Vienna was already becoming Capital in 1804 - at that time of the Royal Austrian Empire. In 1814/15 the Vienna Congress decided about the new political structure of Europe after the Napoleon War. Today its City Center as well as the Castle Schoenbrunn belong to the UNESCO World Heritage.

In September 2017 the 22nd International Conference of REAL CORP (List of presentations) about the present urban revitalization case-studies worldwide will be organized by the Technical University of Vienna, www.corp.at, www.isocarp.org - and supported like at the last Conferences in Hamburg and Ghent by the European Retail Academy. Prof.Dr.B.Hallier will speak about the Silk Road Revitalization.
 

The peaceful summer picture of Luebeck-Bay at the Baltic Sea - painted by M.-C. Hallier - should remind us of the values of Peace: in 1945 this spot was the grave for some hundred refugees being torpedoed by a submarine while trying to escape World War II; untill 1989 it was part of the military border between East and West Germany! Now the human beings of East and West can jointly use its gorgeous beaches and can travel without any formalities across the borders to the neighboring beaches of Poland or the Baltic States!

The city of Luebeck/Germany was also a key-town for the HANSE-partnership: uniting the trade of Scandinavia, Germany and the Baltic States in the middle ages. Its "brick-stone Gothic of the churches and houses" built by the HANSE-traders can still be seen all around the coast of the Baltic Sea.
 

NYCU Media together with Euromonitor International and KPMG just published its newest ranking of the TOP 500 companies of the Asia Pacific region. At Oct. 24th 2017 the Best-of-the-Best will be honored in an Award Ceremony & Gala Dinner in Kuala Lumpur/ Malaysia . Among the international jury for more than a decade is Prof.Dr.Bernd Hallier.

Measured by sales (US $ mn) the leading company is AEON/Daiei (Japan) with 29.870 mn and 688 outlets in front of 7-Eleven (Japan) with 27.206 mn (19.572), Thomas Dux/Woolworth (Australia) 25.022 mn (981), Westfarmers/Coles (Australia) 24.714 mn (783), Family Mart (Japan) 17.287 mn (18.606), China Resources Holding(China) 15.530 mn (906), Sun Art Retail (China) 14.631 mn (432), Gome Electrical (China) 14.101 mn (1.195), Suning Commerce (China) 13.907 mn (1.500) and Lawson (Japan) 13.780 mn (12.837).
 

In Europe the most famous name connected with the Silk Road is the Venetian merchant Marco Polo (1254 - 1324). But Dr.Francis Wood from the British Museum in London does question if Marco Polo had ever been in China; she believes that he traveled only up to Constantinople and everything else is fiction! For sure his reports became only well-known in 1558 - 234 years after his death.

In his notes dictated to Rusticello from Pisa with whom he shared for 10 months a prison cell in Genoa he neither mentioned the Great Wall or the Chinese pottery nor the crippled feet of the Chinese women at that time. Therefore the thesis is that he got his China information from people from Far East for whom the Wall, the pottery, the feet were so common that it was not worth to be mentioned. Scientific fact is too that over the centuries the Marco Polo story increased by each new edition. More about the Silk Road at AEUC (Link).
 

There is no other city in the world which over thousands of years is an example for change/urban revitalization like Byzanz (Greek Empire), Konstantinopel (Roman Empire), Stanbul (Osman Empire) and today called Istanbul - being the bridge between Orient and Okzident as like as it was already in the times of the historical SILK ROAD .

The biggest Shopping Centers in Istanbul are according to Dr.Cebrayil Valiyev the Forum Istanbul (176.400/2009), Mall of Istanbul (135.000/2011), Istanbul Javahir (110.000/2005), Torium (90.000/2010), MetroCity (51.000/2003), Olivium (35.000/2000), Akmerkez (34.000/1993) and Airport Outlet (32.000/2008). For Galleria (77.000/1988) and Atirus (56.000/2005) data reflect the total area of the facility.