Ruhrgebiet, or the industrialisation of Germany

Between the rivers Ruhr and Lippe lies the largest conurbation of Germany: das Ruhrgebiet or the Ruhr Area in English. Located in the Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia this agglomeration of several large and medium sized cities is home to eight and a half million people. In contrast to Greater London, which is -of 2014- of equal size, there is no separate regional authority, all the municipalities (Gemeinden) are independent entities within a Kreis (district) or are so-called Kreisfreie Stadte (literally: district-free cities, the better translation is incorporated cities). The larger cities have grown through incorporation of neighbouring towns and villages. These often have a form of local representation within a so-called Stadtbezirk (similar to a London Borough, a Dutch Stadsdeel or a Belgian Deelgemeente). In Germany Stadtbezirke (literally city district) are to be found in cities with more than 150.000 inhabitants.

The Ruhr Area includes the cities of Duisburg, Oberhausen, Bottrop, Mülheim an der Ruhr, Essen, Gelsenkirchen, Bochum, Herne, Hagen, Dortmund and Hamm as well as sections of the non-urban district (Landkreis) Wesel, Reckllinghausen, Unna and the Ennepe-Ruhr-Kreis. There is no central settlement or an administrative centre for the whole of the Ruhr Area. As such it is a perfect example of a true urban landscape! The independent local authorities cooperate in the supracommunal Regionalverbandt Ruhr (RVR).

The RVR started in 1920 as the Siedlungsverbandt Ruhrkohlenbezirk (SVR). This SVR was founded to raise the money needed to pay the settlement forced on Germany in the Treaty of Versailles after WW1 and included al the rural and urban district of the industrial and mining heartland of the country. The development of the region into an urbanized industrial landscape had started in the late eighteenth century with the early industrialisation in the Wupper Valley (Wuppertal) in the County of Berg (Bergisches Land). By 1820 hundreds of water-powered mills were producing textiles, wood, shingles and iron. The iron was used for crafting knives, tools and harnesses in large workshops.

The Ruhr Area (Rhineland) in 1830 before the rapid industrialisation with the Rhine on the left en the Rurhr meandering at the bottom of the map. The small towns and cities are spread over a large undulating landscape that had been largely deforested for agriculture by this time.

As the decades went on the factories became bigger and more automated. This called for more power, so the industrialists started using steam power. For this they needed large quantities of coal. The few coal deposits around the Wupper Valley and Dusseldorf were quickly being depleted, so a railway was constructed to link the area with the Ruhr Valley some 30 kilometres further north. By 1850 there were almost 300 coal mines in operation in the Ruhr Valley. This rapid growth of the mining industry also meant an unprecedented change to the landscape. Spoil heaps were being raised at some distance of the collieries. Train tracks were laid. Rivers were bridges and on occasion culverted, diverted or dammed. Forests were cleared. Castles and hamlets were replaced by vast industrial complexes. The land of many a farm was developed for housing. As a result the area quickly urbanised in a totally uncontrolled manner. The local village and city councils were no match for the industrialists and often had no clue what this "economic development" would mean for the existing residents. The need for a large workforce also attracted many young men from nearby rural areas in the Rhineland and the Palatine, but also further afield from Silesia, Bohemia, Poland, Pomerania, Posen and Moravia. These men later started families end needed sufficient housing. This lead to a building boom of often substandard housing. This in turn lead to the construction of designated housing for miners and other workers in so-called colonies.

A century on this map from 1930 shows a vast conurbation with shipping canals, docks, railways, collieries, spoil heaps, miners colonies, housing, factories and so on. Only some small pockets of rural land remain as islands in a (sub)urban sea. After 1950 most of these areas were developed for housing en industrial estates as most of the new motorways avoided the existing built-up areas.