FROM DIVISION TO UNIFICATION - REGIONAL DIMENSIONS OF ECONOMIC-CHANGE IN GERMANY

From the political division of Germany in 1949 to unification in 1990, the 'two Germanies' experienced profoundly contrasting forms of political management, economic development and lifestyles. Two markedly different economic and regional geographies emerge& one in West Germany, underpinned by the social market-economy and characterised by spatial imbalances successively between rural and urban, core and periphery, and North and South; the other in East Germany which responded to the 'regional equalisation' and Comecon integration priorities of communist central planning. Today, German unification is posing the enormous challenge of welding together two vastly disparate economies and societies. The magnitude of east-west differences, especially with respect to economic efficiency, infrastructure provision, material living standards and abuse of environment, now overrides all other geographical cleavages. The successful forging of 'Einige Deutschland' is crucial not just to the future of the new Germany but to the political and economic wellbeing of Europe, but it will depend upon a scale and speed of regional convergence that has never been previously achieved in the course of modern European history.