Purpose – European metropolises nowadays are struggling even more to attract highly mobile creative as well as knowledge-based industries. In many European cities, the ongoing socio-economic transformation of inner-city brownfields enables metropolises to allocate new economies within these inner-city spaces. The purpose of this paper is to observe impressive infrastructural projects, e.g. Stuttgart 21, Hamburg HafenCity – aiming at attracting and allocating knowledge and creative industries in the inner-city for the purpose of strengthening its core. Design/methodology/approach – Two of these large empty inner-city slots can be found in Berlin (Tempelhof) and in Graz (Reininghaus). The first one is a former airport in the inner-city area of Berlin, the second one a former brewery located in the inner-city of Graz, Austria. In this paper, these projects are analysed by focussing on governance and urban management approaches, which seek to accommodate creative and knowledge-intensive industries as well as the adjacent creative knowledge milieus. Findings – The paper analyses implications that can be derived from these two cases on the level of governance efforts seeking to overcome the organisational as well as the governance paradox, as it is described by scholars such as Grabher et al.Originality/value – The paper is aiming at presenting new empirical as well as conceptual insights into how this paradox could be successfully dealt with in order to develop places for these targeted creative knowledge milieus in European metropolises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]