Urban Entertainment Centers - Difficulties and chances for urban development

Research Paper (undergraduate) from the year 2001 in the subject Geography / Earth Science - Demographics, Urban Management, Planning, grade: 1,0, The Royal Institute of Technology (Spatial Planning), course: Urban Economics, language: English, abstract: This term paper is attending to the relative new appearance of the Urban Entertainment Center as a development of the entertainment market. Therefore the spatial and economical externalities of one of the stepchildren of the urban planning should be examined. To show the economic backgrounds the market developments will be described from the demand and support side. How do societal, technological and time changing factors or processes like concentration, globalisation and privatisation determine the development of the entertainment market? According to the changed demands, the market has produced constantly new forms of leisure time facilities. But only a certain number of types like musical theatres or leisure parks has a spatial importance because of its amount and size.

But the main focus keeps on Urban Entertainment Center as the new generation of those facilities. A short introduction into the history and the main appearances should help to define this almost inflationary used term. Emphasising the differences concerning the major components and the location the influence of UECs to processes like suburbanisation will be discussed. The core of this work is concentrating the externalities within the urban development in the fields of the city structure, local economy as well as traffic issues and how planners and politicians could handle the phenomenon of Urban Entertainment Center.