Drive-in sex booths proposed for Berlin’s historic Tempelhof airport

An airport in Berlin could become a new site for sex workers after a city mayor suggested drive-in booths to be installed for clients.

An airfield in Berlin, which has previously transformed into an emergency shelter for refugees fleeing Syria and a gigantic rollerblading park, may play home to another less wholesome site.

According to CNN, the mayor of Berlin’s central Mitte district has proposed installing “Verichtungsboxen” — booths where sex workers can meet clients — in the airport site to improve the safety of the city’s sex workers.

Drive-in sex booths proposed for Berlin's historic Tempelhof airport.

Basically, if Stephan von Dassel, the mayor who represents the Green party, gets his way — drive-in style booths will be installed so people can meet sex workers while still in their car.

“Residents and businesses have been calling for a ban on street prostitution for many years,” he wrote in a statement, citing this concept would be an attempt to combat sex work in the “up-market” streets of Kurfürstenstrasse.

Former takeoff runway in public city park Tempelhofer Feld, former Tempelhof Airport in Berlin, Germany

Mr Dassel said the idea of launching booths would improve the lives of “residents and sex workers” alike.

Originally, politicians recommended these “booths” should be installed under a U-Bahn railway bridge near Kurfürstenstrasse, but Dassel says the site should be further afield.

Mr Dassel says the current conditions for sex workers are “inhumane” and increases the risk of “violence against women and drug addiction”.

A local mayor candidate wants to turn Berlin's Tempelhof airport to have drive-in sex booths.

Sex booths first appeared in the city of Utrecht in the Netherlands in the mid-1980s, and the concept has subsequently spread to multiple European cities.

In 2001, the city of Cologne in western Germany created a facility with security cameras and alarm buttons at each booth.