Brain Gain in Eastern Germany

8 November 2009 - 5:00am

After twenty years of reunification, the eastern part of Germany is finally beginning to lure educated workers back.

"Eastern Germany has, with great effort and a lot of money, clawed its way to a measure of prosperity, some of it quite noticeable in urban areas like Dresden, once a gloomy has-been of a city remade by a face-lift of its Baroque architecture.

The comeback has helped Eastern Germany start to attract talented people like Mr. Siebler. And though demographic trends still weigh heavily on the region, the national government in Berlin is increasingly inclined to treat Eastern Germany not much differently from the rest of the country."

This article looks at recent job growth in Dresden, which many young workers had fled over the past 3 decades.

Source: The New York Times, November 6, 2009
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All of that only scratches the surface of what's wrong with this study. The idea that complex urban development patterns and human behavior can be meaningfully studied according to one primary criteria — density — is wrong from the start.