Professional Documents
Culture Documents
The Evolving Urban Form
The Evolving Urban Form
The Evolving Urban Form
(ESSEN-DSSELDORF)
in Urban Issues /by Mike New
by Wendell Cox
An
Early Polycentric Urban Area
The Rhine Ruhr is unusual in not having evolved around a single core
municipality. The Rhine Ruhr has multiple core municipalities, which have
grown together to form a conurbation, the second largest in the world
following Osaka Kobe Kyoto. But the Rhine Ruhr is probably the most
polycentric urban region in the world, with a minimum of eight older, large
municipalities now linked by urbanization. These include Essen and
Dsseldorf, which were until recently the two largest municipalities. In
addition there are Dortmund, Duisburg, Bochum, Wuppertal, Gelsenkirchen
and Oberhausen. Each of these eight municipalities reached a population of
250,000 or more by 1961.
Like nearly all prewar municipalities in the high income world that had not
expanded their boundaries, each of these has lost population since 1961. By
2011, the combined population of these eight municipalities was under 3.4
million, a reduction of 700,000 (Table) from their 1961 total (a 17% loss).
Since 1987, the Rhine-Ruhr has added 161,000 residents, having gained
617,000 residents between 1987 and 2001, and losing 456,000 from 2001 to
2011. The eight older cities lost 170,000 residents from 1987 to 2011, while
the balance of the urban area lost 42,000. The exurbs, outside the urban
area have added 373,000 residents, and account for more than all of the
modest growth since 1987. All three sectors lost population after 2001
(Figure 2).
Slo
w Growth, Even for Germany
But even within the slow growth environment of North Rhine Westphalia, the
Rhine Ruhr region is falling behind as nearly all the growth has shifted
elsewhere to the regions of the lander that surround other urban areas,
Cologne (Kln), which includes the former West German capital of Bonn, and
Aachen (which stretches into the Netherlands). Local authorities in the Ruhr
Valley areforecasting a population loss of approximately 8 percent by 2030.
The Setting
Transport
Without a dominant, large center, the Rhine-Ruhr has a lower transit work
trip market share 18 percent than would be expected for a European
urban area of its size. This is well below the 30 percent share of Berlin and
the approximately 35 percent shares of Madrid, Lisbon, and Stockholm,
which are all smaller than the Rhine-Ruhr. Wuppertal is home to one of the
icons of mass transit, the Wuppertal Monorail, which opened in 1901. The
Monorail is suspended for much of its route above the Wupper River, with
supports straddling the river (such a configuration would probably not be
permitted to be constructed today in any high-income world metropolitan
area because of environmental regulations).
The Rhine-Ruhrs polycentricity requires substantial reliance on its road
system. The region is well served by an extensive freeway (autobahn)
system consisting of at least four east-west routes and five north-south
routes. Traffic congestion is worse than in most US urban areas, but the
Rhine-Ruhrs traffic flows better than in any metropolitan area of similar size
in Europe, according to 2012 data from the INRIX Traffic Scorecard. The
average peak hour delay is 14.8 percent compared to free flow. This is less
than one-half the average delay in smaller Milan (30.2 percent) and well
below Paris (27.8 percent) and London (26.1 percent). In 2005, the Rhine-
Ruhr had the fifth highest rated freeway access among 30 surveyed
international urban areas.
Shrinking City
Shrinking cities (where cities are defined as metropolitan areas or urban
areas) have been unusual in the high income world (Pittsburgh and Liverpool
are exceptions). Even as core municipalities have lost population, such as in
Atlanta and Copenhagen, metropolitan areas have continued to grow. This is
likely to change because of the severe national population declines forecast
in a number of countries. The Rhine-Ruhr, and other similarly situated cities,
will face serious challenges in retaining dynamic economies and delivering
public services in the years to come for an aging population supported by a
smaller work force.
Wendell Cox is a Visiting Professor, Conservatoire National des Arts et
Metiers, Paris and the author of War on the Dream: How Anti-Sprawl Policy
Threatens the Quality of Life.
Note 1: The entire Rhine-Ruhr and Cologne areas are considered by Germany
to be the Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan area (ballungsrume). This article is
limited to an area roughly conforming to the northern part of the
ballungsrume. Eurostat defines a much smaller Dsseldorf-Ruhrgebiet
metropolitan area that includes the Rhine-Ruhr urban area and most of the
exurban area in this analysis. There is no international standard for the
designation of metropolitan areas (labor markets).
Note 2: INRIX classifies the Rhine-Ruhr as two areas (north and south). This is
the population weighted congestion delay.