Discourse on 'metropolitan driving forces' and 'uneven development': Germany and the RhineRuhr Conurbation

Abstract

Issues of state restructuring and rescaling are on the political agenda across Western Europe, but these processes of restructuring require different inflexions in different countries. This paper will concentrate on the case of Germany, and in particular will explore the establishment of a regime of metropolitan regions. It deals with the intensifying uneven development as well as with the management of this rescaling process. Considering one of these new spaces, Germany's biggest conurbation RhineRuhr, the paper argues that among other factors intra-regional uneven spatio-economic conditions influence the future development as a polycentric, but also complementary urban configuration.