The Emscher Landscape Park and its network
Central themes of the Emscher Landscape Park were the reclamation, protection, opening up, networking and qualification of existing areas: The development of new parks on old sites, the transformation of former industrial railway lines into cycleways and hiking trails and the integration of the many individual projects into a contiguous regional park along the Emscher.
From an aesthetic viewpoint, the restoration was not about the landscape of the 19th century, but instead about formulating an independent character for the industrial landscape with its own aesthetics: Nature, culture and the industrial heritage were connected in post-industrial landscapes in order to return nature to the city, to link long-dissected open spaces and to be able to present the region's binding USP, its industrial past, as valuable history.
Based on the Emscher Landscape Park feasibility study (1990), the implementation of the landscape park took place on three distinct levels: An overall master plan for the Emscher Landscape Park as a whole, seven framework plans for seven regional green corridors and many local individual projects. Until 1992, the Emscher Landscape Park master plan was compiled and determined as the overall conception for the landscape park by the Kommunalverband Ruhr, today the Regionalverband Ruhr [Ruhr Regional Association] (RVR). Local and regional projects were coordinated and general quality objectives defined. Themes, requirements and ideas were developed for the landscape park. The framework plans for the seven regional green corridors (A to G) were prepared in parallel. They were created for a clear time period.
For each green corridor, key local projects were described which, essentially, can be categorised as one of five types:
‘Industrially shaped landscape parks’ embody large-scale parks on industrial waste ground
‘Municipal parks shaped by the post-industrial cultural landscape’ are smaller parks which were realised in association with new residential districts and industrial parks
‘Parks shaped by the pre-industrial cultural landscape’ are the remains of predominantly agriculturally shaped cultural landscapes, the agricultural or forestry utilisation of which will continue in a different form as a park
‘Wild industrial woodland’ means natural woodland development on industrial wasteland
‘Slag heaps and landfills’ were prepared for free space use and in part transformed into landmarks from an artistic point of view.
With the end of the IBA, the task of the transformation and sustainable creation of the urban landscape between and in the key cities of the Ruhr area was underway, but in no way was it complete. However, during the 1990s, all the participants had become aware of the enormous potential of the regional park concept. The Emscher Landscape Park 2010 master plan currently includes 178 completed projects and 248 ongoing and planned projects.
