Berlin: Towards a Global City?

Since 1990, the debate on urban restructuring in the new German capital city Berlin has frequently raised the question of whether Berlin is developing towards a global city type of urban region. Many European metropoles would like to be classified as global cities in order to enhance their reputation in the framework of interurban competition. The vision of Berlin as an upcoming global city had become part of the urban government's programme of innovation and technology development by 1999. This article provides a critical assessment of the global city vision of Berlin. The paper concentrates on two important aspects of the global city's economy: supraregional economic control capacity and the concentration of high-level business services. The findings are based on an empirical analysis of Berlin's interregional capital links and of the urban economy's functional structure, comparing Berlin, Hamburg and Paris. The conclusion is that Berlin hardly has a chance of becoming a 'true' global city in terms of a strategic economic centre with internationally extending control capacities like London and Paris.