21st Century (2000–present)

Essen Krupp Belt

2000s · Germany · Western & Central Europe · Post-industrial regeneration and waterfront urbanism · Planned by ThyssenKrupp; City of Essen
Masterplan Krupp-Guertel, Essen — massing of the planned quarter, boulevard and Krupp-Park on the former industrial belt
Masterplan Krupp-Guertel, Essen — massing of the planned quarter, boulevard and Krupp-Park on the former industrial belt · © Stahm Architekten — used with credit · Stahm Architekten, Masterplan Krupp-Guertel / Essen 51, Essen

Core idea

Industrial belt to park/business

Why it matters

Corporate–city brownfield remake

Description

A joint venture between ThyssenKrupp and the City of Essen, planned in the 2000s, to redevelop the Krupp Belt, the crescent of former Krupp steelworks land separating Essen's city centre from its western districts. The scheme combined a new ThyssenKrupp corporate headquarters campus with the large Krupp Park, a new boulevard and sites for offices and housing on remediated industrial ground.

Significance

The Krupp Belt is a notable example of corporate-municipal partnership in brownfield regeneration, with the company that created the industrial landscape financing much of its transformation. Within the wider Ruhr conversion associated with the IBA Emscher Park lineage, it shows how landscape and corporate investment were used to stitch a severed city back together, and it informs debates on the role of legacy industrial firms in post-industrial urbanism.

What shaped it

Sources

Open it on the interactive timeline →
hub.toekom.st — History of Urbanism · an interactive timeline of 850 planned cities across 6,000 years.