THE SPATIAL DIVISION OF TALENT IN CITY REGIONS: LOCATION DYNAMICS OF BUSINESS SERVICES IN COPENHAGEN

The paper focuses on the location dynamics and spatial distribution of talent by workplace to provide evidence of the multiplicity of economic geographies of city regions. City regions are not just homogenous growth machines but complex urban landscapes. The economic growth and revitalisation of the city region and the rise of the knowledge economy, including the growth of advanced business services, have produced new location dynamics that have changed the spatial division of labour. The rise of the knowledge economy has lead to an increasing focus on labour and labour qualification as an important location factor, including the recent focus on the creative class and human capital. Based on an analysis of Copenhagen, we examine the spatial division of talent within industries to provide evidence that new uneven economic geographies of city regions are currently being produced as a result of the new location dynamics of the knowledge economy. Further, it is argued that the intraregional division of talent differs considerably even within knowledge intensive industries. Copyright (c) 2009 by the Royal Dutch Geographical Society KNAG.