What are the success factors for contemporary, attractive city centres against the background of urbanisation, digitisation and structural change? And which aspects are particularly important to people when they visit the city? IFH Cologne has been investigating this question every two years since 2014 with a large-scale survey of visitors in their resulting "Vital City Centres" study. It has conducted more than 59,000 interviews with visitors to city centres at 116 locations nationwide.
Leipzig, Erfurt, Trier, Stralsund and Wismar are ranked the best in their respective category. In order to be able to compare the individual cities better and obtain valid data for future strategies, the cities are ranked within their size class. As in 2016, Leipzig won out among the cities with more than 500,000 residents. The other top cities are: Erfurt (200,000 to 500,000 residents), Trier (100,000 to 200,000 residents), Stralsund (50,000 to 100,000 residents) and Wismar (up to 50,000 residents). These cities perform best on average in terms of ambience, accessibility, parking facilities, shop opening hours, gastronomy, retail, leisure and service offerings.