Berlin is still, to paraphrase the mayor, "Sexy and poor." Europe's biggest market for urban vacation and investment properties, for wealthy Germans and foreigners, and artists with resources who thrive off the museum/creative scene. It's dependency on tourists for income reminds me a lot of Israel, in terms of how significant it is to the local economy. To wit, there are loads of Israelis in town.
One of the most interest economic models proposed for Berlin, at least in the press, is that it's a successful new 'startup center' a la Austin, or Portland. There are a few such firms (Soundcloud, Ableton) but more failures, than not. Spiegel would love it - I think they have a columnprofiling local tech startups, called "Startup City" or something like that. Pass.
Joel
On Mar 31, 2012, at 4:09 PM, John Gulick wrote:
>
> Joel:
>
>> Just read in the magazine published by my renter's association
>> about an
> apartment complex in Mitte where over 250 of the 933 apartments
>> are
> rented out as vacation apartments to tourists.
>
>
> So it goes in NYC and London as well, of course. This seems to be
> something distinctive (distinctively new?) about the latest round of
> hyper-gentrification in the world's leading financial-cultural centers:
> the extent to which it caters to/is driven by pied-a-terres for the
> globalist uber-bourgeoisie.
>
> John
>
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Joel Schalit skype: jschalit jschalit at gmail.com