Stuttgart is the capital of the state of Baden-Württemberg in southern Germany. The sixth-largest city in Germany, Stuttgart has a population of 600,038 while the metropolitan area has a population of 5.3 million.
The city lies at the centre of a densely populated area, circled by a ring of smaller towns. This area called Stuttgart Region has a population of 2.7 million. Stuttgart’s urban area has a population of roughly 1.8 million, making it Germany’s seventh largest. With over 5 million inhabitants, the larger Stuttgart Metropolitan Region is the fourth-biggest in Germany after the Rhine-Ruhr area, Berlin/Brandenburg and Frankfurt/Rhine-Main.
Stuttgart is spread across a variety of hills (some of them vineyards), valleys and parks – unusual for a German city and often a source of surprise to visitors who primarily associate the city with its industrial reputation as the ‘cradle of the automobile’. The city of Stuttgart ranked 30 globally in Mercer’s 2010 liveability rankings, and 7th in Germany behind top-ranked cities such as Frankfurt, Düsseldorf and Munich. For economic and social innovation the city was ranked 11 globally, 2nd in Germany after Hamburg and 7th in Europe in 2009 out of 256 cities.
The Stuttgart area is known for its high-tech industry. Some of its most prominent companies include Daimler AG, Porsche, Bosch, Celesio, Hewlett-Packard and IBM – all of whom have their world or European headquarters here.
The region currently has Germany’s highest density of scientific, academic and research organisations. No other region in Germany registers so many patents and designs as Stuttgart. Almost 45% of Baden-Württemberg scientists involved in R&D are based directly in the Swabian capital. More than 11% of all German R&D costs are invested in the Stuttgart Region (approximately 4.3 billion euros per year). In addition to several universities and colleges (e.g. University of Stuttgart, University of Hohenheim, Stuttgart Institute of Management and Technology and several Stuttgart Universities of Applied Sciences), the area is home to six Fraunhofer institutes, four institutes of collaborative industrial research at local universities, two Max-Planck institutes and a major establishment of the German Aerospace Centre (DLR).
Stuttgart is still one of Germany’s largest wine-growing cities with more than 400 hectares of vine area, thanks in main to its location at the centre of Germany’s fourth largest wine region, the Württemberg wine growing area which covers 11,522 hectares (28,470 acres) and is one of only 13 official areas captured under German Wine law. The continuing importance of wine to the local economy is marked every year at the annual wine festival (‘Weindorf’).
