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Comment by TulliusCicero | Hacker News Reader

As an American in Germany, small towns here seem a lot healthier to me. Maybe it's just tourist-vision, or that most of the ones I've been to are in Bavaria (which is doing very well economically), but they look and feel quite vibrant.

Personally, I think part of this is that they're urbanist in a way that US small towns almost never are: even cities of 5 or 10 or 20k here are highly walkable, moreso than US cities 10x the population size, with cute downtowns to boot.

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A lot of the vibrant small villages and towns in rural Germany are struggling. Healthcare is a huge problem, for example, and there are attempts at solving the problem with mobile clinics but that's only fixing a symptom. Commuting is another issue as a lot of unskilled labor is put out of business by the larger businesses who can undercut them on prices. For example a local corner store may go out of business because they cannot purchase in bulk due to the small population, so an Aldi moves in 2 towns away, puts all the corner stores within a 10km radius out of business, and now all those employees have to compete for limited positions AND commute on top of that.

Germany is probably exceptional, because as you say it's doing pretty well. Italy is full of abandoned villages: https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/homes-and-property...

I must admit I eye Immowelt with envy sometimes. There are stunningly beautiful fachwerk homes under 100k if you want a project. There was on in Rothenberg Ob Der Tauber a while back I half-considered for a project.

Historically Germany has been a very decentralised place, have a look at a map of the Holy Roman Empire. It was also in recent position of being split in two, with the capital of West Germany not being connected to the rest of the country. This almost certainly why it's industry is spread out to smaller towns and cities.

The capital of West Germany was Bonn ...

I did not know that! Thank you.

But I don't think it draws from the larger point.

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