Editing Ludwigshafen (section)

===Financial crisis===
In the early 1970s, a plan to reform the composition of the German Bundesländer, which would have created a new state around a united Mannheim-Ludwigshafen as capital with more than half a million inhabitants, failed.

Nevertheless, further ambitious projects were financed in Ludwigshafen, first of all the 15-floor city hall with its linked-up shopping centre ([[Rathaus Center]]). The last (up to now) new incorporated suburb was [[Ruchheim]] in 1974.

But then a process began that accelerated during the 1980s and 1990s and caused the financial near-collapse of Ludwigshafen. The enormous maintenance costs of the buildings and institutions introduced during the "fat time", new tax regulations that cut down the [[trade tax]] profits from the local industries, and thousands of dismissals in BASF were the main causes for the city's crisis. Loss of population due to the loss of working places and general economic trends, such as the oil crises, further worsened Ludwigshafen's financial situation at the end of the 20th century.

The negative aspects of industrial success became obvious when examinations revealed the bad state of air and the Rhine due to [[pollution]]. There had always been some stench or dirt all over the city, caused by BASF and other plants, and as long as the industry had prospered, people had accepted it. Besides that, the concrete constructions that had been so modern after the war and had a formative influence on today's cityscape were increasingly considered as obsolete.