In which German metropolis (bar Berlin) would you rather want to live?

[Tender Branson]

1. München
2. Hamburg
3. Köln

[Tender Branson]

Cultural similarities coupled with higher standard of living.

Living standards should be higher in the South.

Not really. Hamburg and Bremen are the two biggest states by gross regional product per capita, and North Rhine-Westphalia has the largest economy overall.

Hamburg and Bremen also have a huge debt problem, a lot of people on welfare and in dependency, generally people who are on drugs or in bad health, Muslim and other imported cultural extremism and a life expectancy far below anything you can find in South Germany. GDP per capita isn't telling much, because it is created by almost 50% from people out of their commuter belt.

[Tender Branson]

I have to admit that David is correct. The South of Germany is much wealthier than the North. Hamburg is just an oasis surrounded by its indebted neighbors; it even has the highest millionaire density within the whole of Germany.
Cologne is rather a poor city. Düsseldorf, 28 miles north of Cologne, is by contrast one of the wealthiest cities within the European Union.
Bremen, which is also a German state (consisting of Bremen and Bremerhaven only) is so poor and so heavily indebted that I couldn't even survive without the Länderfinanzausgleich, which only three states (some years ago Hamburg used to do also) pay into:

Cologne is the fifth wealthiest city in Germany; Düsseldorf ranks only eighth. There are indeed several wealthy South German cities, the most prominent being Munich, Stuttgart, and Nuremberg, but the list of wealthiest German cities is otherwise dominated by northern cities like Berlin, Hamburg, Frankfurt, and Hanover. Even when adjusting per capita, most of the larger wealthier cities are in the north, with Stuttgart and Munich again being really the only exceptions.

You have no clue.

Hamburg, Berlin, Bremen are the most indebted cities in Germany. Bremen especially can be seen as Germany's Detroit in that matter. Do you realize that states like Bayern or BW or Hessen and most of their communities there have only a fraction of the debt of these cities ? And this with a significantly higher lifestyle and life expectancy, lower crime and the same level of economic power and much lower unemployment and welfare rates ?