Stefan Krätke, (Frankfurt/Oder)
Urban economies in Germany. Cluster potential and global interconnections
Pages 145 - 163

Urban economies are the leading locational centres of corporate headquarters, advanced producer services, the media sector, research and development, particular “knowledge-intensive” activity branches of the economy and innovative industrial growth sectors. The urban regions might be characterized as heterogenous agglomerations of economic activities, which include a number of sub-economies with diffe-rent functions and forms of organisation. This article concentrates on the structural profiles of urban and regional economies in Germany. The urban economic centres of Germany are predominantly characterized by a strong concentration of different knowledge-intensive activity branches of the economy, which might be regarded as the “urban industries of the future”. These concentrations are being analysed in terms of their potential for cluster building. However, the urban regions’ economic potential reveils specific differences with regard to the large urban economic centres in West- and East-Germany. The final part of this article highlights the urban economies’ involvement in the process of globalization and the transnational connectivity of large cities. Here, the different position of particular urban economic centres in Germany and Europe as ancoring points of global firms’ organizational networks is being indicated with regard to global service providers and global media firms, emphasizing the global interconnections as an important development factor particularly in the metropoles of the urban system.


schließen