In the first few years after we started Dispatches Europe, we had annual lists of the best cities for expats. The usual suspects were on the list year after year – Vienna, Berlin and Lisbon. But about 2020, the housing crisis hit and it got tougher and tougher to find cities with both career opportunities and housing.
Think about it: The cities with the biggest demand for highly skilled internationals also have the most housing stress.
Over the years, we’ve read about a lot of crazy ambitious projects to add housing in Paris, Oslo and other cities. Very few of those actually happened. Lately, though, we’ve noticed that more and more projects across Europe, with more and more housing, really are coming on-line, including in our own headquarters of Eindhoven. So, some good housing news for a change.
Here’s an update for the end of 2024:
HafenCity in Hamburg
HafenCity is Europe’s largest inner-city urban development project, increasing the size of Hamburg’s city center by 40 percent. The goal is that by 2030, not that long from now, 15,000 people will live here, more than 40,000 people will work here and 80,000 tourists will visit HafenCity.
This is, like most big developments in Europe, a public/private partnership with 13 billion euros invested – 10 billion euros of private funds and 3 billion in public investment, mostly via land sales, according to the Ellen McArthur Foundation, a Isle of Wight-based foundation that encourages Green projects.
Unlike Aspern Seestadt in Vienna, which has housing aimed at the middle class, HafenCity is bringing to Hamburg luxury apartments with Manhattan-style price tags.
Apartments in the Elbphilharmonie, a 26-story mixed-use development that includes a concert hall, range in size from 120 meters2 to 400 meters2, or about 1,300 square feet to 4,300 square feet. The last apartment already sold for 11 million euros.
Current projects include the 55-floor, 245-metre high Elbtower in HafenCity, which will have space for 5,000 workplaces.
Here are some of the numbers for the entire project from the HafenCity website:
• Overall area: 157 ha of former port and industrial land • Land area: 127 ha • Expansion of Hamburg city center by 40 percent • 10.5 km dockside promenade / 3.1 km Elbe embankment • 6,500–7,000 homes (approx. 1,500–2,000 subsidized) for approx. 13,000–14,000 residents • Building density: 3.7–5.6 floor space index (FSI) • Residential density: 110/ha (land area) • Employee density: 354/ha (land area) • 57 projects completed; 53 projects under construction or planned
Nordhavn in Copenhagen
Nordhavn started construction in 2009. The goal was – over the next 50 years – to convert a large section of Copenhagen’s under-used industrial port into a collection of inviting urban neighborhoods, with housing for as many as 40,000 residents. The Nordhavn vision is a community built on a “five-minute principal,” where it will take no more than five minutes for residents to reach schools, daycare facilities, groceries and the metro. And all of this a 15-minute metro ride from Copenhagen’s central station, overlooking the Oresund Strait separating Denmark and Sweden.
This, unlike some of the other projects we’ve posted about, actually happened. The BBC posted in November that there are “gleaming apartment buildings, high-end office spaces and a cafe-lined boardwalk along the previously industrial harbour.”
This is a big public-private project, 95-percent owned by Copenhagen government and 5 percent by the Danish government. Copenhagen has several other projects going on simultaneously, including Paper Island, designed to focus on public spaces and housing for all income groups; and Carlsberg City District that’s “built on four pillars of beer production: science, innovation, art and culture,” according to the BBC.
One of the most ambitious projects in Europe, by 2030, Aspern Seestadt (estimated investment 5 billion euros) is projected to have 8,500 units, with as many as 30,000 residents living around an artificial lake. The district is a 25-minute subway ride from downtown Vienna (with its own new line) and a 28-minute train trip to the Slovakian capital of Bratislava.
This is not a pie-in-the-sky project … this is happening now. Our Vienna contributor Thom Harding has written extensively this year about Aspern City. You can see Pt. 1 here and Pt. 2 here.
SDK Vastgoed is redeveloping the area around the Deken van Somerenstraat on the edge of the centrum. Nieuw Bergen adds 3,200 meters2 of green to the Eindhoven city centre. This will be the highest urban density in this already densely populated city, with large building volume. But there are no plans for massive residential towers, which are a thing here now, with several under construction. The design by international architectural firm MVRDV includes diagonal cuts, which gives the project an open character.
This 29,000 meters2 project will include seven buildings with 237 new homes, a 1,700 meters2 commercial section and 270 meters2 of urban farming and underground parking. This is adjacent to Kleine Berg, Eindhoven’s tiny upscale shopping and restaurant district, so these units will go fast. And they’ll be pricey.
This is just one of many projects in Eindhoven, which desperately needs more housing as Europe’s No. 1 semiconductor hub and an expat center. More on that later.
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