The banker calculates that the population has grown by 13 percent in ten years, which is five more people per day. And that in a city that cannot expand any further. That is why, says Martiné, growth must be actively shaped. Not only affordable housing is needed, but also commercial space – and the corresponding infrastructure. “This requires extraordinarily intelligent land management,” he states.

Darmstadt has recently dropped out of the top ten, if not the top 20, in various rankings, whether in terms of dynamism, digitalization or car sharing. This assessment by Matthias Martiné, President of the Chamber of Industry and Commerce and head of Volksbank, therefore sounds encouraging: “The region is one of the most dynamic locations and has attracted many new people and companies,” he said at the Heuer Real Estate Dialogue, a meeting of representatives from business, science and politics. Only Leipzig has grown more than Darmstadt.

The banker calculates that the population has grown by 13 percent in ten years, which is five more people per day. And that in a city that cannot expand any further. That is why, says Martiné, growth must be actively shaped. Not only affordable housing is needed, but also commercial space – and the corresponding infrastructure. “This requires extraordinarily intelligent land management,” he states.

Overregulation makes construction projects more expensive

Plus “courage and determination to think things differently.” And a fair amount of deregulation. According to Martiné, the reason why there has been no significant expansion of local public transport rail services is because German federal licensing law has become an obstacle. The de-bureaucratization initiated by the Hessian state government is a good first step.

Darmstadt's head of urban planning, Michael Kolmer, can only agree. After all, in addition to increased construction costs, inflation, rising raw material prices and personnel problems, there is also the problem of overregulation, which makes construction even more expensive overall. “We have thousands of construction projects that are on hold because building is too expensive,” he said. There are 20,000 construction-related regulations and guidelines. The DIN standard: “A German export hit that has mutated into a fetish.” It not only slows down construction, but also creates uniformity: “Out of 20,000 guidelines, a single house comes out, they all look the same.”

The Darmstadt head of planning welcomes the fact that the state government wants to streamline the bureaucratization of construction. “But I don't like the fact that the local authorities have not yet been consulted.” How can things be streamlined without those who have to implement it? “It makes no sense to supposedly speed up guidelines by questioning municipal planning sovereignty.

Other countries manage completely without standardizing impact sound, the number of sockets in rooms or cabling routes, says Kolmer. And with other forms of fire protection. ”This has developed very differently to very safe neighboring countries such as the Netherlands or Switzerland.“

The intelligent space management that IHK President Martiné is calling for in the growing Darmstadt requires thinking about conversions that go beyond barracks areas and cooperation in the region. At the end of a long year dominated by the debate on growth in Darmstadt, the city recently announced its intention to develop a joint business park together with Weiterstadt.

Growth is not just about housing and commercial space, Kolmer emphasizes. It is also about transport infrastructure, the expansion of fiber optic networks and heat networks. ”This is not just an urban planning challenge, it also means space requirements.“ This requires a strategy and not the first-come, first-served principle of ”the last one to build the transformer house“.

How future infrastructures succeed

Hans-Joachim Linke from TU Darmstadt and Sabrina Müller from real estate consultants Drees & Sommer emphasize that intelligent growth means networking, including functions. Infrastructure is always a system that is subject to internal and external influences. The pressure to change is triggered by climate change, demographics, technological progress and geopolitical developments.

Every change has an interaction and therefore influences the whole. ”You can't look at one part without the other,“ says Sabrina Müller. This is what makes future-proof infrastructures so complex. What used to be solved only through technology now requires a holistic view of ecological, social and economic aspects.

For Linke and Müller, the path to sustainable infrastructures does not lie ”in a ready-made solution that can be imposed", but in cooperation between citizens, companies, innovators, investors and politicians. By 2040, another 24,000 inhabitants are expected to grow in Darmstadt. A lot of communication required.