Research Article Human Capital, Skills, and Uneven Intraurban Employment Growth: The Case of Göteborg, Sweden, 1990–2008 Jonathan Borggren and Rikard H. Eriksson Department of Geography and Economic History, Ume˚ a University, 90187 Ume˚ a, Sweden Correspondence should be addressed to Jonathan Borggren; jonathan.borggren@geography.umu.se Received 5 November 2013; Revised 17 January 2014; Accepted 20 January 2014; Published 12 March 2014 Academic Editor: David Wong Copyright © 2014 J. Borggren and R. H. Eriksson. Tis is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Recent research has elucidated the role of talents to explain urban growth diferences but it remains to be shown whether urban dynamics, such as human capital and a mixed local population, can be linked to intraurban employment growth. By use of a unique longitudinal database, we track the economic development through the lens of intraurban employment growth of a number of primary urban areas (PUA) in G¨ oteborg, Sweden. Regarding factors infuencing employment growth, we fnd that relative concentrations of human capital protect areas from rising unemployment during severe recession (1990–1993) and recovery (1990– 2000) while the composition of skills is benefcial during recovery (1990–2000) and long-term growth (1990–2008). Our fndings suggest that neither too high concentrations of creative occupations nor too low ones are benefcial. Tus, human capital drives much of the employment changes in relation to the recession and early transition from manufacturing to service but composition of skills is more relevant for explaining long-term intraurban employment growth. 1. Background Te gradual shif from manufacturing to a postindustrial knowledge-based economy has resulted in a number of events that have changed future prerequisites for economic development. Tese events include a deepened spatial divi- sion of labour at both regional [1] and urban [2] levels, urban decline and revitalization [3], and a growing service industry [4, 5]. In relation to this, increasing attention has been directed towards how the changing geography of talent shapes the preconditions for regional and urban development. In particular, focus has been on the role of high concentrations of human capital and creativity when it comes to explaining postindustrial location tendencies and why certain localities prosper while others do not [6– 8]. However, recent contributions have shown that it is not the pure agglomeration of certain industries and skills that primarily drive development but rather the composition of knowledge at both the level of the region [9–12] and within the frm [13]. Framing the issue of the geography of talents is its impact on the economic structure of the city region as a whole. In agreement with T¨ ornqvist [14], Hutton [15] and Hansen, and Winther [2], we argue that studying the city region from a holistic perspective is not fruitful if one wishes to put the spatial division of talents in the context of contemporary urban development, especially if one wishes to understand current urban economic activity. Tus, instead of conceptualising the city as a homogenous fabric of inputs and outputs in order to compare its economic activities with other cities, most notably illustrated in the phrase of “cauldrons of creativity” [8], Hansen and Winther [2] argue that the growing complexity of location dynamics within the city needs to be highlighted and consequently also studied through intraurban analysis. Te aim of this paper is to address how the composition of urban talent and the evolving landscape of skills are related to the dynamics of intraurban employment. By connecting to the ongoing discussion on the characteristics of the urban drivers of economic development [6, 8], we construct two diferent indicators. First, an indicator of intraurban concentrations of human capitalin 84 primary urban city areas (PUA) in the metropolitan region of G¨ oteborg (we Hindawi Publishing Corporation Urban Studies Research Volume 2014, Article ID 260813, 14 pages http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2014/260813