Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie – 2008, Vol. 99, No. 2, pp. 248–255. © 2008 by the Royal Dutch Geographical Society KNAG Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA Blackwell Publishing Ltd OUTLOOK ON EUROPE THE MULTI-LAYERED CITY: THE VALUE OF OLD URBAN PROFILES MARCO BONTJE & SAKO MUSTERD Amsterdam Institute for Metropolitan and International Development Studies (AMIDSt), University of Amsterdam, Nieuwe Prinsengracht 130, 1018 VZ Amsterdam, the Netherlands. E-mails: m.a.bontje@uva.nl; s.musterd@uva.nl Received: October 2007 ABSTRACT A mix of factors including increasing wealth, de-industrialisation, the collapse of the Wall, the EU extension and global competition has set new conditions for European urban development. It is often claimed that European cities have particularly good prospects in the creative knowledge economy because of characteristics such as compactness, high density, functional mix and a rich cultural-historical heritage. This, however, may be truer for some cities than for others. In this contribution we highlight the path dependent development and current perspectives of two European cities, Amsterdam and Leipzig. Their development paths are especially interesting since the two cities initially experienced similar characteristics and developments, but under different state regimes clearly experienced divergence, while new opportunities developed from 1990 onwards. We investigated how these development paths impact upon current perspectives. One conclusion is that old urban profiles retain their value, even after serious efforts to get rid of them. Key words : Path dependence, creative knowledge economy, Amsterdam, Leipzig DEVELOPMENT PATHS AND CITY POTENTIAL Contrary to what is often claimed or expected, globalisation has not produced a convergence of the development opportunities of cities. Cities and regions across the world are showing a wide variety of assets and identities. These assets have shaped the new opportunity space for cities across the globe. In the advanced capitalist city- regions, new flexible, diverse, and dynamic post-Fordist ways of production are replacing the old, while knowledge intensive activities, control functions of the global economy, and creative and cultural industries seem to stay in the advanced capitalist and affluent part of the world. Global cities face very different challenges compared with regional centres and the effects of globalisation and economic restructuring in Europe are quite different from those in other continents. Within Europe, we should at least distinguish between the experiences of cities in Western Europe on the one hand and those in Central and Eastern Europe on the other. In this paper, we investigate the historic devel- opment paths of two European cities, represent- ing these two European halves: Amsterdam and Leipzig. We explore the impact of their development paths on the current potential of these cities (and their regions) as creative knowledge centres. In the early twentieth century these cities had quite similar development potentials, but have followed contrasting development paths since