Search

Half the population of Europe's largest economy by population and economic output lives in 30 main urban agglomerations. This paper presents a series of cartogram visualisations of population changes in Germany for these areas that happened in the period 2008–2013. Most of the areas have seen an urban renaissance by regaining growth. After a long period of suburbanisation, growth started returning to city centres. Among the few declining major urban agglomerations, the old industrial Ruhr area stands out, with an overall decline that is larger than any decline in all other major urban agglomerations put together. Population decline in the analysed period almost exclusively took place in suburban areas. Both trends mark an important change in the population dynamics of these major urban regions in the country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Going beyond the territorial/relational divide in regional studies requires researchers to do more than examine the extent to which territoriality and relationality are complementary alternatives. The variety of networked regional spaces means it is intellectually unsustainable to simply relate a single networked regional space to territory-scale without first considering how networked regional spaces interact. Illustrated through the experience of Germany, our paper demonstrates that interaction between different networked regional spaces (eg, city-regions and cross-border regions) is resulting in new networked regional imaginaries (eg, cross-border metropolitan regions). Its overall aim is to show that the production of entirely new networked spaces can assist in overcoming the contradictions present in one configuration of regions, but this only serves to create a new 'regional problem' requiring ever more complex configurations of regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Polycentric urban regions have been advocated for, and justified as enhancing both economic growth and overall competitiveness while also creating more equitable and balanced metropolitan regions. We examine the role of regional polycentricity in effectuating certain desirable outcomes, specifically enhancing economic productivity and minimizing spatial disparities simultaneously in German urban regions (Großstadtregionen) as a case study. Using econometric analysis of both functional and morphological polycentricity measures, our results indicate that polycentric development can effectively reduce regional disparities in urban regions, but not simultaneously promote economic productivity. These findings confirm previous studies that progress toward one goal hampers progress toward another. Further investigation at a finer scale suggests that the borrowed size effect is essentially a "win-loss" game between peripheries and urban core(s) within the same urban region. Peripheries benefit from the spillovers generated by nearby urban core(s), thereby narrowing regional economic gaps and leading to more equitable regions. However, the gains of the peripheries are canceled out by the losses of the urban cores, and polycentric development has an insignificant overall effect on regional economic productivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Monitoring and tracing product and process qualities along global supply chains have become increasingly challenging tasks for companies at the downstream end of the chain. High levels of uncertainty in trade coordination arise among importing companies in the face of these developments. The conceptual aim of this paper is to show, by the example of organic food imports to Germany and Australia, how convention theory can contribute to the analysis of trade coordination in global value chains. Our empirical results affirm that industrial conventions such as standards and third-party certification have gained increasing significance over the past two decades. Simultaneously, however, we argue that industrial conventions are not enough to overcome uncertainties in trade. They do not necessarily lead to reduced differences in perceptions of product quality between suppliers and importers. Less tangible factors such as trust established through relationship management and reputation are likewise significant. Furthermore, not only companies with a certain ideological tradition, but also individual people with altruistic motives within other types of firms, can determine how 'dedicated' a firm is in pushing trade coordination according to civic and domestic conventions. Market conventions (ie, the importance of price and competitiveness) are stressed more by Australian firms reflecting the country's liberal market economy and low state subsidies especially in the area of agriculture. Finally, compromises between conventions are sometimes necessary to end a situation of conflict between buyer and supplier. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the notion that entrepreneurship is a 'local event', the literature argues that entrepreneurs are 'rooted' in place. This paper tests the 'residential rootedness' hypothesis of self-employment by examining for Germany and the UK whether the selfemployed are less likely to move over long distances (internal migration) than workers in paid employment. Using longitudinal data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP) and the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS), and accounting for transitions in employment status we found little evidence that the self-employed in Germany and the UK are more rooted in place than workers in paid employment. Generally speaking, the selfemployed were no less likely than workers in paid employment to migrate over longer distance. In contrast to the residential rootedness hypothesis we found that entry into selfemployment and female self-employment are associated with internal migration, and that the self-employed who work from home (home-based businesses) are fairly geographically mobile. The gendered results suggest that women might use self-employment as a strategy to be spatially mobile with their household, or as a strategy to stay in the workforce after having moved residence until they find a job in the more secure wage and salary sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Even though labour has been an important research topic in the field of economic geography for many years, up to now little has been known about transnational labour migration of highly skilled employees in global production networks. This article examines the role and the impact of highly skilled (re-)migrants of Turkish origin who studied and/or worked in Germany for several years in knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS) offshoring. To do so we analyse the empirical case of a German automotive company that operates as a lead firm within a global automotive production network. The company has insourced enterprise resource planning (ERP) software services from their suppliers in Germany and offshored those to a captive offshore service centre in Istanbul (Turkey). Based on our empirical material, we found that highly skilled (re-)migrants of Turkish origin are used as boundary spanners to efficiently and effectively manage the knowledge transfers from the onshore organizations to the service centre in Istanbul. Thereby, highly skilled (re-)migrants of Turkish origin help to mitigate resistance and facilitate the dis- and re-embedding of knowledge within the offshoring process. The exploration of highly skilled labour migration from a transnational perspective contributes to the discussion about the role of labour in global production networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors contribute to the discussion on suburban developments by way of modeling the underlying social dynamics between suburban actors in two European suburban areas: the Wirral (Liverpool), UK and Leipzig, Germany. Data from questionnaires carried out in the two study areas are used to model social attraction and repulsion: that is, social segregation processes among socioeconomic groups. The model suggests that these social dynamics would, if other possible influences are ignored, lead to a situation of fluctuating residential in-migration and out-migration and to waves of suburbanization in the study regions. There are no persistent states: suburbanization would steadily continue until external--that is, not modeled--forces restrict movement, impact the spatial characteristics of the suburbs, or alter the social interactions among the actors. Suburban in-migration could only be reduced by strict planning regulations and/ or other external forces which impact actor-class constellations and interdependencies, for example, by measures to restrict migration to more distant suburban locations and to provide preferential housing in the inner urban areas. The analysis further indicates that suburbs develop into independent residential areas, separate from the urban centers, as the primary source of migration to suburbs is no longer the urban centers; the vast majority of moves occur within suburbs or into suburbs from outside the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]