ABSTRACT
For Vienna, the main consequence of the fall of the Iron Curtain was the dramatic shift of its geopolitical and geo-economical location: from a marginal position to a central one in Europe. Vienna expected to become one of the most promising interfaces between the east and the west (Borsdorf 2002). The new location factors became even more relevant when Austria entered the European Union in 1995 and the Union itself expanded towards the east in 2004. The new location in a unifying Europe was the reason for fundamental changes in the urban economy. While the industrial sector suffered a remarkable decrease in size, the service sector was not only able to compensate for the loss of the secondary sector, but was even responsible for an increase in the number of employed people in Vienna. In 2001, more than 80 per cent of all gainfully employed people were working in the service sector (Hatz 2002).
