The Regionale

Abstract

From 1989 to 1999 the Emscher Park International Building Exhibition (IBA Emscher Park) was an innovative approach to regional development in an old-industrial region by project-based strategies and setting new themes like “change without growth”, “ecological development by urban landscape” and “cultural renewal with industrial heritage”. As a result of this successful strategy in 1997 a new program setup by the State Government of North Rhine-Westphalia was to act as a platform for the promotion of innovative approaches in regional development in the whole country. Six Regionales were launched and implemented along these principles during the 2000 to 2010 period. Two further projects are scheduled to be completed by 2016. The Regionale 2006 in the Bergisch City Triangle of Wuppertal, Solingen and Remscheid in fact covered an early industrialized conurbation on the periphery of the Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan area. The region understood it as a structural program capable of uniting the strategies for inner-city renewal into one course of action with approx. 22 smaller projects—this to raise the profile of the economic location and to carve out the identity of the cultural landscape. Above all, via the thematic complex of Living Industrial and Entrepreneurial Culture, endeavors were made early on to involve the SME community and other committed entrepreneurs in the plans for regional development.