Rolf H. Funck

Cultural Activities: Source of Competitiveness and Prosperity in Urban Regions

Over the past two decades, the potential of cultural activities to contribute to regional economic development has been increasingly recognised. This paper provides an analysis of the importance of the cultural sector for the economic prosperity of an urban region using the example of the city of Karlsruhe in Germany. It argues that the evaluation of the role of this sector involves the assessment of its direct contribution to regional performance and its impact on the competitiveness of other economic activities located there. The paper contains an empirical part where an effort is made to measure these effects. Finally, the role played by cultural initiatives in the regional development of the urban area of Karlsruhe is discussed.

Innovative Behaviour, R&D Development Activities and Technology Policies in Countries in Transition: The Case of Central Europe

In the early 80s Professor Zbigniew Brzezinski, former President Jimmy Carter’s National Security adviser prophesized that the decade would either result in a war between the superpowers, or lead to the demise of the communist system and of the Soviet dominance in Eastern Europe. His main argument was that the Soviet socio-economic system was unable to meet the challenge of the new wave of innovations in communications and computers, based on research and development in microelectronics and related fields. This wave of innovations had already started to reshape the way business was done and the way society and its communication channels were controlled. It rewrote the military-defence framework and accelerated the pace of change in societal arrangements. It also made the information-control mechanisms used by the totalitarian communist regimes increasingly inefficient and irrelevant, so that they would become untenable. Brzezinski’s fear of a major confrontation between the superpowers stemmed from his belief that the Soviet generals had been aware of the innovation weaknesses and deficits inherent in their system, and could have been tempted to launch a surprise preemptive strike, before the free-market technological superiority established itself.

Regional development and technology policies: Some lessons from the German experience

Abstract The development of economic, ecological, social, cultural and political conditions has a lasting influence on the development of individual regions and economic areas, and is in turn influenced by them. Background conditions in Germany have changed over the last few years, with reunification and the upheavals in Eastern Europe, the prospective completion of the Singh European Market and the increasingly insistent new challenges in the areas of the environment and transport. This paper gives some examples of the changes taking place in some of these background conditions, and discusses their foreseeable future regional impacts in the FRG. In the last 10 years, Baden‐Wurttemberg in south‐west Germany has been considered as one of the most successful examples in Europe of regional structural adaptation combined with a dynamic innovation system. The characteristics of the economic development of this region and their causes are dealt with.

The New Europe: Political, Social and Economic Changes in Eastern European Countries and Their Impacts on the Spatial Division of Labour

The first two years of transformation in Central and Eastern Europe have shown that the process of change is much more complicated and painful than was originally expected. The initial euphoria following the non-violent take-over of power from the communist governments by the opposition democratic movements has been replaced by the sober awareness that political, mental and economic obstacles to the transformation from centrally planned to market oriented economies are indeed formidable. The political consensus that cemented these opposition movements in the time of their resistance against totalitarian governments, gave way to a splintering up of them, and to bitter quarrels between the various groups of former dissidents. Political stability in all reforming countries, and even in some cases their territorial integrity, are endangered. The impetus of economic transformation has slowed down, due to the unavoidable social costs connected with this process which have come to the fore, and which pose not only huge problems with regard to the interregional and interpersonal assessment of these costs, but in some cases have virtually brought to a halt the implementation of the transformation projects themselves.

Regional Integration of Transport and Communications Systems in Southern Africa

Karin Peschel’s — may I say: infatuation with Southern Africa which began in the 1970s was, I believe, caused as much by a personal fascination with some of the world’s most beautiful sorts of countryside as by her political desire to understand the then prevailing multicultural conflicts and evaluate the differing approaches to overcome them, and her interest as an economist in the reasons for failure or success of the efforts toward socio-economic development in the region.

The Social Market Economy — Present and Future

With his contribution on “Das Magische Neuneck — Umwelt und Sicherheit in einer Volkswirtschaft” Wolfgang Eichhorn takes a stand in the systems-economic discussion on an adequate adaption of the social market economy to socioeconomic developments. Whereas Eichhorn focuses on the design problems of a free enterprise system in developed industrial societies by indicating the necessity of considering and formulating new economic policy objectives, the authors of a memorandum of the Protestant church in Germany titled “Gemeinwohl und Eigennutz — Wirtschaftliches Handeln in Verantwortung fur die Zukunft” address the issue from a world political point of view and by applying Christian-ethical standards, dealing with fundamental as well as topical questions of present and future adequacy of the concept of the social market economy. In the present contribution we concentrate on problems of relevance for the ecologic system, for demography, and distribution policies, as selected from the broad contents of the memorandum. These problems are discussed with special recognition of their consequences with regard to a restructuring of the concept and implementation procedures of the social market economy, in order to preserve its problem solving capacity and, therefore, its survival. Thus, at the same time, some substantial aspects of Eichhorn’s expositions are rather thoroughly reflected.

Information Technology, the Urban System and Urban Policy Consequences

As with many other mature economies in recent years, the economy of the Federal Republic of Germany has — among other factors like the population decline — experienced serious structural changes connected with the rapid development and spread of new technologies leading to the creation of new economic activities, reshaping the character of the old ones and influencing the structure of the labour force. In this chapter, various aspects of the relationships between new technologies on the one hand, and the regional structure and the development of the urban system in West Germany on the other are analysed. Among the influences of the cluster of new technologies (Lakshmanan and Chatterjee 1986, p.15) which cause these cumulative effects, information technologies play an important role. A continuing structural change in the sectoral composition of the economy, leading to a growing dominance of the service sector and to changes within this sector itself (see Table 1), indicates the extent of these influences.

New Technology, Innovative Activities, and the German City System

In recent years the economy of the Federal Republic of Germany has experienced serious structural changes which have resulted, on the one hand, in stagnation and decay of various traditional activities in manufacturing and mining and on the other hand in the rapid development and spread of new, information-based sectors. As a consequence, old industrial centers have lost their status as spatial nuclei of economic activity, and new, information, technology, and service-oriented centers have emerged.