Industrial Past and Urban Future in the Ruhr

If one asks people in Europe what they immediately associate with the term urbanity, there is little by way of hesitation. Urbanity means crowded streets, 24-hour shopping and the traditional character of the European city. The only place where no easy answer can be found is in Germany. The Allied bombers, West German investors and East German planners have left very little of the original, historical character of the European city intact. This is one reason why Germans go to Italy or London to experience urbanity, unless they are town planners, in which case, they are currently trying to reconstruct the nineteenth century, as can be seen in Berlin.

Editors and Affiliations

1. University of Hanover, Germany

   Bernhard Blanke (Professor of Public Policy) (Professor of Public Policy)

2. University of Bristol, UK

   Randall Smith (Reader in Policy Studies) (Reader in Policy Studies)

© 1999 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited

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