Leipzig

Leipzig is a city in the East of Germany. The city centre is a bit empty.

=Leipzig Project=

Leipzig project

Links
...with as scope transitions through post-industrial p2p cluster creation.

I ll add to my http://delicious.com/deliciousdante/leipzig+projects

Introduction to current housing situation
What concerns Leipzig, I feel this document is a good introduction ( in english - 300 k )

http://www.pik-potsdam.de/urbs/projekt/leipzig_dec02.pdf

excerpt :

" At the moment in Leipzig about 60.000 dwellings are empty; this is 17 % of the city’s housing stock. Approximately 20.000 of these dwellings aren’t habitable at the moment, though, but their great majority is offered on the housing market for rent. Thus, in Leipzig comfortable flats in good location are rather cheap – at least cheaper than in almost every other big German city – and very often even cheaper than in the new buildings in the city’s periphery. (The market for offices displays a similar pattern.) "

http://www.shrinksmart.ufz.de/data/WP2%20report%20Leipzig%20Halle_kompr13635.pdf ; page 6

excerpt : ''Today, Leipzig is not a shrinking city anymore when one only looks at the total population numbers; but urban shrinkage is an important topic for the city (coping with its consequences, dealing with shrinking neighbourhoods within the city) and this will also be true within the near future (new wave of shrinkage due to ageing and decrease in households).''

Yet if prospects seem to be evolving for Leipzig, for eastern germany as a whole, certain statistics predict a certain type of shrinking :

http://kulturstiftung-des-bundes.de/cms/en/programme/kunst_und_stadt/archiv/shrinking_cities.html

excerpt : "The situation is dramatic: 1.3 million apartments in eastern Germany are untenanted. In the year 2030, the figure is expected to increase to 2 million. The unemployment rate is 20 percent. More than a million residents have left the new states of the former East Germany. Young, well-educated people in particular are turning their backs on their home regions for the West in pursuit of jobs or apprenticeships, which are currently rare even there. "

additional report( 2 mb )

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1163152

Shrinking Cities in the world
some more docs, as I google :

http://www.google.be/search?q=leipzig+pdf+post-industrial&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:nl:official&client=firefox-a

for example :

http://www.ufz.de/data/06_2_banzhaf18860.pdf

excerpt :

" Most cities declining during the last 50 years are located in western industrial countries, particularly in the US (59), the UK (27), Germany (26) and Italy (23) (4). Since 1990, shrinking cities have in-creasingly been found in the states of the former socialist Eastern Europe such as in Russia (13), the Ukraine (22) and Kazakhstan (13). Between 1950 and 2000, there have also been an above-average number of shrinking cities in South Africa (17) and Japan (12). But ‘hot spots’ of this phe-nomenon have been in Europe and in the USA. Shrinkage will also emerge in the growing conur-bations of the developing world. In 35 years, less than 10% of the world's population will live in Europe or in the USA and some of the southern countries will be facing a general decrease in population, too (1)."

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http://www.shrinkingcities.com/analyse.0.html?&L=1

Since 2002, four local interdisciplinary teams study and document urban shrinking processes in the urban regions of Detroit (USA), Manchester/Liverpool (Britain), Ivanovo (Russia), and Halle/Leipzig (Germany). Each site stands as an example of a specific form of shrinking: In Detroit, the issue is the consequences of suburbanization; in Manchester/Liverpool, of deindustralization; in Ivanavo, of postsocialism; and in the greater Halle/Leipzig region, several of these factors are compounded.

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excerpt of an introduction to a conference :

http://www.plurel.net/images/PLUREL_Leipzig_programme.pdf

The Leipzig region is a representative example to carry out an ex-post analysis of social, economic and environmental consequences of post-socialist highly dynamic land conversion, extreme urban sprawl and considerable shrinkage under conditions of demographic change. During the last decade Leipzig was host of various international workshops coping with shrinkage, a.o. the exhibition of “Shrinking Cities”. The former Lord Mayor of Leipzig, Wolfgang Tiefensee, today Federal Minister for construction, planning and transportation, was the president of the European ‘Cities of tomorrow’ network.

Post Socialism
Other Interesting Pdf on evolution of Post-Socialist Leipzig Economics :

http://www.idhe.ens-cachan.fr/Eurocap/leipzig.pdf

Media Industry in Leipzig
http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~content=a713666259&db=all

The Re-emergence of a Media Industry Cluster in Leipzig This conceptualization is used as a basis for studying the new Leipzig media industry cluster. Leipzig, which is located in the Neue Lnder (States of the former German Democratic Republic), has traditionally been a major centre of industrial production in Germany. After the German unification, a significant proportion of Leipzig's manufacturing activities were terminated or downsized. Interestingly, a new media cluster has developed during the 1990s, driven by the activities of the MDR (Middle German Television and Broadcasting Service). This has stimulated substantial start-up activities in branches of the media industry, such as film/TV production, new electronic services/interactive media, graphics/design, PR/marketing and media-related hardware/software. Being virtually the only sector which has grown in recent years, the media sector has stabilized the local economy. In this paper, I investigate those forces which have supported start-up and location decisions of media firms and the role of local institutions and policy programmes in the clustering process.