Tom 60 (2002): Zeszyt 2 (March 2002)

The temporal horizon currently applied in population prognoses for counties and selected towns and cities in the German federal state of Brandenburg is the year 2015. However, a considerable number of important planning issues call for significantly longer-term forecasts of demographic developments. Such issues include the decisions which need to be taken by housing providers in the context of urban redevelopment regarding the reduction or supplementation of the housing stock; other examples are investment decisions affecting social and technical infrastructure, and labour-market matters. Consequently, the Spatial Monitoring Section within Brandenburg's State Environmental Agency has undertaken population-development forecasts with a 2040 horizon for 25 towns and cities in Brandenburg with populations in excess of 20,000. These forecasts highlight in particular the specific problems facing cities in eastern Germany; what they reveal especially clearly is that the drastic shifts in age structure expected to become evident over the coming years will continue after 2015, and in some cases will become even more pronounced.

Business start-ups are considered to represent an important means for renewing regional economic structures. There is to date, however, little empirical evidence regarding the timescales affecting business start-ups, nor are sectoral or geographical breakdowns or data on survival rates available. The first part of this article consists of an analysis of start-up activity in western Germany between 1983 and 1997, revealing a relatively high constancy between structures and processes. One further important finding is the discovery overall of a reciprocal relationship between the start-up rates observed for specific cohorts and their survival rates over a five-year term, attributable largely to the service sector. The second part of the study draws on regression analysis in an attempt to assess the geographical differences for start-up rates and survival rates. The models for start-ups provide relatively good certainty levels (60–84 %); the results for survival rates are not quite as sound. Overall the study reveals that both start-up rates and survival rates are influenced significantly by the respective business sector and by the regional milieu (size of businesses, qualifications, unemployment rate, etc.). In the final section, these findings are used to develop ideas for regional structure policy.

Although cluster approaches in regional development policy have gained popularity, methods of identifying and analyzing industry clusters are still unsatisfactory. This paper presents a procedure first to delimit the objective and spatial characteristics of a cluster, second to show the interconnection between firms, and third to enable an interregional comparison between clusters. These procedures rely on regional statistical methods combined with a survey of companies and cluster institutions. The evaluation demonstrates on the one hand how economic actors are bound in a functional interrelation of a value added chain and on the other hand what kind of transaction and communication network is built by these same economic actors. From that evaluation, qualitative and quantitative criteria are provided to assess clusters. This method has been tested on the example of the film industry in Potsdam-Babelsberg.

On the basis of a comparison of current conditions in Murich and Oberhausen with regard to both the local economy and the state of urban development, the authors attempt to establish just what are the critical factors which determine whether the decision to locate a major leisure project (an “FGP”) in a particular city harbours more advantages or disadvantages for the city concerned. The authors look critically at the arguments frequently advanced in favour of FGPs, namely the “added leisure value” and “locational benefits”, as well as the gains anticipated for the city’s economic strength, for city and regional development, for the city’s image and for its competitive position vis-à-vis other cities. Proceeding from an appraisal of the current leisure value of the two cities, they go on to examine and to assess the impact of such a new FGP on the existing range of decentralised retail and leisure amenities. Where the initial assessment of a city–s leisure value is high, an FGP is unlikely to be capable of generating additional demand. Thus, the very significant displacement of demand which can be expected to take place following the opening of a new FGP will be accompanied by losses in terms of both leisure value and urbanity. The authors also indicate what factors need to be considered in selecting the right location for an FGP, assuming that such a development is deemed desirable from an urban development perspective.

In the past decade an astonishing number of new regional co-operations were established all over Germany. Now the question arises how their continuity can be achieved: How can co-operation be anchored in the region in the long term? It is obvious in this connection that the different forms of governance, for instance networks on the one hand and fixed formal organisations on the other, have their specific strengths and weaknesses. This article considers these in detail and formulates possible perspectives for future landscapes of regional governance on this basis.