Advanced Economic Geography

Course goals

• Analyse the current and historic economic functions of cities on the basis of contemporary economic geography theories and approaches.
• Apply economic geography thinking to the analysis of urban development.
• Draw on a rich set of examples for evolutionary and non-evolutionary urban development processes.
• Debate the strength and weakness of contemporary economic geography discussion with respect to urban evolution.
• Communicate and present the learning objectives in a creative and effective way.

Content

The course’s objective is to present and discuss cities from an economic geography perspective. More precisely, the long-term evolution of selected cities will be analyzed focusing on contemporary discussion in the literature. These discussions center on spin-offs & entrepreneurship processes , the product-space perspective, global production networks, the regional resilience literature, the triple-helix model, as well as the relevance of creative industries for the economic evolution of cities. In the courses, the theoretical discussions will be directly linked to specific city examples showcasing their contemporay and historic relevance for the understanding of urban economic development.

The course will include the study of ‘real world’ cases in lectures, which will be discussed in more depth in the tutorials using scientific studies. In the seminars, students will actively carry out group project assignments that are not only literature based but also include working with multi-media.