The municipality of the City of Rostock is divided according to the jurisdiction of the Mayor and four senatorial spheres. The municipality departments that participate in the ASCEND project (European Office, Hanse Sail Office and the Department for Culture and Preservation of Monuments and Historic Buildings) are assigned to the Mayor, or the senatorial sphere of culture, schools and sport. Town Hall.

After the political change, the use of areas and real estate for military and armaments purposes was stopped in Rostock to a considerable extent. Nowadays, these real estates are used by the University of Rostock and by the authorities, for instance by the labour exchange department. Residential dwellings were built on some areas. A wooded area in the territory “Rostocker Heide” of about 1,100 hectares was renaturised by funding from the EU programmes Konver I and II in the middle of the 1990s. Some remains of the former Ernst Heinkel Airplane Company, which are preserved and classified as historical monuments, are presently unused.

With about 200,000 inhabitants, Rostock is the biggest city of the Federal State of Mecklenburg–Western Pommerania. The harbour, shipping and shipping industry, from construction to repair, play an important role within the economic life of the City of Rostock. New opportunities may emerge from mechanical engineering and big combustion engineering, from electrical engineering, electronics, call-centres and wholesale trade. The tourism branch is also a leading growth sector. Because of this, the leisure, tourism and event facilities are being continuously developed and improved. The Hanse Sail belongs to the most beautiful water productions of the year – for the audience and even for the protagonists! Every year on the second weekend in August, more than 250 traditional sailing boats, museum steamers and passenger boats for tourists pass through Warnemünde several times on their way to the passenger quay or back to the City Harbour of Rostock.

More than 12,000 students are registered at the University of Rostock. Despite multifarious efforts to establish additional enterprises, the unemployment rate amounts to about 17 percent. Mainly because of this, the city has lost more than 50,000 inhabitants over the last 15 years.