CONTEXT 186 : DECEMBER 2025 31 INFRASTRUCTURE IBA was instrumental in enabling a positive way forward and led to the state purchasing the site, although initially demolition remained an option. Ultimately it was concluded that most options involving demolition would be considerably more expensive than preservation, and the final decision to preserve the site was made in 1992 by Duisburg City Council. The ironworks thus remains as a centrepiece of the park, with structures creatively used, for example, as climbing walls or for scuba diving. A personal highlight was the breath-taking ascent to the top of one of the blast furnaces, an open and free viewing platform in the park. In 2010 the park was recording 770,000 visitors a year. Above all, beyond these spectacular sites, it should be emphasised that this is a landscape of (post-) industry, extending across the Ruhr Valley. This is recognised by the Route Industriekultur that connects sites across the region through a 400-kilometre route, including 27 anchor points with particular historical significance and tourist appeal, 17 viewpoints and 13 settlements. What has been achieved in the Ruhr Valley contrasts markedly with what one often sees in the UK, where industrial heritage has often been equated with the early seeds of the Industrial Revolution. We can see this represented by world heritage sites such as Ironbridge or Derwent Valley Mills. While also noting the world heritage sites Blaenavon Industrial Landscape and the Slate Landscape of north-west Wales, representing later, mass industrial processes, it often seems that legacies from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have determinedly been removed from the landscape. One recent case is the brutalist Dorman Long Coal in Middlesbrough, listed and then delisted a few days later, which Peter de Figueiredo mentions on page 14. Seen from this perspective, the transformation of the Ruhr is a phenomenal achievement, rightly used as an internationally celebrated example of inspiration and good practice. Yet challenges and questions remain. For example, despite the sustained attention and resourcing industrial heritage has received, managing the sheer quantity, or profusion,² of protected heritage is very difficult, especially in times of more austere public finances. There are questions of what represents an appropriate ‘authentic’ approach to conservation on sites where individual components were often designed to only last 30 years. The social consensus associated with the transformation from industrial to postindustrial region, as represented in the Ruhr Museum, has also been questioned.³ However, there is perhaps nowhere on earth quite like the Ruhr Valley, which should be a source of inspiration for all who are interested or concerned with the legacies of industrialisation. Acknowledgements CONSIDER is funded under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme. Many thanks to Sebastian Scholz of Stiftung Zollverein who both acted as my host for CONSIDER and provided useful comments on this article. Houses in Margarethenhöhe, Essen, one of the first settlements following garden city principles in Germany and part of the Route Industriekultur All photographs by the author John Pendlebury is emeritus professor of urban conservation, Newcastle University. His most recent book, with Jules Brown, is Conserving the Historic Environment (2021) ² Macdonald, S et al (2020) ‘Too many things to keep for the future?’, in Harrison, R, DeSilvey, C and Holtorf, C et al Heritage Futures: comparative approaches to natural and cultural heritage practices, UCL Press, London. ³ Berger, S (2019) ‘Industrial Heritage and the Ambiguities of Nostalgia for an Industrial Past in the Ruhr Valley, Germany’, Labor: Studies in WorkingClass History.
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