Frankfurt D.C.

The station district had already had its fair share of the 2024 European Football Championships:

"NO GO ZONE". England fans in 'Zombieland' Frankfurt have to run the gauntlet with drug addicts in the 'worst city of the European Championship' during the game against Denmark. ... The streets are packed with 5,000 junkies and 300 dealers ... the most dangerous slum in Germany" (The Sun, 20.6.2024

This caused a stir in Frankfurt politics, the press and the public, as the station district only has a total of 3,984 inhabitants. People wondered where 5,000 junkies were supposed to be. The Sun' is simply the UK's tabloid newspaper with a similarly peculiar approach to reality.

However, the station district is quite a leader in waste production. But only the best, because there is a whole mountain of garbage in the rest of the city after that. A well-kept city looks different. And spectacular things are no substitute for permanent maintenance: the northern bank of the Main was released as a fan zone for the 2024 European Championships, which meant that the large lawns were conceded their demise. A year later, everything was repaired with expensive turf. The €850,000 required for this had already been included in the event costs. It also looks great - as it is currently still fenced in. There seems to be little cash left over for emptying the litter bins and cleaning the sidewalks. As long as that doesn't change, the beautiful turf will soon be garbage again.

Apparently the city outside has lots of pretty attractions such as designer benches, a meter-high Euro sign and new jumbo litter bins on the banks of the Main, with rather unimaginative slogans on them. "Keep clean what you love." Hopefully there will be enough civic love, one can only hope. The wastepaper basket agency was probably keen to sell its wording expertise as well. They are more or less (slightly more than less) okay in terms of form. But why not just a red, blue or yellow wastepaper bin? A blue and yellow one would even have been a political statement of solidarity with Ukraine. Or the rainbow flag. Or simply the city colors. Or anything but the blunt slogans. And there are color-repellent coatings against the greasers.

The city of Frankfurt has waste regulations. It states in § 5: "In public squares, streets, paths and green spaces, everyone is obliged to place small waste in the waste containers provided there."

But hardly anyone seems to know them when you hear the results of late-night pizza box throwing competitions and the glass hardness tests of numerous beer and wine bottles in parks and squares on Sunday mornings. It seems that some Frankfurters don't really love their city.

The city has had a "cleanffm" cleanliness initiative since 2017 and calls are made every six months for a 'cleanup' with citizen participation. March 2025: "Almost 800 kilos of garbage were collected in the harbor park alone within a short space of time," the press release stated. Is this perhaps more PR for politicians than actually doing any good? What happened in the time between two 'clean-ups'?

Politicians are always happy to initiate spectacular campaigns, but when it comes to regular maintenance, there are regular shortfalls and politicians prefer to look the other way. Today, cleaning contracts are mainly awarded to private companies, the result of the political promise of privatization in the late 1990s. They are then only allowed to do what the company is paid to do. City gardeners, who can also put an accidental wastepaper basket back in order, are probably a dying profession. Today, another company is responsible for this in the private sector, provided it gets a contract. The holistic view of the whole has been lost. Even the cheeky slogans on garbage trucks, waste bins and websites don't help. That's not how brand architecture works. In the New Frankfurt of the 1920s, the beautiful red and white benches by Ferdinand Kramer were taken to the depot every fall, refurbished and put back in the parks in the spring. This was conscious and clever corporate design for the city. Contemporary benches, on the other hand, look rather sad.

Above all, one should not lose sight of today's public design, especially its condition. For example, the elevators on the Iron Footbridge. It was once built in the 19th century before the electrification of cities with steep staircases. Then, a good 30 years ago, a building inspector came along who wanted to update the footbridge with elevators for today's baby carriages, wheelchair users and cyclists. In the late post-modern era, everything naturally had to be transparent, beautiful and made of glass. So much for the plan, so far so well-intentioned. There are also well-functioning glass elevators in private office and hotel high-rises. So why not in public spaces in the city of Frankfurt? If you look at the glass towers today, they were completely the wrong materials for public spaces. As soon as you step into these glass cubes or roll in with a baby carriage or wheelchair, you are confronted with the fact that the transparent technical areas have probably never been cleaned in three decades. Millimeter-thick dust caked to dirt, defective lights, chipped wall tiles and lots of garbage, however it may have got in there. Primitive tags inside and out or simply graffiti by people who don't know how to use paint cans. There is real graffiti, but not here. They wouldn't belong here either. You hardly dare press the up button without rubber gloves. And: the thing on the north side is mostly "out of order", the one on the south side often "out of order". If the wheelchair user from Sachsenhausen gets as far as the north side, he can turn back at the defective north tower and take a kilometer detour via the Alte or Untermainbrücke. Great fun.

One wonders whether the responsible authorities, or rather the politicians in charge of them, are still in their right mind. The Eiserne Steg is a hot spot for all tourists who come here to admire the view of our small high-rise city and send a selfie to the world via Facebook, Instagram and the like. The place is packed every day from 10:00 am. Anyone coming from super-clean Singapore, Japan or Korea to this shithole of an elevator can only think that Frankfurt is completely degenerate. Great advertising. If the road and bridge construction authority doesn't take action, then one wonders why the tourism department doesn't get its act together and, if necessary, reach into its own financial pot. It can't be that small, after all the city charges every visitor 2 euros 'tourism contribution' per overnight stay. "Frankfurt quite nice, but very dirty" can hardly be the letter of recommendation.

These things urgently need to be renovated and given a thorough clean, even if it means taking them completely apart. And then please send the cleaning team to this Frankfurt 'key visual' for the city's corporate design every week. If bad guys get too rowdy at night and shut down the technology, then a technician will have to be called in. But perhaps after 30 years it simply needs to be replaced. Frankfurt's baby carriage, wheelchair and bicycle users would be more than grateful.

The call for cleanliness as urban brand management? You're quickly outed as a neat freak. Cleanliness is certainly not the most important issue for city branding, but it is an issue. What use is all the philosophizing about 'enduring contradictory, open spaces in which urban complexity is made socially and economically fruitful' if the real, analogous visual city experience is a dirty design in many areas?

Unfortunately, Frankfurt D.C. too often stands for 'Dirty City'. Changing this in a way that is both sustainable and humane would undoubtedly be a real challenge, because draconian penalties for dirty people, as in some Asian cities, should not be the solution. If 'city administration' is to become 'urban design', then this means acting proactively. The paradigm must be not just aftercare (clearing litter) but prevention (avoiding litter). A staff unit is not enough; the topic must be the central area of a larger consideration of public space as a central dispositive for urban branding.

The built city is the three-dimensional localization of ideas. Ultimately, the city is a vertical and horizontal, i.e. a temporal and spatial sequence of such materialized ideas. Its condition is not least an essential criterion for successful or unsuccessful branding.