Locating exhibition centers: how to explain divergent spatial development in Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Milan and Munich

Since the 1980s, investment in exhibition center infrastructure in Western Europe has followed a divergent pattern. On one hand, investment in the extension and renewal of historical inner-city facilities, dominant in earlier decades, continued while on the other hand many new venues were created in the periphery of European metropolises, thereby breaking with the earlier pattern. This paper tries to explain these contradictory developments by developing its own theoretical model based on path dependency theories. This model is used to analyze recent spatial strategies of two centrally located facilities in Frankfurt and Amsterdam and two recently constructed peripheral complexes in Munich and Milan. It is concluded that differences can only be accounted for through historically developed and locally specific opportunities and limitations that manifest themselves in the dimensions of physical form, function, spatial embeddedness and institutional setting.