!
Oh now we need a Ludwigshafen vs Gießen video or better yet, one that compares the ugliest places in the Ruhrgebiet and then we get a battle royale video.
Too bad TH-cam got rid of the voting feature but we could still all vote in the comments.
I see the similarity to Charleroi too, but Ludwigshafen got a good idea. They only forgot that their city will not gain inhabitants forever especially because of the decline of pure industry. I live in Wuppertal, a very very cramped city and we got some elevated traffic too until the city thought they have to redesign the central station. Now its a - good looking - mess of a station. Wonderful, every bus which departs need two f more minutes to leave the hub. Its a disgusting failure and I dont know why people condone this. Edit: Cos I watched to the end I've to say: "Kunden aus Aschaffenburg, zahlen Hash nen Achter-Kurs" ;D
If you were someone ignorant to Germany geography you'd automatically assume Ludwigshafen was in the former DDR just by looking it at it. Just a shame Halle Neustadt isn't a city in it's own right or else it could have definitely taken the title
As a Hallener, I can say that. The Neustadt Centrum is a bloody skeleton. I'd be more than happy if it did count as a city.
6:33 impressive that a foreigner has spotted that difference. Most Germans do not even know about this slightly different logo of the Bundesbahn
Isn't this TH-camr German?
@@baumi8805 yeah? I think I can hear a slight British accent when he pronounces German names.
@@herrsan Okay he has an English name, so you might be right ;)
I checked the channel information
@@herrsan For “-hof” I am hearing him pronouncing it “haawwf” where I feel a short “hof” sounds more German, with less foreign accent. But I may be wrong.
Shame you didn't make it to the Prinzregentenstraße on the other side of the Rathaus Centre - that bit didn't get bombed too much and is optically very pretty (even if it has a bad reputation, exaggerated imo)
Mind that there are at least two Ludwigshafen in Germany:
Ludwigshafen am Rhein, the one in this video
Ludwigshafen am Bodensee which is a small town at the north-west area of Lake Constance between Überlingen and Radolfzell.
The big Ludwigshafen/Rhein is a huge industrial town and a centre of the chemical industry. However I think the Wilhelm-Hack-Museum of modern art is often worth a visit.
Ludwigshafen is in a quite difficult situation since there are a number of much older and quite prominent towns nearby like Mannheim, Heidelberg, Ladenburg, Schwetzingen and Weinheim.
One of the reasons why Ludwigshafen appears to be a bit isolated can be found in its history: for quite some time it was part of an exclave of Bavaria and maybe a bit too far away from Munich to deserve more attention.
In vielen deutschen Städten ist Blockrandbebauung offenbar ein Fremdwort. Die Gebäude stehen irgendwie in der Gegend rum, statt als Häuserblöcke organisiert aufeinander Bezug zu nehmen. In Darmstadt ist mir das bei einem Besuch negativ aufgefallen, es sieht dort einfach furchtbar aus.
Americans over here with our car centric cities just like "damn, thats a prty nice lookin city" xD
Literally lol... I wouldn't have noticed it was "ugly" if it wasn't pointed out 😂
I lived in Mannheim for nearly two years and worked in Ludwigshafen. And, yes sir, I will confirm the claim of Ludwigshafen being the ugliest city in the wor...Germany. Well, ok I haven't visited every single city in Germany, so I'm lacking experience legitimacy of announcing it the worst. But I can confirm it is very ugly. And it's once better half Mannheim once was a jewel. But since I moved away in 2015 it continually went worse, especially with people tossing their garbage on the streets and homeless people sleeping in the city center. And I think it would not be unfair to say Mannheim is on the way to beat Ludwigshafen in its bad reputation and ugliness
Mannheim hässlich? Also man kann auch übertreiben
@@youtubesuchtig1113 na ja, jetzt nicht in der Bauweise. Da ist monnem ja recht schön. Aber eher in der Hinsicht, wie die Umwelt auf die Stadt einwirkt
@@youtubesuchtig1113 Naja aber auch nicht gerade schön. Schöner als Ludwigshafen definitiv ja, aber ne 1/10 is halt immer noch ne 1/10
This reminds me quite a lot of Charleroi here in Belgium. The only differences being that Charleroi is a 19th century industrial city (which grew a lot post-WW2 though), its main station isn't confusing and that the industry is no longer there. But apart from that: a once hustling and bustling city center with loads of small shops filing for bankruptcy after a brand new shopping center opened ? Check. Plans for an extensive metro network that was cancelled and now the very 70's looking poorly lit concrete stations are served by a modest tram network ? Check. A city that has a very high unemployment rate even though it's one of the major cities of the country ? Check.
And where is the ugly part of this city? I didn't see one!
There's a city much more uglier than Ludwigshafen - it's Pforzheim.
- the more you come to the center of it, the less green and the more grey - once someone said to me "I've never seen so much grey in a city"
- though the the gold-/jewellery-industry decreases, they still focus on it
- the highest rate of unemployment in Baden-Württemberg, ironically the lowest rate is in the district Enzkreis (the district around Pforzheim)
- they complain that there are many shops and even some buildings are empty, but there aren't many parking lots - instead of filling empty shops or buildings, they prefer to build new ones
- horrible traffic-chaos - even my cousin from the area of munic complained about it. The worst is when you drive through and it happens that you have red light at every traffic light - on the one you wait for green you can see at the next one that the light there is green and when you get there it's red.
For decades they had the excuse that Pforzheim was bombed in the 2. worldwar. Bad excuse - other cities were bombed much more and recovered much better!
The quirk is that they have three UBahn stations without a network. The rolling stock and trains are only regular trams. Sadly, it is not in a good condition, but interesting to see. There was a trend where mayors of smaller cities thought that they need a Ubahn network and they calcaluted with an bigger population that it made sense to propose a network. So they started building maybe three station underground. However, the oil crisis and miscalculation years prior brought to a screetching halt that the other part of the network were left unbuilt or still being used as tram stops.
Iirc the billboards at LU HBF still showed Merkel's 2005 election ads a few years ago. It also doesn't help that the HBF is extremely empty at all times. Really scary place.
The (now closed) tram station Rathausplatz takes the cake though, what you don't see in your vid is that it had a faint smell of urine and the floor was sticky. Also the mold-patterned tiled walls. And the hole in which a kiosk used to be, now covered in school children's graffiti. The design of the signs and colourscheme transformed the station into a time travel machine back into the 70s/80s, i have a love/hate relationship with it.
BUT all the stigma of "ugliness" keeps the housing costs affordable here even in the city center, so keep em coming :)
On a related note, I'd love to know DB's stats on one-way trips to Wolfsburg vs. round trips. If everyone going there is picking up their new car they don't need a train ticket home.
I guess beauty indeed is in the eye of the beholder. I kind of feared it's going to be my own city (I believe it was actually in the xtra3-list, too).😅 In fact, the concrete-architecture did remind me of my childhood in a way and I actually kind of liked it and didn't feel repulsed by it or like I am seeing the perfect setting for a horror movie/film. Somebody must feel at home there, as well.
Though I have to say that our shopping centre does have several entrances/exits. But it's right in the city centre and pedestrian zone, where you just have several options of where to go. Although I think most of the doors just lead to the same street (as our pedestrian zone is in fact one street only) just a few metres apart from each other. (At least?) One of the doors leads to a different street/walkway.
I wondered why this city's name sounded familiar.
I was stationed in West Germany and we had to conduct operations once near Manheim.
Plus, of course, my knowledge of W.W. II history also probably comes into play for knowing the name.
Overall, a good video about this city.
rammstein?
@@gamerdrache6076 If you are asking if that was where I was stationed,...no, it was not in that city.
@@pauld6967 oh
Born and raised in Ludwigshafen am Rhein. U just take a look on the main city. Please visit Rheingönnheim, Friesenheim or Pfingstweide.
You'll find the ugliest cities usually where the most bombs were dropped in WW2. After the war noone had time to think about nice architecture. We needed houses. Fast. Because of that many cities in the industrial Ruhr area are really, really ugly. They can be charming in their own way, though.
You can say Ludwigshafen am Rhein has been americanized.
I like the idea of a mixed shopping centre/city hall.
Nice video ! Could you at some point explain why the rail station of Karlstein am Main is called Dettingen ?
Karlstein is actually made up of two parts: Dettingen (where the train stops), and Großwelzheim. The two were merged in 1972 and given a new name.
@Rewboss: Wie wär' es mal mit einem Tripp nach Ostbayern: z.B. die Bischofsstädte Regensburg und Passau; Landshut mit dem Turm von St. Martin; oder die Gäubodenmetropole Straubing?
I've lived in Ludwigshafen since 1994. Fortunately, in one of the few nice parts. Downtown LU has gone down the sewer in the last 28 years. All the good shops left long ago. This video is accurate. Ludwigshafen is simply an poor, ugly, industrial zone of Mannheim.
And Mannheim isn’t pretty either…
The ugly parts of Mannheim look just as ugly as Ludwigshafen, and Mannheim has just as many ugly parts. The key difference is, that the nice parts of Mannheim are much nicer than Ludwigshafen and there are more of them in Mannheim. Nothing to brag about however.
The tunnels of the Hauptbahnhof make me feel like im in the backrooms
isso
Ludwishafen has ugly bits, however if you go to Parkinsel, which is a 15min walk from where this video was filmed, it is a beautiful park/island next to the Rhein river!
Du musst dir unbedingt Emmerich am Rhein anschauen. Ja Emmerich hat eine sehr schöne Brücke und die "Rheinpromenade" ist auch schön, aber blendet man das aus, gibt es keine Hässlichere Stadt als Emmerich am Rhein. Alleine die Gegend um den Bahnhof... Hilfe, dagegen sieht Ludwigshafen aus wie ein Paradies.
You absolutely have to visit Emmerich am Rhein. Yes, Emmerich has a very beautiful bridge and the "Rheinpromenade" is also nice, but if you ignore that, there is no uglier town than Emmerich am Rhein. The area around the railway station alone... Help, Ludwigshafen looks like a paradise in comparison.
haha, nice idea.
actually, just before Covid, I had the idea to visit "the least visited towns in Germany" with my family as a sort of joke with our own tourism habits, as I drew tired of sightseeings. I and my wife visited a couple of unusual small places in Brandenburg and Mecklenburg-Vorpommen for that sake, but once Covid came, we kind missed it. And now, with the 9 EUR ticket I came back with the idea again but haven't still made it :D
One thing that is missing here is that Ludwigshafen is, since 30 years or so, newfound home of a ever growing number of welfare scroungers, locals and also way too much from all around the world, but they keep coming in this city for what so every reason. That means, combined with the worlds most generous social transfer system, it costs the working society a lot of money, which lack for investment in the city itself. And since the government makes no try to stop this growth, the city becomes poorer and poorer.
The video captures this visually even if it’s not addressed overtly :)
I love post apocalyptic sceneries in summer where the weeds grow and where no noises are. It’s so relaxing to stroll around there with a bottle of beer and have no one around.
- I’m a great fan of British Brutality btw.
I can only recommend Baden-Baden. Its a lovely small city in the south near the French Border. It was declared UNESCO World Heritage Cite last year. Unlike Ludwigshafen, it was almost not affected at all during the second world war. This most certainly shows as the architecture in the city center is absolutely mesmerizing, the cuisine is amazing ( several Michelin restaurants) and the parcs and nature surrounding the city outstanding.
Being born and raised there, a lot of your criteria apply to Leverkusen as well, at least as far as the city centre goes. The more you move away from the Rhine towards the east, the prettier it becomes, though.
Ein sehr interessantes Video. Ich denke aber, ein Stativ wurde der Qualität der Aufnahmen gut tun. Es war teils doch recht wackelig
I came across that place in the first aerial shot every time I had an exam at the Chamber of Industry and Commerce which is located just behind the pink high rise building. 😅
In the 90s the City of Völklingen near the French border was awarded as the "ugliest German City"....but today there are a couple of cities you can consider to be the ugliest ones, such as Neumünster, Mönchengladbach, Fürth, Wuppertal, Offenbach, Bremerhaven, Salzgitter, Eisenhüttenstadt....and of course Ludwigshafen.
Bremerhaven struggled a lot forward during the last years.🙂
Why is this video giving me a huuuuge The Tim Traveller vibe? Especially the ending =))))))
about huge plazas, how does it come that some plazas are a burden to the pedestrian and other plazas are place for social interactions, parties hanging out and so on.
in Freiburg we have this "platz der alten synagoge" which is on first glance a wide stone plaza, but unless you visit it very early in the morning its basically overfilled with people doing nothing but sitting on the ground, wich is made of stone and most likely very hot or very cold depending on the season
Oh, we have such sights to see:
the Berliner Platz hole, the abandoned Rathaus Center, the nonexistent bridge (nobody knows how to pay for a new one), you forgot the derelict Eberthalle (again, nobody knows how to finance the badly needed renovation), and so on