Begining of our two-day bus tour

Office Building
Originally uploaded by Helmers.

This was the first site we visited - a large scale residental and office project near a canal that has experienced heavy industrial use over many decades.

Our tour guide, Peter, was informative, even if he did seem to generate some controversy among the German professors. In any case, he was very familiar with all the sites we visited.

The major industries in the area were steel production and coal extraction. After the 1980s, a lot of these operations were shut down. Their impact on the landscape took the form of enormous heaps of extracted soil and abandonded infrastructure. Massive reinvestment was necessary to find new uses for these big, dangerous, and expensive sites.