Earlier this summer, I took my kids to a Taylor Swift concert in Gelsenkirchen, Germany. Plenty has been written about Swiftonomics, but witnessing her impact on the economy of a local German town still amazed me. Gelsenkirchen is a former coal mining town, in the West Virginia of Germany. In recent years, they’ve mostly turned themselves around. The city’s planning department has been aiming for growth, and they have achieved that goal to some extent, by diversifying their economy. That’s where Taylor Swift came in. Born in West Reading, PA, and raised in Tennessee, Swift is likely aware of her significant impact on the economies of small towns.
Even Jimmy Kimmel joked about how people had never heard of Gelsenkirchen until three concerts in the area appeared on Taylor’s 2024 Eras Tour schedule. Yet, about one-third of those attending the concert on those three days were from outside of Germany. Taylor Swift put Gelsenkirchen on the map.
In another Rust Belt city, the population of my current home of Pittsburgh dropped to less than half after the 1960s with steel mills and other heavy industries laying off workers. The city has worked hard to regain its popularity. It leaned into its higher education institutions while adding high-tech companies and even tourism to the economic mix. Pittsburgh also hosted Taylor Swift as part of the Eras Tour, where two days of concerts generated $46 million in direct spending, with 83% of concert-goers from outside the area. Meanwhile, West Virginia, the center of coal mining, has not been as successful in diversifying its sources of revenue, given that its real GDP has been a tenth of Pennsylvania’s in recent years.
Previously unattractive and unknown cities like Gelsenkirchen received the expected Swiftonomics financial boost from concert-goers, but the global attention also shined a light on how some areas need to rebrand themselves. These regions have all struggled to come back from their heydays, mostly leaving the industrial and mining foundations behind.
The idea of creative destruction is at play: innovate, let things fail (and succeed), and allow the market to drive new ideas and industries. Gelsenkirchen, and the surrounding Ruhr area, at first remade itself as a solar power hub, and the region overall now thrives with universities, new logistics firms, and R&D efforts. Creative destruction is crucial in rebuilding, whether as a city or as a company. And pharma is no exception.
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