ABSTRACT
The European Union forms a transnationally interlinked economic and institutional space that is being considered as an economic bloc in global competition with other large economic blocs in North America and Asia. With respect to its global competitiveness the EU has set up the ambitious aim of becoming a worldwide leading economic territory of the knowledge-intensive economy (‘Lisbon process’). However, the development of the EU territory reveals considerable structural differences between the European regions. In particular, the regions’ capacities in the field of innovation activity, research and technological development (see European Commission 1999, 2004; Cooke et al. 2000; Grotz and Schätzl 2001) are increasingly being considered as a key factor in regional economic success. The European urban and regional system today is subject to a double process which contains, on the one hand, a progressive economic integration within the EU territory (‘Europeanization’) and, on the other hand, the active involvement of the EU in a new development stage of the world economy (‘globalization’) which is marked by intensified worldwide economic interrelations. Thanks to their structural characteristics as centres of economic activity and prime nodes of transnational economic interaction, urban agglomerations and metropolitan regions are playing a prominent role in the globalization process. Furthermore, the economic integration of Europe happens quite substantially on the field of the transnational integration of formerly national urban systems. This leads to a revaluation of certain urban regions and to changes of their functional reach in the European and global context. The dominant economic developing centers of the EU territory are dynamic urban agglomerations and metropolitan regions in which in particular the knowledgeintensive services and research-intensive industrial activities concentrate. In these key sectors of an increasingly knowledge-intensive and innovation-driven economy the processes of selective regional concentration and cluster building are increasing the economic productivity and innovative capacity of the urban economic centers.
