Blue Banana
The Blue Banana denotes a densely populated zone, a band-shaped major European space between the Irish Sea and the Mediterranean, whose urbanization forms a chain of agglomerations. Due to the compression of population, economy, science and culture, capital, media, transport, infrastructure and settlement, as well as because of its global integration, this space reaches a high degree of centrality and dynamism. Almost all central institutions of the European Union and 20 Global and World Cities are in this room. With the City of London the Blue Banana has the largest financial center in Europe and one of the most important hubs of global economic and financial networks in the world. The term Blue Banana is based on an economic geographical model of a group to the French Roger Brunet from 1989, featuring a space relevant geographic transformations, offering an explanation for the different population densities in Europe and divided the continent while in so-called active and passive spaces. Developments or modifications of the model are the concepts of the Golden banana or the Blue Star dar.
The compression chamber is marked with the term Blue banana is not the result of planning, but has developed in the course of long-term historical and market-based processes through colonization. Today, this compression chamber is closely global competition and cooperation to other conurbations in the world, about to BosWash, Chipitts or SanSan in the U.S. or to large metropolitan areas on the coasts and major rivers of Asia, such as the Japanese Taiheiyo Belt.
Geographical delimitation
The Blue Banana has its northern end at the old industrial centers around Liverpool, Manchester and Birmingham, then runs south through the UK via the London area. In continental Europe, eventually it curves, while she closes Flanders, the northern area of Belgium, the southern part of the Netherlands, the Randstad, the Aachen region, the Ruhr, the agglomeration around Dusseldorf and Cologne / Bonn. From the Rhine -Ruhr from it extends further along the Rhine and consolidates the Frankfurt and the Rhine -Main area a. Over the Rhine- Neckar metropolitan region it continues to Stuttgart. At the apex of its arc touches the metropolitan regions of Nuremberg and Munich. To the south it continues across the Tri-national metropolitan region of the Upper Rhine to the metropolitan areas of Switzerland and ends in the north of Italy to the northern Italian cities of Turin, Milan, Genoa, Verona and Bologna.
The central axis of development of the Blue Banana is the Rhine because of its historical function as an important transport and trade in Europe.
The model of the Blue Banana can be supplemented by the model of the Golden Banana, by which also compressed metropolitan area along the Mediterranean coast (including the cities of Nice, Marseille, Montpellier and Barcelona ) to Valencia in Spain will be included in the analysis.
The Blue Banana has a Nordsüdausdehnung of about 1300 km ( Westostausdehnung: about 900 km) and it goes through nine countries, all of which - except for Switzerland and the Principality of Liechtenstein - belong to the EU and there are core to the same.
Emergence of the concept and the term
The Frenchman Roger Brunet, who wanted to divide Europe into active and passive spaces, developed in 1989 with his group RECLUS the term " blue banana ". He was referring to a European industry and service large space extending from northern England along the Rhine up to northern Italy. However Brunet saw his theory as not really a new discovery, as it was foreseen with "a little understanding and spatial empathy ".
He saw the blue banana as a development of historical circumstances, such as major trade routes, or as a result of the accumulation of industrial capital. France, however, have mainly lost through the persecution of minorities, he calls the Protestants, and the centralization of Paris connected with this bullpen. Thus Brunet left out intentionally the French room which is particularly concentrated or limited to the greater Paris area, to show the need for economic integration in these pan-European region by the French government.
The banana was referred to as blue because it is the European heartland of Europe and the flag is predominantly blue ( with yellow stars ), the banner color it was thus adopted. Other sources, however, call their work clothes - exist in English to be the concept of the blue-collar worker who is primarily for factory workers - most of the industrial labor force as a justification for the extension.
Importance
The Blue Banana receives not only by the population consolidation, which expresses itself in an almost continuous belt cities over long distances, a special significance. The infrastructure - both traffic engineering and information of a technical nature - is above average. The density of the centers provides logistical advantages and promotes collaboration and innovation. Interdependent sectors can better come through proximity in a mutual exchange. A large number of skilled workers, innovative and creative environments ( "Creative Class"), exhibition centers and good " remote infrastructures " (gateways ), such as the ports of Rotterdam and Antwerp, the inland port of Duisburg- Ruhrort or major international airports such as in London, Amsterdam, Brussels, Dusseldorf, Frankfurt, Zurich and Milan will make the room economically attractive, particularly for national and international companies. Density and central location in Europe also lead that the Blue Banana for central public institutions is preferred. This can be seen in the distribution of international institutions such as the International Court of Justice in The Hague, the Euro Europe in Strasbourg or the seats of the EU and NATO in Brussels. The advantages of compaction of the population, infrastructure, functions and services are also referred to by the terms Fühlungs and agglomeration benefits.
In the Blue Banana 20 Global and World Cities ( GaWC ) are counted present. The most important among them, London, followed by Milan, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Brussels, Zurich, Munich, Dusseldorf, Luxembourg, Manchester, Birmingham, Geneva, Stuttgart, Cologne, Bristol, Antwerp, Leeds, Rotterdam, Turin and Southampton. In proportion to its population the Blue Banana is thus a disproportionately significant space in the globalized world.
Development of the Blue Star
A major reason for location and shape of the Blue Banana is the change of transport relations and economic flows during the division of Europe after the Second World War, which led to the expansion of Europe along the historic north-south axis. Especially the now well-developed infrastructure environment and transport infrastructure developed " corridor" along the Rhine benefited from this political and historical circumstance. The existing already in the period of industrialization centers, such as at the mouths of the Scheldt and the Rhine and in the area of the Rhine and Ruhr, Rhine and Main and Rhine and Neckar, while East could further strengthen under this influence along the development axis "Rhine " - west connections themselves tend to be less well developed or even stunted.
Roger Brunet criticized by pointing to the importance of the Blue Banana once the essence of the French regional planning, today we see, however, that the model of Blue Banana, at least economically, does not represent fully the currently running developments, as the metropolitan area has several offshoots, the be drawn, for example, to Paris to the south of Spain. Especially in east-west direction to expand the Blue Banana - also due to the growth of passenger and freight flows in the wake of an opening and a growing together of Europe - so strong that now emerges a Blue Star, the center of the Rhine- Ruhr and form the agglomerations of the Netherlands and Belgium. The territory of the classic Blue Banana is the less, the core and the main axis of the European compaction represents the dominance of blue banana as the main axis is expressed mainly in the distribution of population concentration. Compared to this north -south axis effect the compression straps extending in an east-west direction, as the weaker runners. More compression areas that can suggest a modification of the model of Blue Banana, extend ribbon-like along the Mediterranean coast between Valencia and northern Italy. This compaction band is referred to as the Golden banana or European Sun Belt. The term Sunbelt wants to show a parallelism to the same U.S. economic space, which is also characterized by sunny climate and new industries.
Because of the constant influx of skilled workers, many of whom are immigrants who prefer the more prosperous, urbanized and multicultural agglomerations rural areas, the area is growing so strong that there is a polarization within Europe, so to a division into " winning regions " such as the Blue banana, and " loser regions," the rural and remote areas of the "periphery", particularly in Eastern Europe. In particular, lose those border areas that already stagnate or fall behind due to their low significance anyway. Thus, the difference in meaning and the dependence of the rural or peripheral regions of the compression areas reinforced. In addition, certain facilities such as systems of high-speed traffic (ICE) are profitable only in some heavily populated, affluent areas, so that peripheral areas further suspended and thus be less interesting for important sectors of the economy.
It should be noted that the processes of globalization have become a key growth factor the centrality of the compression areas, regardless of whether these agglomerations can be described as the Blue Banana, Blue Star, or a combination of Blue Banana and Golden Banana. While the influence of the factor increasing centrality and people are increasingly dependent on central institutions and infrastructure, can be observed at the same time that also arise problems caused by the increasing density, so-called agglomeration disadvantages such as traffic jams, overcrowding, high land prices, gentrification, increase in environmental pollution and urban sprawl. The so-called 'loser cities ' or' loser regions " outside the agglomerations benefiting from centrality subject to the mirror-image process peripheralization, which is reflected, inter alia, unemployment, migration, declining tax revenue and rising social problems. Do not leave out of consideration here, however, that some regions suffer in the recipient economies in the 'blue banana', as cities such as Duisburg and Gelsenkirchen in the Ruhr or Liverpool or Sheffield in northern England, from similar problems. In these cases, however, a decline of old industries and lack of diversification of economic structures, the main reasons for this. The location of an area centrally located can greatly facilitate the necessary structural change here. The economic downturn and high unemployment rates in particularly affected by the financial and Euro crisis peripheral areas of the euro zone currently lead to a strengthening of a brain drain of skilled young people in the centers of the Blue Banana.
The model of the Blue Star, the more moves the axes of development in east-west direction in the view, as the model that represents the resultant with the EU enlargement processes seems better. The predominantly running east -west axes of development and urban communities, for example the Hamburg- Copenhagen, Berlin, Warsaw and Munich-Vienna ( -Bratislava -Budapest ), correlate with here greatly grown freight and passenger flows. Another notable corridor runs from Paris to Toulouse to Madrid. Economically, these corridors are developed stronger against their surroundings. However, these spurs do not reach the population density and the spatial extent of the blue banana.
All pictorial models have a common gist: rooms that are not in such a corridor or are not connected to him in the competition of economic areas tend to have poorer chances.
In the Italian media opinion was submitted that according to EU data from the year 2013, the form of the Blue Banana is changing, as Italian territory lost by increasing de-industrialization of the connection. Only the Lombardy could still " keep up ".