They’ve really had the socialistic concepts pounded into them for a long time, haven’t they, even since Bismarck’s time. They can’t conceive of private enterprise building infrastructure anymore.
The glaring example is the lack of affordable housing in urban areas.
They built so many stumbles for the real estate market...city council efforts to hinder you acquiring the property. Then political thugs want to gimmick you into a corner about how you build this...what gardens will be designed into it...what bike paths...and the diversified occupancy. Then they tell you that some of the project must be for ultra-low income, and you try to explain that you design for a profit, and they suggest they will hinder you until you cooperate. So you walk away.
Then you have city council operations who want to build special rules that if you did have cash, walk in and buy a 1950s built building and do a renovation, then to recoup your money....you have to double the rent, which makes the current renters go crazy....well, they will have rules to stop you. So no one really wants to renovate anymore. People complain about the lack of renovation but don’t understand that the fact that their rent hasn’t gone up since 1995...really doesn’t register any brain-waves.
Go bring up mass transit and major projects like Stuttgart-21....where billions were going to pour into a 10-year project, and how the Greens fought it tooth and nail. The whole of Stuttgart politically has been reshaped because of that fight. Strangely enough? Stuttgart-21 will continue on and somewhere around 2022...Stuttgart will be a magnet for tens of thousands of new residents because of the urban transport project.
You could write a 1,000-page book on incompetence within BER, the Berlin airport project, which is a utter failure.