The Ruhr area close to Germany’s western border is one of Europe’s largest urban agglomerations. Merging Ruhr cities have resulted in the autobahn A 40 being assigned a unique centrality quite unlike ist previous peripheral position, turning it into the central boulevard of a metropolis with more than six million inhabitants. As such, the Ruhr area is becoming an exemplary international laboratory for urbanization processes in the “Urban Age”: how is the urban condition developing amidst decentralization, networks and metropolitan growth? How do global and local structures influence each other? How can a city be designed in the face of modernization pressures, migration into cities, and metropolitan loss of identity? What kind of participation and responsibility can the decentralized city offer its citizens?

In this volume, international artists, experts from the fields of planning and science, as well as residents report on conditions and chances of (urban) landscapes and provide valuable advice for the current urban development debate located between art and planning.