Rick Vermeulen

Pursuing the Peripheral Path? A Path-Dependent Analysis of the Frankfurt and Munich Fairs

Abstract As a result of increasing competition and internationalization, many Western European cities have invested in exhibition facilities. Surprisingly, many new exhibition centres emerge in the urban periphery. An assessment of the 34 largest exhibition centres in Western Europe shows that only 16 are still centrally located while 18 now have a peripheral location. This is a drastic break from the traditional location of these centres in inner city cores. Behind this observation of spatial change is a complex set of dilemmas about investments in current or new locations. A fresh analytical model (based on assumptions of path dependency) is constructed and employed to analyse time and place specific determinants and opportunities. Two contrasting cases are selected in comparable German cities. Frankfurt decided to renew its facilities in the centre of the city, whereas Munich opened a relocated exhibition centre in 1998. Based on these case studies, the paper concludes that there is no autonomous force pulling exhibition centres towards the periphery, but it is rather a misfit between the central location and new physical, functional, spatial, and institutional demands that causes a facility to move.

Locating exhibition centers: how to explain divergent spatial development in Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Milan and Munich

Abstract Since the 1980s, investment in exhibition center infrastructure in Western Europe has followed a divergent pattern. On one hand, investment in the extension and renewal of historical inner-city facilities, dominant in earlier decades, continued while on the other hand many new venues were created in the periphery of European metropolises, thereby breaking with the earlier pattern. This paper tries to explain these contradictory developments by developing its own theoretical model based on path dependency theories. This model is used to analyze recent spatial strategies of two centrally located facilities in Frankfurt and Amsterdam and two recently constructed peripheral complexes in Munich and Milan. It is concluded that differences can only be accounted for through historically developed and locally specific opportunities and limitations that manifest themselves in the dimensions of physical form, function, spatial embeddedness and institutional setting.

Planning olympic legacies: transport dreams and urban realities, by Eva Kassens-Noor

of networks alone is not enough to create civic capital. Therefore leaders, as the key nodes in networks, creating engagement, are analyzed. Scale is the final important notion, as local leaders are not contributing to regional civic capital networks until they are engaged at a regional scale. These are the vague and constantly shifting boundaries of regional communities. The second part of the research is the empirical part, analyzing four cases in Germany and Canada. In Germany the metropolitan region of Frankfurt Rhein-Main, with the city of Frankfurt as its dominant element, and the neighboring Rhein-Neckar region with three more or less equal cities, are analyzed. The Canadian cases are the Toronto metropolitan area, which is dominated by the city of Toronto and includes some influential suburbs, and the second case of Waterloo, located an hour west of Toronto and by far the smallest of all cases. All four cases focus on three policy areas of regional integration: regional marketing, metropolitan public transportation, and cultural-policy coordination. The book concludes with three key findings. The more often used institutional and opportunities variables produce different outcomes across the different cases. Civic capital however proves to be a more effective predictor of cooperative intensity, relative to the factors mentioned above, because places with strong civic capital can more easily overcome the barriers to cooperation. Third, the findings highlight differences between Canadian and German cases that suggest a potential role of national political cultures in shaping cooperative outcomes. A crucial and perhaps unavoidable weakness of the research is the choice to study cases of formal networks of regional cooperation. The administrative boundaries of these networks do not overlap with the functional regional scale as the research concludes. This leads to the conclusion that the two large cases have less civic capital and less intense cooperation. However, the true regional civic capital might be organized on a different level in these cases, in more informal networks that remain invisible when studying the formal metropolitan scales used. Furthermore, the different outcomes in the two smaller cases show that cooperation and thus the positive influence of civic capital is not equal across the three policy areas. This could imply first that civic capital has different impacts in different policy areas, or second, mean that civic capital exists in different shapes across countries. These questions deserve further study of the positive role of civic capital in regional cooperation.

Planning olympic legacies: transport dreams and urban realities, by Eva Kassens-Noor: London and New York, Routledge, 2012, xxi + 131pp., £24.99 (paperback), ISBN 978-0-415-68971-7

of networks alone is not enough to create civic capital. Therefore leaders, as the key nodes in networks, creating engagement, are analyzed. Scale is the final important notion, as local leaders are not contributing to regional civic capital networks until they are engaged at a regional scale. These are the vague and constantly shifting boundaries of regional communities. The second part of the research is the empirical part, analyzing four cases in Germany and Canada. In Germany the metropolitan region of Frankfurt Rhein-Main, with the city of Frankfurt as its dominant element, and the neighboring Rhein-Neckar region with three more or less equal cities, are analyzed. The Canadian cases are the Toronto metropolitan area, which is dominated by the city of Toronto and includes some influential suburbs, and the second case of Waterloo, located an hour west of Toronto and by far the smallest of all cases. All four cases focus on three policy areas of regional integration: regional marketing, metropolitan public transportation, and cultural-policy coordination. The book concludes with three key findings. The more often used institutional and opportunities variables produce different outcomes across the different cases. Civic capital however proves to be a more effective predictor of cooperative intensity, relative to the factors mentioned above, because places with strong civic capital can more easily overcome the barriers to cooperation. Third, the findings highlight differences between Canadian and German cases that suggest a potential role of national political cultures in shaping cooperative outcomes. A crucial and perhaps unavoidable weakness of the research is the choice to study cases of formal networks of regional cooperation. The administrative boundaries of these networks do not overlap with the functional regional scale as the research concludes. This leads to the conclusion that the two large cases have less civic capital and less intense cooperation. However, the true regional civic capital might be organized on a different level in these cases, in more informal networks that remain invisible when studying the formal metropolitan scales used. Furthermore, the different outcomes in the two smaller cases show that cooperation and thus the positive influence of civic capital is not equal across the three policy areas. This could imply first that civic capital has different impacts in different policy areas, or second, mean that civic capital exists in different shapes across countries. These questions deserve further study of the positive role of civic capital in regional cooperation.