Case Study in landscape planning: The example of Emscher Landscape Park in Germany

Kalliopi Bakali

Introduction

The purpose of this case study is to search, analyze and present the existence and the effectiveness of landscape planning in a recent regional park, the Emscher Landscape Park in Germany.

The park constitutes a part of a 10year regeneration program led by the International Building Exhibition (IBA). The program included the regeneration of the Ruhr Region, an area in North-Rhine Westphalia of north west Germany (The National Archives, 2011). From Dortmund in the east to Duisburg on the river Rhine there is one large open area, the Ruhr district. This area is defined by the river Rhein in the east, the river Lippe at the south, the river Ruhr at the north side, whereas there is also the river Emscher in the middle. The whole valley around the rivers used to be one of the Europe's oldest centres of mining and heavy industry, which was abandoned in about 1980.

Fig. 1 _ Map of the Ruhr

Thus, the valley's regeneration became the main aim of the IBA and "the idea of the park became the central theme for structural change, and the Emscher Landscape Park its key project" (Auer, 2010, p. 15). When the first phase of regeneration led by IBA completed, further actions, strategies and project coordinations were led by Projekt Ruhr GmbH and Regionalverband Ruhr (RVR) (The National Archives, 2011). A great amount of money invested for this large scale redevelopment, came from existing funds of the Land North Rhine-Westphalia, combined with structural development aid from national government and the European Union programme. In total, 2.5 billion euro invested on the Ruhr regeneration from which the 1/3 was private funding and the rest 2/3 were public investments (Colombo, 1992).

Historic information

The industrialization of the Ruhr valley started in the Mid-Nineteenth Century. By this period the progress in both coal mining and metallurgical industries was temperate, whereas the area was rural and the agriculture continued to be the most important pursuit. In the Ruhr district of mid-nineteen's there were woodland areas, the banks of the rivers and some shallow valleys were covered by meadow and the settlements were sparse and few (Pounds, 1952). By 1900 Ruhr was

almost industrialized having a great impact to the previous landscape. Factories permeated the whole region of Ruhr, woodland was in retreat, settlements and villages turned into cities of 100.000 people and the former arable land was replaced by industrial and residential buildings (Pounds, 1952). Despite the extended mining and the existence of the heavy industry by 1950, it is wrong to suppose that Ruhr district is wholly urbanized. A large part of the valley is built and urban in character but the rest of it is forested or with agricultural uses. In addition, the power of Germany because of this large industrial zone was impressive, as "the Ruhr has a near monopoly at least of the export of coking coal and coke" (Pounds, 1952, p. 269). The end of this productive period started with the World War II, when a significant part of Ruhr valley was bombed having as a result the loss of a 30% plant and equipment. The problems continued until the Cold War with the Ruhr being the primary target. Last but not least, the economic crisis of 1973 influenced essentially the German industry, which was no longer competitive as lower-cost suppliers (for example from Japan) appeared in the marketplace. The production of steel declined sharply and thus industries were closed down ( Berndt, 1998).

The Emscher Landscape Park

The closure of the mines and steel factories led to a pack of problems such as social deprivation, outward migration and dwindling economy. As regards the environmental impact of the aforementioned situation, Ruhr's environment was extremely poor due to the long-term industrial pollution (The National Archives, 2011). As we are informed by travelers' descriptions, nature's appearance is more oppressive than vibrant, the foliage is grey and the trees are almost dead without leaves (Rossmann, 1996). The River Emscher itself has gained notoriety as the Ruhr's open sewer (Tjalingii, 2000, p. 111).

Fig. 2 _ Planned Space by IBA Emscherpark

As stated above, one of the main aims of IBA was to integrate into a structural programme for the ecological, social and economic redevelopment of the northern Ruhr District. IBA included the "Park" in the project's name as the Emscher Landscape Park was the central focus of that architectural exhibition which aimed to enhance the landscape of the Emscher region while improving its urban planning. The Emscher Park is based on the concept of a "national park amid the towns", first proposed by Robert Schmidt in 1912. "Its basic principles are: to protect, join together and improve existing open spaces, to create new kinds of park on old sites, to build up the area's own park infrastructure and to integrate many individual projects into a coherent park for the whole region"(Rossmann, 1996, pp. 154-155). In particular, the regeneration programme's coordination group decided to focus on a row of strategies aiming to decline and change the perceptions of the area. The revivification programme intended to include education, training, new types of jobs and housing, the conservation and the creative reuse of the industrial heritage, the general regeneration of the river system. The most important point was that they wanted to unite all the separated themes under the umbrella of a regional park and to have the ecological reconstruction of the Emscher valley as their backbone(The National Archives, 2011). The implementation of the park was divided in three stages. These three phases go from the general planning to the individual projects. The first set of measures includes the realization of an overall plan for the whole project, then follows the second stage with the realization of a framework plan for seven regional green corridors, and last but not least there is the expansion of the project in order to include the many individual local projects (Rossmann, 1996).

Fig. 3 _ Emscher Landscape Park

Fig. 4 _ The individual projects

The cities of the Ruhr district, the old settlements, the industry and the motorway network form a chaotic urban - rural landscape. Thus, the Emscher Landscape Parks overall goal was to create gradually a continuous green area crossing the northern Ruhr Area from east to west. Regarding the expansion and connection of green spaces in the region, separating the main cities and re-establishing a contrast between town and country. The park plan entails a system of seven green zones whereas green belts created for the same reason, based on the 1920s-era German concept of green corridors (Siemer and Stottrop, 2010).

Fig. 5 _ Green zones restore the contrast between town and country

Fig. 6 _ Planning Structure of Emscher Landscape Park - The seven green zones

"Such corridors, formerly separating towns and cities, are open spaces that, despite fragmentation, still constitute continuous belts of landscape. A new East-West green corridor along the canals and rivers in the Emscher area is to form the backbone of the regional green belts. This will ultimately give concrete form to the vision of a large, continuous landscape unit and a new Emscher Valley" (Gailing, 2007, para. 9 of 31). Fundamentally, a continuous park belt is emerging as a green corridor, crossing the park from the east to the west, connecting other green corridors and parks and reaching until the urban areas. Furthermore, the system of green zones and corridors is linked to the river valleys of the Emscher tributaries and to the river itself. In many cases, the land-use plans are changed in order to be able to host the new structure of green zones. Thus, a number of new landscape parks was added creating a continuous network of parks and trails, including 230 klm of bicycle paths and the development of a system of walking paths (Siemer and Stottrop 2010). In particular, one of these bicycling routes, the Ruhr Valley Cycle Route, runs from the rivers source in the Sauerland to Duisburg until the Rhine (Mayr, -). Moreover, the ecological improvement of the Emscher river system was extremely essential, targeting to the redevelopment of both the river Emscher and its tributaries. Small scale repairs were accomplished in order to improve the river quality. Such repairs were rehabilitation of tributaries, small scale groundwater infiltration designs and removal of the concrete river lining. However, some larger scale investments, such as the construction of new sewers and decentralized treatment facilities, were also necessary (Kilper and Wood, 1995). Likewise, tremendous efforts took place in view of improving the environmental quality of the existing green areas whereas they aimed to clean up the former contaminated industrial sites and make them part of a green network (The National Archives, 2011).

In addition to this, the abandoned industrial sites and structures were utilized again aiming to create a variety of new jobs in emerging economic sectors. The Ruhr District is strongly connected with its industrial past. Thus, instead of removing the factories, power plants, collieries, foundries, tailing heaps, storage tanks, canal locks and warehouses , they decided the preservation of these industrial monuments, providing them new uses, such as community centres, arts facilities, exhibition halls, and other public uses. One building was even restored to its original use as a transformer station, while others are pending to be reused.

Fig. 7 _ Network of industrial culture

At the same time, the renovation of housing and neighborhoods was programmed including not only some rehabilitation of early 20th Century worker housing but also some new constructions, both with high design standards, innovative ecological thinking, and user involvement. The goal of this part of planning was to rehabilitate housing estates in order to be able to receive better the new uses for the park. With regards to the social initiative, they developed a community social fabric, providing it with citizen involvement, grass roots development projects, employment, training programs and other social activities (Kilper and Wood, 1995). Conclusion

To sum up, the Emscher Landscape park is an example of an extended landscape planning because of its large scale and a variety of individual projectes must be included. As we understand from the previous analysis, before regenerating and mainly before even designing the new park in the Ruhr valley, there was a methodical landscape planning about organizing green areas, relationship between urban and rural landscape, cycling and walking paths and managing the industrial areas. One of the most important things that we can spot from the study of this park is

the procedure of going from the more general point of view to particular areas. Zooming in and out can constitute a very useful and effective way to approach an area, especially when it is in such a large scale example. In particular, the regional Park in Germany achieved through the landscape planning to bring together many different project and create a unite park of diversities. In addition to this, it is called to be a very successful example as it managed to turn into a symbol of sustainable development from a former contaminated situation.

Fig. 8 _ View of the Emscher from the roof of the Gasometer

Reference List

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Image Referencing

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