‘Where is the Metropolis Ruhr?’ asks book one of the program for the European Cultural Capital 2010. Its answer is:
51° 12′ – 51° 49′ N
6° 22′ – 7°59′ E
You won’t find ‘Ruhr’ in your navigation system and only seldomly on a more general map. It is a city with 5.3 million inhabitants that just has been found. It is the prospective future of 53 towns of the Ruhr region with people from 170 nations. They came here to work, mainly and at first in one of the once many coal pits or steel plants. Geographically a region that was transformed by coal mining and the production of steel is now being transformed into a city that relies on the service branch and a creativity economy.
The towns of the Ruhr are: Bergkamen, Bochum, Bottrop, Castrop-Rauxel, Datteln, Dinslaken, Dorsten, Dortmund, Duisburg, Ennepetal, Essen, Hagen, Hamm, Hattingen, Herne, Herten, Kamen, Lünen, Mülheim an der Ruhr, Neukirchen-Vlyn, Marl, Moers, Oberhausen, Oer-Erkenschwick, Recklinghausen, Rheinberg, Schwerte, Unna, Waltrop, Witten and some more. They lie in the middle of the state if Northrhine-Westfalia where the historic provinces of Westfalia and the Rhineland meet.
In German language, the region is called Metropole Ruhr, formerly known as Ruhrgebiet or ‘das Revier’.
# Wolfgang Wosmann on December 22nd, 2009
Dear Herr Schmidt,
What happened to the Ruhr town of Gelsenkirchen? Is it no longer on the map?
# Wolfgang Wosmann on January 4th, 2010
… yet another comment from Mülheim an der Ruhr:
“Metropole Ruhr” is an artificial name for an area which – in English – is known as “the Ruhr” and in German as “Ruhrgebiet” or in the past as “der Kohlenpott” or “das Ruhrrevier”.