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Hey,
I lived for a time in Frankfurt and never really noticed this when I was there. It might be, that I just got used to it. However, after moving to another big German city and revisiting Frankfurt this past week, I've realized how dirty the city is even in most "normal" living areas. It even reminded me, in terms of the trash, of more rundown areas of US cities.
Especially around Bockenheim I was stunned when I made my morning walk and realized that the streets were full of garbage. Particularly sad is it in parks where it was quite common that pizza and other food cartons, tin foil, broken bottles and other alcohol was just casually laying around in the green areas.
What I've also realized is that the garbage cans were overburstingly full with trash so that people who would have liked to throw stuff away did not even have the chance anymore.
Do you think the city administration has a general problem with keeping the public spaces clean or is this particularly related to corona and that people are still coming together more in public areas than in private?
Thx
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I think it’s a bit of both. The city administration can’t keep up with all the littering, and an awful lot of people just DGAF. Offenbach has the same issues BTW, and people have complained about it for ages, even pre-COVID!
I’ve found that the smaller towns around here are much cleaner, like Hofheim or Königstein, but there’s also more space for fewer people. Can’t say anything about other larger German cities since I haven’t actually lived in them. I just wish Frankfurt and Offenbach would take the littering issues more seriously!
You’re SO right!!
I'm in Berlin right now and although there are much more garbage cans the city looks like trash in many places. There is a park with a playground at Leopoldplatz where I wouldn't even think about letting a small child play. Trash, Junkies, broken bottles near and some even on the playground. Imo it's simply that most people DGAF. If I need to get rid of trash and the can nearby is full then I'll keep it until I come across the next one.
Offenbach is starting to do better - have seen a couple of pizza-box trash cans around and people using them. Plus a lot of the parks are cleaned regularly (even if the problem exists to begin with, this is a small plus).
As someone who just moved to Frankfurt, I noticed that there is a definitive lack of trash cans in public places.
There are enough trahscans. Look at the Main riverside every 50 Meter there are big green trash barrels. People don't use them.
I don't think the Main is a good example. It's Frankfurt's centrepiece, the bit they put on the postcards. It's one of the few places in the city that they really do work hard to keep extremely clean. So, yes, there are enough bins there.
But other areas just aren't as well provided for. So stuff gets dropped and dumped. And the City is in no way as diligent about cleaning it up in those other areas as they are along the Main.
in my experience trashcans in this city are almost always full. that either means there are not enough or they are not emptied often enough.
there are spots that have this problem mor or less then others. but in general i see overfilled trashcans more often then not.
yes thats true. You can see it especially in the U-Bahn. The walls and stairs are extremely dirty. I guess the whole cleaning and maintenance part had been neglected for years. Every time when I go to the U-Bahn & S-Bahn at the Ffm Hbf i am thinking about Munich's Stachus. It can be so different if the authorities are committed to change.
You can't compare Munich with any other city. It is one of the cleanest in Germany.
I see people dumping trash out of the car in puplic day light. There is no shame in trashing our environment. I see it on playgrounds as well parents leaving they're shit around.
I also get particularly angry when I see it in parks. Imho there would need to be a stricter enforcement of people from Ordnungsamt patrolling more often and sanctioning people who just leave their trash when they go.
Actually think this is one of the biggest issues in Frankfurt. Everything is just extremely laissez fair. Take your drugs on the street? There you go. Throw trash in the park? Nobody there to enforce rules anyway.
Same goes with graffiti and sprayers. It feels like it is openly tolerated to just spray political slogans on normal living houses. It happened to my house and the one across me three times or so and I never saw the police actually patrolling that area.
Kind of sad since I do like laissez faire and little government intervention in my life but a bit more might be just appropriate especially when you look to larger cities and what hands off approaches lead to (see L.A. with Skids Row or San Francisco).
I am originally from Frankfurt but moved to Munich less than two years ago. When I visit home the first thing that hits me in Frankfurt Hbf is the smell. It always stinks of urine and I feel uncomfortable. Munich train stations and trains are mostly really clean because there are constantly people going around picking things up. You can even whatsapp the MVV people and tell them which S-Bahn is dirty and they will get on somewhere on the Stammstrecke an clean it up.
Through Covid some park areas and other outdoor meeting places here too have become a bit dirty, but are picked up the next morning.
This is also a money thing of course! Maintenance costs a lot of money but I find if something looks clean people are less likely to litter, if everything is dirty why bother?
Why is Frankfurt so dirty? It's only been this extreme for a few years. Frankfurt is falling into disrepair and politics is ignoring that.
Sad!
As someone coming from Chicago to Frankfurt, I've noticed this as well. Then last summer I moved to Hanau (I know, I know) and it's much cleaner and more importantly doesn't fucking smell like literal garbage during the summer.
I’m coming from DC to Frankfurt and was shocked cause I heard Germany was supposed to be a really clean and well kept. It’s not bad as I have definitely lived in worse places but it just wasn’t what I was expecting
You also have to factor in that Frankfurt is by a huge margin the least German City in Germany.
It’s like visiting Miami in America and concluding that you felt the American way of life is different than expected.
If you compare Munich to Frankfurt that is completely a different world. Somethings are better but some things are defenitely worse.
Nah that’s more of a Swiss thing
Yup for sure. Totally have been worse but wasn't expecting it to be like how it is
ok chicago talking trash about another city lol
I'm just bitter there's no good Chicago style pizza or dogs here.
Take away places where people can party and eat lizza, they will do both of these things in the streets in an uncontrolled manner. This whole ordeal has been a prime display of mismanagement. You can't ban your way out of a pandemic.
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she's Italian or Italian American and likes to be enjoyed in a variety of debauched and pleasurable ways. She is also a cultural unifier, and a guilty pleasure to many. And she most definitely is a great time! ^
Doesn't seem like it was related to the pandemic unless this is comparatively cleaner than it was then.
Well, i still live in Frankfurt, i think it is all about sooooo many Stores, Restaurants etc, as a City with over 1M at Day coming from all directions to Frankfurt (just watch all Autobahnen in FFM direction) i think it is not SO BAD. I found Paris really dirty even more as Frankfurt 😃
That is a good point! I don't think, however, it makes sense to judge a certain characteristic of one thing (e.g. dirtiness of a city) based on how it looks like in other cities especially when they are so vastly different in size and demographics.
I also know that a lot of huge cities have much more waste problems, such as Rome, but in terms of a relatively small city (compared to Paris, LDN etc.) in the DACH region Frankfurt really stands out. I compare it mostly with other DACH cities and when I came back I was really surprised why there was so much trash laying around everywhere.
I haven't noticed any increase in rubbish when I was there. Probably depends on where you are. Though I currently live in a corner of Berlin where they constantly throw all sorts of shite onto the street. Worst item was a toilet bowl that sat there for one and a half months, so I guess my bar is really low perhaps.
Just moved from Dublin to Frankfurt a couple of weeks ago and noticed the same thing. Even in the more affluent districts in Frankfurt you see a lot of trash and ugly graffiti. Ruins the aesthetic of an otherwise quite nice city
This is absolutely true! I live in Gallus and is a struggle everyday while walking my dog for him do not eat food leftovers, plastic bangs and all random garbage. It is really bad. It is mixture of not enough cleaning, not enough and small garbage bins and lack of civility in general. It is infuriating that people just continue to throw garbage to the floor indiscriminately. Another point is that also garbage bins are in general too small and and also are open. You can see the crows in Europaviertel just taking all the stuff from the bins and spread it all over. There is some lack of planning and action. It is something that I really hope to se improved soon
I lived in Hamburg for a couple of years before Frankfurt and I find it extremely dirty but at least I know it's not a German thing, it's a Frankfurt thing. I've come to the conclusion that Frankfurt only cares about money and doesn't give a shit about free public spaces. Hamburg had a lot more visible homeless people and tolerated graffiti, yet the streets and parks were much cleaner. Frankfurt has no public toilets, not even paying ones, and no drinking fountains. This happened in my hometown too when we got a conservative city government, they actually removed existing drinking fountains and public toilets so the homeless can't use them. I'm guessing Frankfurt is the same, the city only wants rich people spending money in restaurants, not having picnics in parks for hours for free.
I don't think it is a political issue since Frankfurt also has no conservative government. Furthermore this problem is not just centered to parks. The litter/trash/papers is even on most sidewalks so this is absolutely no excuse for saying that there is not enough space to consume something without paying for it. It's a mixture of the attitude of people and also the cities total failure of simple control measurements in my opinion.
I think this is related to corona!
It’s the people, they lost their last fuck to give.
In my opinion we should just gentrify the shit out of districts like Bahnhofsviertel. But that’s not a popular opinion.
So we just try to cover the shit with paint and hope that it becomes better.
How is gentrifying the Bahnhofsviertel anything but covering shit with paint? Do you think the things you dislike just magically go away and not just become displaced?
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This already happened, as the junkies just took the S-Bahn to Höchst and linger there, near the Riverside. It's just an "aus den Augen, aus dem Sinn" approach. So the problem is in Höchst then, which hasn't helped anyone. Corona was quite an amplifier for the situation, as the lockdown kept the regular people off the streets and out of the neighborhood, whereas the junkies found more places to go to and get high without being bothered. So they spread out.
Recently we had articles in the press, demanding that the city took care of this problem, because people who bought million euro apartments were bothered by the junkies getting high underneath their balconies.
It's a mixed situation. On one hand everybody would like to have a nice and clean Bahnhofsviertel, on the other hand that's also a very characteristic part of Frankfurt and also stands for the Frankfurter Weg policy.
In the end people are how they are, and to change one's behaviour, the new behaviour has to have advantages compared to the old one. This means we have to rethink the whole situation and adjust to the people. Also, no one wants to have huge multiple thrash containers in public.
(By the way I'm working on a solution to The trash problem, so maybe there will be change in a few months, if the city should be interested in my solution. Stay tuned.)
I think you are the real human garbage here.
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You move the shit to the junkyard.
So...killing the junkies? What IS your actual solution beside buzzwords?
Lockdown phenomenon. Takeaways from restaurants because they were closed. Would be surprised if the littering stopped with the reopening of the restaurants.
Doesn't seem like it got better
No, people don't get better in these thing once a certain behavior is established in their heads
Lol. I lived here my entire life and never noticed. Maybe I don't go the dirty areas aa often. Or maybe my standards are just skewed.
Laissez Faire should work when people consider their land and their city as they're home and would treat it equally as good as theyre living room.
I think ist the people here and their Attitude mostly Younger people Who dont Seem to know that their actions have consequences for their environment. And The City Administration propably thinks that everything goes to shit anyways so they dont Put effort in it. Both sucks
Stayed in savoy hotel near the main railway station in late october we arrived on friday the streets were filthy in this area this first bar we tried to enter the sink of cigarette smoke forced us back out when we left on sunday the streets still had not been cleaned its the worst city we have ever visited