Economy
Popular tourist resorts can be found all along the Baltic beaches of the Fischland-Darß-Zingst peninsula and the islands of Hiddensee, Rügen and Usedom. The old Haneseatic towns are also popular tourist destinations due to their brick gothic medieval architecture, downtown Stralsund is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Stralsund, Greifswald and Wolgast also have a shipyard industry, the Volkswerft in Stralsund and the Peenewerft in Wolgast produce large ships, while the HanseYacht shipyard in Greifswald is specialized in building yachts. In Mukran near Sassnitz on Rügen, there is an international ferry terminal linking Western Pomerania to Sweden, Denmark, Lithuania and other oversee countries. An industrial complex northeast of Lubmin near Greifswald includes a shut-down nuclear power plant which is being deconstructed, and the Nord Stream gas pipeline which come ashore at this site. In Greifswald, the University of Greifswald runs several institutions and the major hospitals of the region. Also, Greifswald is the site of innovative scientific research, like the Wendelstein physics research center and biotechnology enterprises, most notably the federal Friedrich Loeffler institute for animal diseases like BSE.
Away from the coastal tourist resorts, the rural areas of Western Pomerania have maintained an agricultural character with no significant economic prosperity. Unemployment, poverty and emigration rates are amongst the highest in Germany. A study published on 18 May 2009 revealed that Vorpommern is the poorest region in Germany, with 27% of the population regarded as poor - that is living with below 60% of an average income.
Read more about this topic: Western Pomerania
Famous quotes containing the word economy:
“The counting-room maxims liberally expounded are laws of the Universe. The merchant’s economy is a coarse symbol of the soul’s economy. It is, to spend for power, and not for pleasure.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The aim of the laborer should be, not to get his living, to get “a good job,” but to perform well a certain work; and, even in a pecuniary sense, it would be economy for a town to pay its laborers so well that they would not feel that they were working for low ends, as for a livelihood merely, but for scientific, or even moral ends. Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“It enhances our sense of the grand security and serenity of nature to observe the still undisturbed economy and content of the fishes of this century, their happiness a regular fruit of the summer.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)