Is this Germany's ugliest city? Ludwigshafen am Rhein

Ludwigshafen is said to be Germany's ugliest city. But who gave it that title, and is it deserved?

Chapters:
00:00 Welcome to Ludwigshafen!
00:25 How the title was won
01:16 A brief history
02:29 Built of concrete, for cars
03:14 Failed plans
04:20 Shopping
05:11 The station: a case study
07:10 In summary
08:03 How to get there

Music:

"On My Way Home"
by The 126ers
YouTube Audio Library

"Dead Forest"
by Brian Bolger
YouTube Audio Library

"Style Funk" and "Hot Swing"
Creative Commons Attribution Library

Data for maps taken from

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[mats]

As someone from Hannover im so happy that Ludwigshafen exists
(Just to be clear, i love Hannover but it has a horrible reputation)

[Raider_MXD]

Pointing out all the major bad planning decisions made in Ludwigshafen over the decades would probably require several videos, but this is a nice summary. One point to add may be that those decions not only resulted in a city with many planning issues, but also in significant amounts of debt making it hard to correct past mistakes.

[martintodorov]

As a Bulgarian, this city has very strong “Eastern European” vibes, albeit it in the Western part of Germany. If you pause at 4:41, you’ll even see a Bulgarian “Баничарница” and hot meals store!

[volderhamer]

I love how here in Heidelberg, which is like 15 km away from Mannheim, we call Mannheim the ugly city, but we also all forget that Ludwigshafen even exists.

[ft]

Ludwigshafen is like one of those so-bad-it's-good-movies. It's so incredibly ugly and ill-designed that the uglyness transforms into a bizarrely pleasing aesthetic. Some places feel like a portal into an alternate reality in which Ludwigshafen outranked even Frankfurt but was later partially destroyed, probably due to some chemical emergency at BASF. This is best experienced by taking tram 6 from Mannheim. After crossing the river you enter this tunnel and pass through a station that looks like a real metro station, except something about it is slightly odd. As though it's not quite at the right scale but you can't describe what it is that feels wrong about it. Then the tram carries on, turns an incredibly tight curve and is suddenly wizzed back into reality, running at street level right though a generic city street, back in reality again. I kind of adore it.

[rvfabrice]

It looks eerily similar to Charleroi in Belgium : it is also a young industrial city with some elevated highways in the middle of the city. It has an unfinished metro used by trams and shopping streets that are deserted because of a modern mall. The only big difference is that it's way poorer. It is still slowly recovering from the industrial decline.

[naruciakk]

70s architecture, a dilapidated and badly designed railway station, half-finished Stadtbahn… that's unironically sounds to me like a must-see. Thank you for recommending, especially that I'll be relatively nearby in July so now there is a plan

[j--xeke]

Germany: oh look at this ugly city, it's so car-centric and designed inconveniently.

USA: hold my beer

[MrSuperschnitzellp]

As someone who grew up in Lu I can say without a shadow of a doubt that I rly didn't expect to ever see english language content about that shithole. The shopping street btw isn't deserted because of the shopping mall right next to it, which itself is quite desolate and in decay, it is deserted because of Mannheim's Planken shopping street which is where everyone goes these days. Most people from Lu never really do anything in Lu itself, it's a glorified suburb. If you want to do anything from partying to going out to eat you do it in Mannheim, which in itself isn't the best city either but it's the best we got. It has gotten so bad that I and most of the people I grew up with never say we are from Ludwigshafen when someone asks, we all just say Mannheim.

[CharlsonS]

I was in Ludwigshafen some time ago and was fascinated by all these places that were seemingly stuck in time. Sadly many iconic buildings were or will be demolished, such as the Rathaus center. I enjoyed riding their U-Straßenbahn sections (or rather what's left of it) and their tram network in general. The station below the rathaus center will probably be demolished together with the building itself. Below the active platforms there are two dead ones. They belonged to the tram tunnel that closed in 2008. Prior to this closure, only one weekday, rush hour only line ran there. The U-Strab station HBF is a very characterful place that gives you a ride back to the 70s and is a silent reminder of the very ambitious (and insane) construction plans Ludwigshafen had. For fans of underground structures a place to go.

[mickimicki]

Ha, you did my hometown! I think your judgement is fair, but let me add that the inner city and the "Rathaus Center" used to be bustling in the 80s, and even the main station was doing o.k. Some of Ludwigshafen's most "iconic" and beloved (by me and the locals) buildings from the 50's and 60's were demolished in the last decade.
When I lived there in the 1970s and 80s, Ludwigshafen was the richest city in Germany thanks to BASF, which meant that there were very well funded schools, lots of swimming pools, an ice rink and all kinds of municipal sports facilities in great repair, as well as good museums, a theatre, nice parks and so on. The hinterland is quite nice, so many people from Ludwigshafen spend their weekends walking in the Pfälzer Wald or in the winyards around the Weinstraße. (One of the Ludwigshafen tram lines ends in Bad Dürkheim an der Weinstraße, home of the world's largest wine cask and the world's larges Weinfest.)
Of course it always was an "ugly" factory town, and the elevated highways made commuting easy, so the higher-ups in the BASF tended to move to the surrounding towns and villages, taking their taxes with them, which is probably the reason for the city's (nowadays) empty coffers despite the high GDP. It seems large companies themselves don't pay a lot of tax these days, and BASF has moved many of its blue collar jobs abroad. (Supposedly, they are still paying their remaining workers relatively well, compared to other countries and German regions, but globalisation is what it is).

[oxmoxtatze]

Hallo Andrew,
ich ergänze hier einfach mal ein bisschen ... leider diesmal in Deutsch

Die Bismarkstraße (Fußgängerzone) war schon vor der Pandemie und meinem Umzug im Jahr 2007 eigentlich nichts viel mehr als 1 Euro Shops und Bäcker.
Die Straße ging mit dem Niedergang der deutschen Kaufhäuser mehr und mehr den "Bach runter".
Im Rathaus Center hattest du vielfältige Auswahl, dazu dann noch den Kaufhof. Auf halber Strecke Richtung Berliner Platz war dann Horten (an der Querstraße rechts) und am Berliner Platz in der "Tortenschachtel" Kaufhalle.

Horten wurde zum Kaufhof und schloß irgendwann ganz ... Kaufhalle und die Tortenschachtel war ein Kapitel für sich (inzwischen nach jahrelangem Leerstand abgerissen ... und Neuplanung schon längst überfällig - der Investor war glaub ich zwischendrin sogar insolvent)

Das Shopping-Center "Walzmühle" ist dann im Anschuss sowas von gefloppt (inklusive dem Multiplex-Kinos was sogar einige Säle mindestens zeitweise ungenutzt lies)
Rathaus-Center und RheinGalerie sollten ursprünglich mal miteinander verbunden werden ... ist aber auch gescheitert ... deswegen auch wohl nur der südliche Eingang ... der nördliche wäre dann mit der Verbindung zum Rathaus gekommen.

Spätestens an dem Punkt der Einführung der "Netzfunktion" für Jeden mit dem Rhein-Neckar-Ticket bist du spätestens dann wenn du in mehrere Läden wolltest und evtl. sogar was gesucht hast sowieso nach Manneim mit der Straßenbahn. Das hat dann auch nochmal zu einigen Schließungen in der Ludwigshafener Innenstadt geführt.

Das Hochstraßendebakel hätte übrigens noch größer ausfallen können, den die "Süd" (die abgerissene Hochstraße) hätte eigentlich während des Abrisses der "Nord" die Umleitung machen sollen ... jetzt betet die halbe Region, dass es die Nord noch solange mitmacht, bis die Süd wieder in Funktion ist ... sollte die Nord früher schlapp machen wäre das mehr als nur ein worsed case ... das währe der verkerliche Zusammenbruch, da dan zwischen Mannheim und Ludwigshafen neben der Autobahnbrücke A6 und der Rheinfähre in Altrip keine Rheinquerung ohne Verkehrshindernisse angefahren werden könnte und die A650 endgültig im Niemandsland endet (eigentlich geht die über die Süd und die Adenauer-Brücke direkt nach Mannheim und dort wahlweise in Richtung Stadt oder über Fahrlach runter zur A656 und zur A5

[ThePhilNews]

As someone from that area one of the most important things as to why it looks so deserted is this: Why go to Ludwigshafen if Heidelberg is not even 30 minutes away? The ugliest city being not even 20 kilometers away from the most beautiful city isn't a coincidence.

[pixoontube]

Ludwigshafen's train station is so confusing that I once missed my connection simply due to the fact that I could not find the right platform in time.

[twinmama]

Dear Andrew,
I'm pleasantly surprised how fair and accurate your video was regarding the city center. But the city center is not the whole city. All but one part of the city used to be independent villages and even a town until they were incorporated into the city (and most of them against the will of the people during the Nazi regime). There are remnants of a baroque residence and a pilgrimage church in the former town of Oggersheim.
To be fair, DB's planning of the main train station was grandios but it worked fine with TEE and Intercity trains once every hour into all directions until the ICE arrived on the stage. ICE trains are longer than ICs and TEEs used to be - too long for Ludwigshafen's train station - and because of the triangle rails they couldn't extend the platforms. So DB just kicked Ludwigshafen out of the network. This was not the city's fault.
The elevated motorways are the city's fault. In the 1950s they fell into the modernist, car-friendly trap. And the city was rich, very rich at that time. So they decided to plan and construct them on their own. They didn't think about maintanance and they didn't predict the poor finances. The newer, northern one has been in disrepair for 20ish years, the older, southern one was in pretty good shape until they rerouted all heavy vehicles in order to save the northern from total collapse before the scheduled demolishing in a few years. But at a routine check they discovered very severe damage and had to close it.
Ludwigshafen as a city has two problems. 1. Mannheim is a better shopping destination. You can find any shop you can find in Ludwigshafen and more. The big chains (e.g. Galeria and C&A) had shops in Mannheim with double the size of their Ludwigshafen counterparts. Some chains (e.g. Karstadt) never came to Ludwigshafen. Before the Rathaus Center was closed Bismarckstraße was very busy but since then the shoppers moved one street over to Ludwigsstraße and one further to Rheingalerie - Mall. 2. Ludwigshafen provides many services to the surrounding towns and villages (museums, theater, courthouse, swimming-pools, schools [about half of the students in Gymnasiums and Realschulen do not live in Ludwigshafen]) and don't get any money from the towns and villages. Those are more attractive to people with higher income, so most of the money from income tax of people working in the city goes to the surrounding villages. In the city there live unproportinally high numbers of longtime unemployed people or people with low income, which strains the city's finances even further.
On another note: Ludwigshafen is a very green city with many parks. It is part of Germany's largest tram-net from Bad Dürkheim in the west via Ludwigshafen and Mannheim to Weinheim and Heidelberg in the east. Rent is far cheaper than in Mannheim. All in all Ludwigshafen is a very liveable city. Weinstraße with dozens of wine-villages, hundreds of vineries, and a Weinfest somewhere every weekend is but half an hour away. And beyond Weinstraße lies Pfälzerwald, Germany's largest forest, Speyer with its medieval city center and the largest romanesque church north of the alps is close by.
I was born and raised there and only because of my husband I moved to a village just outside the city limits. I could not imagine to live elsewhere.
CU twinmama

[CarinaCoffee]

Honestly apart from the ugly cement buildings and the mostly dead city centre the real problem here is the humidity. When I moved to Ludwigshafen I didn't know that I was moving to the most humid part of Germany.
Ludwigshafen does have some nice areas, like along the Rhine, the park island and the old buildings in the Southern district of the city that weren't bombed during WWII.
The greatest advantage is living in a hotpot of ethnicities, rent is cheaper than in the surrounding areas and it's so well connected with public transport. You can go to the Pfälzer Wald and wine country by train in under 30 minutes, you jump onto a tram and you're at the Neckar River in 10-15 minutes and Mannheim just over the river has access to all the long distance trains and the regional express trains.
You get a lot of living value for a lower price in such a massive metropolitan area. Those are definitely the positive parts of living here

[CarinaCoffee]

Yeah Andrew, the mainstreet used to be marginally more bustling like 10 years ago when I moved here, but I wouldn't say it was so much the pandemic or even the Rhein Gallerie that sucked the live out of it.
Once the Rhein Gallerie opened some shops moved there, but it was already dying before that. What really seemed to give it the last nail into the coffin was when it became clear that the Rathaus Center was going to get demolished.
Even with the Rhein Gallerie there still were some shops in the Rathaus Center which gave people reason to go to that part of the city centre (the train, bus and tram hub Berliner Platz is at the other end of it). Slowly surrounding shops closed and then all the shops in the Rathaus Centre.

[PlittHD]

So is Ludwigshafen the ugliest city in Germany?
Short answer: Yes.
Long answer:

[CieFood]

I went to vocational school in Ludwigshafen once. Our teacher said that one of the reasons LU is so ugly and poor is because the BASF chose to pay taxes at another location of theirs. LU used to be wealthy in the 70s, but then a new law came allowing companies to choose in which city they want to pay taxes in. (ofc they need a branch there)

[klickeradoms]

I grew up in Ludwigshafen and never questioned the aesthetics back then, I even like(d) the 70s concrete stuff. Since moving out I started to have reference and it is in fact not the most beautiful place in Germany. Thanks for being so sachlich with it!