Introduction

Abstract

Metropolitan growth has been dramatic in the industrialized countries since the Second World War. Today, metropolitan regions are increasingly recognized as the national growth and development engines in a globalizing world (Jacobs 1984; Huggins 1997), and in particular as the driving forces in national as well as global innovation processes (Shefer and Frenkel 1998). In the industrialized countries, the metropolitan regions play a critical role not only as major generators of value added but also as major nodes for creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship as well as for communication and transportation. In line with Duranton and Puga (2005), one could claim that metropolitan regions are functionally specialized in the invention and creation on new products, i.e. innovation. Thus, since they are highly diversified and contain a broad range of different types of industries, local business services and firm sizes, they function as “incubator cities” (Chinitz 1961) or “nursery cities” (Duranton and Puga 2001), i.e. as superior ‘incubators’ for the development of innovations and for the development and growth of both new and small firms.