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Abstract
As is the case with other metropolitan regions, there are claims that the emerging functional urban region of RheinRuhr needs to develop a cooperative spatial future. This article explores the underlying difficulties in seeking to move forward in regional cooperation and strategic regional development for RheinRuhr. At present, no clear shift can be observed from traditional land use planning and local development approaches towards more strategic planning for the whole urban region. There are still many obstacles to be overcome. Nevertheless, strides have been taken in the direction of improved cooperation. A dense and functionally overlapping (sub)‐regional associationalism seems to be one step towards future city‐regional governance and possibly government. An evaluation is reported of two new innovative modes of structural and regional policies, namely the Regional Conferences and the IBA Emscher Park Planning Company; their impacts on regional policy‐making structures are reviewed. A discussion on more recent approaches to regional cooperation follows. It is argued that, in the long term, as a multi‐regionalized space, RheinRuhr requires some kind of coordinator and moderator and new practices of regional planning and management. The future development of a RheinRuhr metropolitan region requires further steps to be taken towards strategic planning by the Land government as well as a deepening of the level of institutionalization. Some ideas are put forward on how the elaboration of a spatial Leitbild for RheinRuhr could be initiated and supported.
Notes
Wolfgang Knapp, Research Institute for Urban and Regional Development of the Federal State of North Rhine‐Westphalia (ILS), Dortmund, Germany. E‐mail: [email protected]
Klaus R. Kunzmann, Faculty of Spatial Planning, Department of Spatial Planning in Europe at the University of Dortmund, Germany. E‐mail: [email protected]‐dortmund.de
Peter Schmitt, Department of Geography, University of Duisburg, Germany. E‐mail: peter.schmitt@uni‐duisburg.de
The European structural funds and the new mode of European regional policy based on regional programmes play a central part as a resource for financing and legitimizing these new policies.
At the same time, the federal state not only set up an institutional framework in order to integrate relevant actors in its policy on the regional scale, but also created the conditions for dealing at a regional level with the problems arising from economic restructuring.
As elucidated by Heinze and Schmid (Citation1997, pp. 604–606), with regard to North Rhine‐Westphalia a staged corporatism can be identified framed by several programmes and initiatives taken by the federal state in order to cope with the crisis in the Ruhrgebiet: (1) the Entwicklungsprogramm Ruhr (Development Programme Ruhr) in 1968–1973; (2) the Aktionsprogramm Ruhr 1979 (Action Programme Ruhr); (3) or the Zukunftsinitiative Montanregionen (ZIM) in 1987 (Initiatives for the Future of the Coal and Steel Regions). In 1989, these proceedings and experiences were extended thematically and expanded for the whole of North Rhine‐Westphalia with the Zukunftsinitiative für die Regionen Nordrhein‐Westfalens or ZIN (Initiative for the Future of Regions in North Rhine‐Westphalia).
Regarding the unsatisfactory coordination of this policy approach with formalized regional planning in North Rhine‐Westphalia see, for example, Blotevogel (Citation1994, pp. 33–35).
The Emscher Zone accommodates about 2 million inhabitants and can still be seen as having to grapple with urban sprawl, severely contaminated sites, numerous intersections of low‐quality open spaces and brownfield sites, poor architectural quality, and persistently high numbers of people living on social benefits as a result of the slow process of re‐structuring the almost defunct coal and steel base.
For further understanding of the IBA policy‐model, see Kilper and Wood (Citation1995), Kilper (Citation2000) and Rommelspacher (Citation1999), for examples.
See, for instance, CentrO in Oberhausen, a large‐scale retail and leisure complex, or the Time‐Warner movie and amusement park in Bottrop.
Danielzyk and Wood (Citation2000, p. 14) also summarized several criticisms of the ZIN programme. The key points are the delineation of the regions (cf. also Blotevogel, Citation1994), which is seen as arbitrary and artificial; the incapacity of social organizations; the lack of integration of the private sector; reservations regarding the insufficient democratic legitimacy of the regional conferences; the deficient inter‐ministerial coordination of the various funds; and finally the lack of coordination between structural policy and spatial planning, particularly at the regional level.
At the end of 1990, the city administrations of Wuppertal, Remscheid and Solingen set up a steering group, which made an assessment of strengths and weaknesses in the region. In the years up to 1992 this ‘city triangle’ developed a regional development design which is in harmony with the regional development policy of the Land. Finally, at the beginning of 1992, a central coordination group was created, which was established as a Regional Office with the primary purpose of implementing and updating the regional development concept.
Regions like Emscher‐Lippe, for instance, with a precarious power structure, took recourse to a commonly accepted moderator (the District Commissioner) and followed established administrative procedures of cooperation and the exclusive membership of only top administrators in the Regional Conference. Their decision‐making processes only worked because of the disciplining influence exerted by the demand for consensus: the choice was either to collaborate, to pool resources and to produce a plausible concept, or to let central government departments decide what they thought fit for the region—which under conditions of acute competition for scarce resources from other regions was a ‘dangerous option’ (Potratz, Citation2000, p. 20). Consensus and a certain degree of mutual trust was only developed over time in this type of Regional Conference.
Among others things, the implementation of the first Metrorapid railway in Germany, the Ruhrpilot (a computerized traffic‐control system), Ruhr Digital (a user‐friendly system enabling citizens in the region to tap into the services of local authorities via their personal computers), and the international arts festival Ruhr Triennale starting in August 2002 are intended to set up new identification symbols for the Ruhr.