Great Leap or Long March to Knowledge Economy: Institutions,Actors and Resources in the Development of Tampere,Finland

Tampere, the second largest city-region in Finland, has been accustomed to continuous change throughout its history. First, it developed from a small village into Finland's leading industrial town. When traditional industry fell into crisis, Tampere once more had to recreate itself and has since risen to a position in which it is among the top cities on the cutting edge of utilizing the possibilities of new knowledge-based technologies. The objective of this article is to recognize the internal and external forces that have had an impact on the development of Tampere, Finland, as well as the dynamics of the relationships between them. The objective is thus to identify those factors and forces that have laid the foundation for economic change and the development of the new knowledge economy. This article first frames the core concepts used in the analysis, and then, describes and analyses the development of Tampere from a small village into the leading industrial town in Finland, and further, into one of the pre-eminent cities of the knowledge economy.