Business Brief: Why we’re caught up in Berlin’s identity crisis

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One of Europe’s coolest cities is getting costlier

Good morning. I’m Irene Galea, a business reporter covering technology. Over the past few months, I’ve been reporting from Berlin as part of a fellowship that brought me to the economics desk of Die Welt, Germany’s newspaper of record. From there, I witnessed first-hand the increasingly acute pain being felt by businesses and consumers across Europe’s largest economy.

I quickly discovered that Berlin has outgrown its reputation for housing affordability. While the cost of living is still lower than in many European capitals, the city has seen the rents triple over the last two decades. Why does this matter? I think University of Toronto political science professor Alexander Reisenbichler expressed it well when he told me the housing gap has resulted in “a new social and economic fault line,” which is having wider consequences for the country’s political landscape. After a summer covering German politics, I saw the degree to which housing unaffordability is leading to frustrations often directed squarely at newcomers.

 

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