Transforming a post-industrial landscape through networked heritage
Planning and co-ordination at a regional scale, Germany’s Emscher Landscape Park brings long-term ambition to repurpose industrial heritage
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The Ruhr region of western Germany was the industrial heartland of Europe for much of the 20th century. In May 1988 the government of North Rhine Westphalia resolved to stage the Emscher Park International Building Exhibition (IBA) in the decade to 1999. Industrialisation and deindustrialisation had left a range of familiar and simultaneous challenges across the Ruhr: from derelict buildings sitting on contaminated soil, through to mass unemployment.
The intention of the IBA was to bring together international experience and organise a lasting and practical exchange of ideas, a “workshop on the future of old industrial areas”. The vision of the IBA involved creating new high quality urban areas and regenerating a natural landscape along the River Emscher between Duisburg and Dortmund. The area of the IBA is 800 sq km covering 53 municipalities — an area three times the size of Birmingham. As well as redevelopment and environmental improvements, preserving the remaining industrial landscape features — including ‘architectural witnesses’ — was one of the five principal objectives of the IBA.
In common with many urban regions in the UK, Emscher’s post-industrial heritage relates to a broader set of issues of architecture, urban planning, economic development and social regeneration. What was unique was the vision to restore the predominance of nature. Urban regeneration projects were considered within the landscape of restored ecological systems in a regional park, rather than a metropolitan framework of urban design.
The IBA itself had no formal legal status or power. It represented an investment by state government, and pooled budgets from local councils, in coordination. It achieved consensus from mayors and council leaders in sharing the vision. This is built on a long history of regional collaboration — Kommunalverband Ruhrgebiet has been working collaboratively at regional scale since the 1920s. While no new public funding was made available, the criteria for accessing funding was in effect changed to include built and environmental quality. The IBA’s power was derived from quality stamping proposals which could help projects to access funding. This resulted in competition for funding on the basis of quality.
Emscher has involved planning and coordinating hundreds of projects at the strategic spatial scale, over a timescale spanning decades. But it has also, crucially, involved fundamental re-engineering of regional infrastructure: restructuring the treatment of polluted water, and the creation of seven green corridors — first proposed in the 1920s — which connect major open spaces, and play host to new long-distance cycle paths on former roads and rail lines. The scale of change is significant enough to provide a tangible theme for economic development, attracting businesses pursuing innovation in environmental sustainability to locate in the region. The ambition is to create a landscape asset which represents a fundamental improvement in quality of life for residents, through both recreation and economic functionality.
As well as new industrial premises, 25 housing projects, and new public transport infrastructure, the scale of creative responses to industrial relics has been unprecedented, creating industrial monuments as a focus of tourism, cultural programming and symbolic rebirth. Projects are financed jointly by the cities and private companies, and their planning has involved local community groups and artist-led initiatives alongside convened panels of international experts.
The most spectacular projects include pithead buildings of the former Zollverein colliery and the conversion of the Oberhausen gasometer into a contemporary theatre, with a 120m viewing platform. An ore bunker has been converted to a climbing centre; an open-air cinema sits in a blower house. An Industrial Heritage Trail has grown to incorporate 900 attractions, signposted coherently on a 400km circuit, attracting 5 million visitors annually. 25 themed trails focus on mining, shipping and railways, among other things.
Zollverein highlights the value of strategic long-term planning. Coal mining ceased in 1986, with the state government taking immediate ownership and pursuing a heritage agenda. A partnership with the Essen city government saw the establishment of a charity (later Foundation) in 1989. The prestigious Red Dot Design awards established a museum in a former boiler house in 1997. UNESCO inscribed Zollverein as a World Heritage Site in 2001. Zollverein now hosts a regional welcome centre and museum, a gateway to tourism in the region.
The Emscher project demonstrates the advantages of localities with complementary heritage assets working together at a regional scale. Administrative benefits are realised in practical outcomes, such as the provision of integrated signage throughout the region. This means that the branding visible to motorists entering the region is consistent with the wayfinding on the footpaths guiding a visitor around one of the region’s many industrial heritage sites.
A principal lesson from Emscher is the importance of spatial planning. As CABE has concluded: “Spatial visions and strategies are useful to present a creative and realistic framework to engage people in the story of change.” The initial 10-year timeframe gave confidence to the politicians and investors that there was enough time to effect meaningful change but that there was a definite end point in sight. IBA supported ‘meanwhile’ temporary uses effectively. When the IBA concluded, the municipalities invested significant political energy in reforming governance structures to update the regional masterplan, ensuring that the long-term landscape rehabilitation initiatives could continue.
Industrial heritage has been able to provide a coherent identity, gaining national and international renown. Rather than competing to be the ‘capital’ or ‘birthplace’, localities in the region share this identity, and use it to rejuvenate civic pride. The scale of intellectual and creative input, and financial resources, over the long-term, creates a shared vested interest which seeks to achieve more than the sum of its parts; without a regional strategy, many local heritage assets would remain ‘hidden gems’. The region’s assets are impressive in aggregate; the innovation has been the means by which project-level initiatives have been linked together in a network. In 2010, as the large Ruhr city of Essen was European City of Culture, and each of the other 53 municipalities in the region took turns throughout the year to augment the cultural offer, acting as a ‘local hero’, week-by-week.
Those planning for long-term social and economic development in the Ruhr assessed that the legacy of industry is poor investment in cultural infrastructure, environmental assets and built environment quality. In the UK, regeneration in many urban areas — Glasgow, Liverpool, Manchester, Bristol and Newcastle/Gateshead — has addressed these challenges. However, we have not yet developed the power of coordination, nor perhaps the ambition, to achieve similar results at a regional scale, for example across Scotland’s Central Belt, across the mill towns of Lancashire, or the former mining communities of South Wales, County Durham and Yorkshire.
Further reading:
CABE — Design Task Group, Emscher Landschaftspark
(PDF, 2.3MB)
Resource for Urban Development International (RUDI) —
