Stephanie G. Mathis The formerly industrial Ruhr Region in Germany, which started its reinvention process in 2011, is one of the most useful examples of European redevelopment.
The region has 53 cities and municipalities and 5 million residents. It is one of Europe’s five biggest population centers. It was once one of the top heavy industrial zones in the world. Steel, coal, and iron were produced there.
The Ruhr region is not a classic metropolis. The Ruhr is a loosely-connected network of cities, towns, and neighborhoods, interwoven with open spaces such as rivers, brownfields, and landscapes decimated by coal mining.
This is a multicentric urban region without a dominant central city. In addition, the Ruhr region is demographically diverse, with a range of communities and income levels living in close proximity. Infrastructure mostly dates back to its industrial past.
Much of Ruhr’s current infrastructure is a legacy of its past as one of the largest steel-producing regions in the world. Wolfgang Rattay/Reuters
Germany is determined that this post-industrial area will be brought into the modern world economy. It wants to do this in a manner that considers both climate change as well as the citizens’ radical wide-ranging requirements: urbanism at different levels and speeds.
The discursive process
The Ruhr Regional Planning Association Regionalverband Ruhr faces a number of challenges in developing the new regional plan, which will become the development guidelines shared by all 53 municipalities in the Ruhr region, including 11 independent towns and four counties in the next few decades.
The plan will replace portions of three regional plans that overlap the RVR area. Instead of fighting residents and the local authorities (from mayors to governors to business), the planning authority decided to use a new process that relies on consensus building.
The plan was developed by all municipalities, local universities, and citizens to transform this former industrial hub into a modern conurbation. The project also aims to take into account the changing demographics of the region, with long-term residents who once worked in its factories and smelters being replaced by young professionals, university students, and immigrants.
The new Ruhr is being built section by section, with the help of constantly changing working groups and section by section.
In the recently completed Phoenix Lake Redevelopment in the city of Dortmund, a developer joined forces with the regional planning organization and citizens to transform a polluted old mill area into Dortmund’s newest urban district.
The Phoenix Lake Master Plan was projected in 2006. Tbachner/Wikimedia, CC-BY-SA
A former factory has been replaced by a 24-square-hectare artificial lake for water skiing and swimming. Polluted tributaries have also been cleaned. The new housing was built in a style that fits both the modern landscape as well as the past of the region, which was a steel centre.
Two-scale urbanism
The Phoenix Lake Project is an excellent example of Two-Scale Urbanism, which is the successful convergence between high-quality and small projects and a long-term vision for the region.
The Ruhr Region has closed the gap between disciplines by implementing this participatory approach. Everything from urban theory, environmental studies, and economics have been incorporated into its development plan.
This also shows that different communities can work at the same level, from neighborhoods to regional levels, and implement regional infrastructure in each city.
This discursive style could provide answers to many of the challenges that face cities and regions all over the world. From rapidly expanding Accra to shrinking Detroit to cities like Vancouver, which are striving to become “Green.”
Detroit, like Germany’s Ruhr area, is trying to reinvent itself following the decline of its manufacturing economy. Albert Duce/Wikimedia, CC BY-SA
What we think of as dualisms, such as a growing metropolis in the developing world versus a shrinking manufacturing hub or booming metropolis and controlled-growth smart cities, are often not that different. They reveal spatial contradictions in the urban transformation processes all cities will experience at other points in their histories.
The city is resurging.
Two seemingly opposing trends are taking place in many cities around the world: urbanisation and regionalization.
The city centers are growing as professionals, and even older generations who left the city for their children’s education, rediscover urban life. This is partly because people don’t want to commute from the suburbs to downtown every day.
Cities are also regionalizing. Urban areas are expanding, and multi-functional places outside the traditional cores of cities are emerging.
According to the 2011 book Aeorotropolis, such “airport city” projects are being planned or built near Amsterdam, Dubai Paris, Hong Kong Shanghai, Beijing, Memphis, and other cities.
The world will continue to see more and more conurbations with interconnected centers, such as the Ruhr area. The metropolitan area of Sao Paulo in Brazil has 39 municipalities with a combined population of 21.5 million. And the New York Tri-State Area (population 20.2), which includes large areas of New Jersey and Connecticut, also displays this geography.
Sao Paulo, with its dense population and many ‘centers,’ is the perfect example of a modern conurbation. Chensiyuan/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA
It is not easy to adapt to the different trends in the Ruhr, but it’s possible. At various points, the local and regional must be linked – urbanism at two scales that progress at two different rates.
The Ruhr region and beyond are facing a major challenge: to design change that is in the best interest of the majority of citizens, with visible results at all levels.
