Employees of the city cleaning service usually don't receive such an escort: While the street cleaner sweeps the Taunusstraße of garbage and dirt with a broom and water hose, a police squad car follows him at a walking pace with its blue lights flashing visibly from afar. In Frankfurt's Bahnhofsviertel, it's common for workers maintaining the infrastructure to operate under police protection. The area between Niddastraße and Münchener Straße is infamous for its open drug scene, crime, and prostitution. At the same time, Germany's most well-known social hotspot serves as the gateway to the financial metropolis for tens of thousands daily, on their way to the glittering banking district.

Currently, the debate about the security situation is once again gaining momentum. A British tabloid newspaper has highlighted the drug misery in the Football Euro Championship venue Frankfurt on its front page and warned English football fans not to stay in one of the numerous hotels in the vicinity of the train station. „The Sun“ is renowned for anything but subtle headlines. But the fact that the tabloid immediately dubbed the Bahnhofsviertel as „Zombieland“ and „Germany's biggest slum“ hit the city's top officials hard.

Almost immediately following the headlines, Mayor Mike Josef, flanked by a shrewdly calculated two-thirds of his municipal administration, as the Hessischer Rundfunk pointed out sarcastically, unveiled a comprehensive package of measures. Its goal must be that no one goes to the Bahnhofsviertel „with a bad feeling“, so the core message. A sentence that stands for everything that goes wrong in the debate about the hotspot. A sentence that segregates, that separates between „Us“ and „Them“, between bourgeois passers-by, for whom the misery when walking through the quarter is unbearable, and the hundreds of nameless ones, whose fall through the social safety net ended on the hard pavement of the Bahnhofsviertel. An attitude that primarily perceives social misery as a risk for location marketing. And that explains why increased police presence and controls preferably take place in the period around elections, why a weapons-free zone and comprehensive video surveillance primarily appeal to the sense of security of passers-by: social cosmetics.

None of the homeless, drug addicts, or sex workers struggling to survive go through the Bahnhofsviertel with a „good feeling“. None of them voluntarily chose to undermine the glossy image of a financial metropolis. These are people who have lost everything, who are fighting for their existence and often for their lives. What is necessary is an honest and consistent confrontation with the causes of poverty, drug use, and homelessness. If it is possible to help the affected individuals lead a better life, a „better feeling“ will naturally arise among passers-by and tourists.