emscher:future master plan. The Emscher between Dortmund and Dinslaken

Long used as a sewer in the industrial region between Dortmund and Dinslaken, the river and its surroundings are gradually being redeveloped into attractive landscape spaces. During the renaturation and redesign, we are retaining the always linear and austere character of the watercourse. The Emscher is a piece of nature and industrial heritage at the same time. This should also be the case in the future.

We see the course of the river as an Emscher cable. With its three strands - water, path, (dyke) green - this cable runs through the heterogeneous space of the northern Ruhr region. The "cable" supplies, radiates, is tapped and branches out. Water, path and theme strands are woven in. Nearby "attractors" such as parks, former collieries, slag heaps or sports facilities are integrative energy providers. The "cable" is thus a carrier and connecting element of leisure uses that include both commercial facilities and sites of industrial culture as well as neighbourhood-related open spaces, playgrounds and sports facilities.
From the designs for three exemplary areas, we have developed a homogeneous design canon for the entire region in a consortium.

Special Award Infrastructure and LandscapeGerman Landscape Architecture Award 2013

Jury verdict: The conversion of the Emscher system from an open, stifling sewer to an attractive, ecological waterway system is a generational project that was already initiated as part of the IBA Emscher Park. Initiated and financed by the Emschergenossenschaft, the emscher:zukunft master plan initiated a planning process that is exemplary for the integration of infrastructure into the landscape.

In an interdisciplinary competition held in 2003, an impressive strategy won through a concise image: The future Emscher is to develop as a colourful cable strand within which diverse water-related, landscape and urban planning functions are closely interwoven. This interweaving unfolds energy, generates synergies and enables spatially expansive ramifications. The programmatic image of the cable strand was spatially concretised in the course of the master plan process and further developed into a systematic regional development and action concept.

The emscher:zukunft master plan is an interactive planning platform for the involvement of and dialogue with the Emscher towns, districts and landowners along the Emscher. It shows in an exemplary way how it can be possible to use the infrastructural reconstruction of an infrastructure system as a motor for an integrated spatial development planning on a regional scale, which initiates new cooperation possibilities between different actors and bundles their different plans and projects. The master plan does not replace formal planning instruments, but it establishes guidelines for planned projects in the Emscher region and is thus an important strategic orientation framework.

At the same time, the master plan is continuously updated by including legally valid plans and continuously comparing them with the overarching goals. The emscher:zukunft master plan project impressively demonstrates that it is possible to develop an isolated infrastructural meideroom into an attractive, multifunctional, lively urban landscape through cooperation between different specialist disciplines and a dialogue-oriented planning process.