# Is the Rhine Ruhr area a megacity?



## Minato ku

erbse said:


> And I'm glad it isn't!
> 
> 
> Btw, Köln-Chorweiler is considered as one of, if not *the* worst district of Germany.
> It's still safer than the Banlieus of Paris or the trabants of London or most other shaby districts in Europe, I'd say.
> 
> And other parts of Cologne are really safe and friendly actually, pure joy of life everywhere.


^^ Banlieue (=suburbs) host over 8 million inhabitants, from the wealthiest to the poorest, from the safest to the most dangerous.
The large majority of Paris banlieues are nice and very safe.
We can't generalize a such big area.

So don't say that Köln-Chorweiler is less dangerous than the banlieue of Paris because I could find thousands of municipalies in banlieue less dangerous.
Say that Köln-Chorweiler is less dangerous than the most dangerous banlieue of Paris.


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## erbse

I should have said "some" Banlieus, me knows, but - dammit. Did you really have to take this part of my post with a pinch of salt like that? :|

And sure, we know how darn great peripheral Paris is, Minato. But I think everybody got the point of my post 

Let's head back to Rhein-Ruhr! What would/should be it's epicentre, btw? Düsseldorf?


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## Minato ku

There is no Epicentre. 
If we exclude Koln, Dortmund is most populated city and Dusseldorf is the most important business center.

For me Cologne (Koln) is too excentred, in fact I would not include Cologne in the same "metropolitan area" than Essen.
I even think the same for Dusseldorf.


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## Skyland

*Cologne perspective*

From a *Cologne perspective*, I think that Cologne, Bergisch-Gladbach, Leverkusen, Neuss, Krefeld, Düsseldorf and Bonn, though of course distinct cities, form one urban area. Lots of people commute between these cities (for their jobs, shopping, leisure etc.) by S-Bahn and local trains. People from Cologne go party and shopping in Düsseldorf and vice versa. Couples would live in between, one works in Düsseldorf, the other in Cologne etc.. Business travellers for Cologne would land at Düsseldorf airport and take a train to Cologne. Cologne and Bonn share a common airport and a tram connects the two cities. On the right bank side of the Rhine river Bonn and Cologne are connected continuously through urban areas. 

While US-cities like SF might have x-lane highways we have full trains (Local trains, S-Bahn, Subways, Trams - whatever you want) running every 10 minutes in the morning, may be less impressive in satellite pictures, but they prove high density that you only experience in New York at that level. Our trains are even full at weekend nights when people come back from nightlife in the other city. I havent seen that in US cities (except for NY) at that level at all.

Thats from a Cologne perspective. 

From a Duisburg perspective it looks a little different, you would go out and work for example in Düsseldorf, shop in Oberhausen, but probably you would not as frequently go to Cologne or even Bonn.
From a Bonn perspective, Cologne belongs to the same urban space, but people from Bonn would not go for nightlife to Düsseldorf, but to Cologne. The same for Dortmund or Essen, they would go to the nearby cities like Oberhausen, but not to Bonn, Cologne or Düsseldorf. 
So you can see that of course Dortmunders wouldnt say that Bonn is in the same urban area, but the two cities are connected continously by urban areas. 

Crime in Cologne:nuts:: Having lived on the US west coast as well as Paris, I can say that crime levels here are really a joke particularly compared to US-cities. Gun crimes are very rare and I have often been to Chorweiler. The center of Chorweiler is a well visited shopping mall that anybody goes to and there is no problem at all walking around. Chorweiler is surrounded by greenery and lakes where people BBQ, go jogging etc.. There is also a popular swimming pool. Of course if you are into drug trade you can get into trouble, but as a normal citizen you will only notice that level of foreigners is higher and that housing is a little less nice than elsewhere. In some of the US suburbs you have every night helicopters flying over your condo chasing some criminals and there are some suburbs of some cities where you cannot go because you have the wrong race. Cologne is a safe city as by the way is Paris - compared to the US with their guns, drugs, racial/low income gettos and death penalty.


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## brisavoine

^^Finally a forumer from Cologne giving his opinion. Thanks.

Concerning crime in the Paris suburbs, just a few stats to debunk some myths.

These were the crime rates in 2006 according to INSEE (crimes here include everything, from murders to simple robberies, frauds, and drug consumption):
- entire Greater Paris: 84.5 crimes per 1,000 inhabitants
- City of Paris proper: 118.6 crimes per 1,000 inh.
- Seine-Saint-Denis (the "93", the immigrant-heavy department with a bad reputation where the 2005 riots started): 101.2 crimes per 1,000 inh. (less than the City of Paris, shocking isn't it!)
- Val-d'Oise (another immigrant-heavy suburban department): 84.9 crimes per 1,000 inh.
- Yvelines (home of Versailles and affluent White people in the western suburbs): 67.5 crimes per 1,000 inh.
- Hauts-de-Seine (also in the western suburbs, and home of La Défense): 68.0 crimes per 1,000 inh.
- entire France: 60.7 crimes per 1,000 inh.
- entire Germany: 77 crimes per 1,000 inh. (in 2005)
- entire UK: 98 crimes per 1,000 inh. (in 2005)
- entire Sweden: 138 crimes per 1,000 inh. (in 2005) (Sweden! who would have thought)

If you can find crime rates for Cologne and the Rhine-Ruhr, don't hesitate to post them here to compare (remember that ALL crimes should be included, from simple thefts and frauds to murders).


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## Blackpool88

No way. There is clear countryside between Dusseldorf and Koln. It's like saying Liverpool & Manchester are one city.


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## Skyland

*Bonn-Dortmund - one urban space*

I disagree. 
1. Distance between DUS-CGN: 38km; Manchester-Liverpool: 55km
2. Düsseldorf and Cologne are connected through one urban area, because in between lies on the right-bank side Leverkusen (170k), Langenfeld (60k) or Monheim (60k) on the way to Düsseldorf. Look on Google Earth and you can see that the main roads (not motorways) are always going through urban area which is interrupted by a few (5 mid-size) fields. On the left-bank side it similar. Between CGN and DUS there is Dormagen (60k) and Neuss (170k).
3. As I outlined earlier, the most important evidence of this urban area being one is the commuter behavior. Many people work, shop, leisure in any of these cities not depending where they live. Giving you one example: A colleague of mine lives in DUS and commutes everyday to Cologne, another lives in Bonn and does the same. On weekends they would go out to Cologne or the other respective city they live in as I would go to Düsseldorf occasionally for shopping, leisure etc.. Similarly a friend of mine lives in Düsseldorf and works in Mülheim/Ruhr (170k), but would go party in Cologne. So you can say people of the following areas use the following as their urban space: 
-Bonn (Cologne, Troisdorf, Siegburg)
-Cologne (Düsseldorf, Bonn, Leverkusen, Neuss, Bergisch Gladbach)
-Düsseldorf (Cologne, Duisburg, Neuss, Leverkusen, Mühlheim, Krefeld, Mönchengladbach, Wuppertal)
-Wuppertal (Düsseldorf, Hagen, Solingen)
-Hagen (Witten, Dortmund, Wuppertal)
-Duisburg (Düsseldorf, Oberhausen)
-Oberhausen (Duisburg, Essen, Mülheim)
-Mülheim (Düsseldorf, Essen)
-Essen (Oberhausen, Mülheim, Bochum, Gelsenkirchen)
-Gelsenkirchen (Bochum, Essen, Herne)
-Bochum (Dortmund, Gelsenkirchen, Essen)
-Dortmund (Witten, Bochum, Herne, Hagen)

So: Anybody living in Bonn would very rarely out for weekend in Dortmund or vice versa, but both cities are connected by one urban space. Its like people from San Bernadino - they dont go to Santa Monica to grab a beer, but Los Angeles is still one urban area.

Crime rates per 1,000 in the Ruhr area depends on the city but varies in the bigger cities from 70-130, but this really includes all kind of crimes incl. pickpocketing etc.. Violent crime rates are much lower.


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## Svartmetall

^^ Well in fairness you do have lots and lots of towns between Manchester and Liverpool too which do almost form a continuous urban area connected by frequent transport and effective (enough) roading systems. Most of the areas are only again separated by a few fields.

If you look on Google Earth you can see this (starting at Liverpool). 

Liverpool - Huyton - Prescot - St Helens - Wigan -Atherton and then you're into the outskirts of Bolton which is on the outskirts of Manchester. The whole area is one seething mass of towns. You can also see another clear continuous line of development via Widness/Runcorn into Great Sankey and Warrington and then through Partington and into Manchester too.


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## brisavoine

Skyland said:


> Crime rates per 1,000 in the Ruhr area depends on the city but varies in the bigger cities from 70-130, but this really includes all kind of crimes incl. pickpocketing etc.. Violent crime rates are much lower.


So it's not very different from the Paris banlieue then.


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## Svartmetall

brisavoine said:


> So it's not very different from the Paris banlieue then.


Crime statistics are hard to compare though - graffiti could be endemic and treated as a crime in one place, yet could only be a misdemeanor in another (thus not contributing to the crime statistics for the country). Rather than assessing total crime, the best measure is violent crime and murder considering these variables are at least slightly less likely to vary from one country to another to quite the same degree.


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## brisavoine

^^I don't think that graffiti are considered a crime anywhere in Europe.


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## Metropolitan

It's funny but before today, I've never noticed how huge was the concentration of Bundesliga teams in the Rhein-Rhur area !

We can find there:
- Borussia Dortmund
- Schalke 04
- Bayer Leverkusen
- VfL Bochum
- Mönchengladbach
- FC Köln

That's a third of Bundesliga teams for a region representing only about 12% of the German population.


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## brisavoine

Svartmetall said:


> Rather than assessing total crime, the best measure is violent crime and murder considering these variables are at least slightly less likely to vary from one country to another to quite the same degree.


If violent crimes include violent and armed robberies, murders and murder attempts, attacks causing bodily harm, sexual crimes, and abuse of children (incl. lack of care such as not feeding children), then these were the violent crime rates in Greater Paris in 2006 (look at my previous post to find out what each jurisdiction encompasses):
- entire Greater Paris: 9.5 violent crimes per 1,000 inh.
- City of Paris: 13.0 violent crimes per 1,000 inh.
- Seine-Saint-Denis: 15.7 violent crimes per 1,000 inh.
- Val-d'Oise: 9.7 violent crimes per 1,000 inh.
- Yvelines: 5.9 violent crimes per 1,000 inh.
- Hauts-de-Seine: 6.7 violent crimes per 1,000 inh.

Here the Seine-Saint-Denis has a higher rate than the City of Paris, but all the other suburbs have a lower rate, and the City of Paris is way above the Greater Paris average. In other words, most of the banlieue is safer than the City of Paris.

Now if you can find the same stats for cities in the Rhine-Ruhr (making sure to include the same things that I have included), it will be interesting to compare.


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## DiggerD21

brisavoine said:


> ^^I don't think that graffiti are considered a crime anywhere in Europe.


In Germany, Austria and Switzerland illegal graffiti can be treated as a crime, as it is property damage, and can lead to fines and prison.


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## DiggerD21

Entire Northrine-Westphalia had a crime-rate of 80.75 crimes per 1,000 inhabitants (all crimes) in 2008.


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## poshbakerloo

Its not a city...its just a conurbation...its like calling the Manchester-Liverpool-Warrington-Stockport-Salford area in England a city...


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## Fallout

Hey nerds, maybe it will be interesting to you:

http://www.espon.eu/mmp/online/webs...61/420/file_2420/fr-1.4.3_April2007-final.pdf

It's a "ESPON project 1.4.3 Study on Urban Functions" (14Mb).


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## bayviews

OMH said:


> No, the Rhein-Ruhr isn't a "Megacity" , since a Megacity would mean that it's a metropolitan area which is centered around a core city, and has a pop. of over 10 million people (I don't know if there's any official definition, but this is what it says on wikipedia:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megacity ).
> The Rhine-Ruhr IMO should be considered an agglomeration , or a metropolitan area (the two are basically the same), but not a megacity since it isn't centralized, but has many large cities, though none except Cologne has over 1 million people, and even Cologne doesn't have the same influence in the Rhine-Ruhr as San Francisco has in the Bay Area or Amsterdam in Randstad) .
> Maybe this is because Cologne is located quite far away (ca. 40 km) from the centre part of the Ruhr region (roughly where Essen or Bochum are located).


Had the Rhein-Ruhr bee a rapidly-growing region like the SF Bay Area or say the Hong Kong-Shenzen-Macao area in South China, maybe it would have morphed into a true mega-city by now. But haven't most German cities including these been, at most, fairly stable in terms of their population?


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## erbse

^ That matters on which historical era you put into perspective.


During the industrialization (esp. the "Gründerzeit" era) we had anything but a "stable" pop. growth. And even in post-war times there was quite a growth thanks to immigrants and war refugees.

Nowadays it's rather stable or even declining, thou. But urban centers still grow, and if the Rhein-Ruhr area gets its act together and transforms from a resources-oriented economy into a service or scientific oriented one, it could def. grow again as well.


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## Xusein

hudkina said:


> The stretch of land between Stamford, CT and Springfield, MA is similar in nature. There are half a dozen cities connected via a few smaller cities and towns. It covers about the same land area as the Ruhr Area (around 2,000 sq. mi.) but has less than half the population (3 million vs. 7.5 million for the Ruhr). The main cities are also much smaller and a little further apart. The largest cities are Hartford, Springfield, Bridgeport, New Haven, Stamford and Waterbury.


Hmmm, actually there is a resemblance. Although Hartford is by far the largest metro-wise, city-proper they are all approximately similar in size. There really is no dominant city or metro for the area, and I suppose that the crazy metropolitan areas that they put us in is a statement. 

However, we have a major difference: New York. As you probably already know, every major town here south and west of Hartford is part of NYC's sphere of influence and CSA, and slowly the state is being more integrated into it. I suppose if the Rhine Rhur area was next to an even larger metro that half of it's cities were influenced by, then we'd be more similar. They seem even more disorganized than us.

I wish we had their rail system too.


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## bayviews

erbse said:


> ^ That matters on which historical era you put into perspective.
> 
> 
> During the industrialization (esp. the "Gründerzeit" era) we had anything but a "stable" pop. growth. And even in post-war times there was quite a growth thanks to immigrants and war refugees.
> 
> Nowadays it's rather stable or even declining, thou. But urban centers still grow, and if the Rhein-Ruhr area gets its act together and transforms from a resources-oriented economy into a service or scientific oriented one, it could def. grow again as well.


In that sense, the Rhein-Ruhr's rise & decline in many ways mirrors that of the US rustbelt, cities like Pittsburgh & Detroit were America's boomtowns in their day.


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## brisavoine

bayviews said:


> Had the Rhein-Ruhr bee a rapidly-growing region like the SF Bay Area or say the Hong Kong-Shenzen-Macao area in South China, maybe it would have morphed into a true mega-city by now. But haven't most German cities including these been, at most, fairly stable in terms of their population?





erbse said:


> Nowadays it's rather stable or even declining, thou. But urban centers still grow, and if the Rhein-Ruhr area gets its act together and transforms from a resources-oriented economy into a service or scientific oriented one, it could def. grow again as well.


I calculated the population of the Rhine-Ruhr some time ago, for every year since 1963. These population figures refer to the Metropolregion Rhein-Ruhr (Rhine-Rurh Metropolitan Area) officially defined by German authorities. The officially defined Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Area has a land area of exactly 10,819 km². Here on this map you can see the limits of the officially defined Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Area (all the territories that have bright colors are part of the Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Area).










And here is the population of the officially defined Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Area since 1963, with its peaks and throughs:
- Jan. 1, 1963: 11,066,754
- Jan. 1, 1974: 11,535,178
- Jan. 1, 1987: 10,922,944
- Jan. 1, 1997: 11,574,717
- Jan. 1, 2005: 11,507,401
- Jan. 1, 2006: 11,491,395
- Jan. 1, 2007: 11,471,732
- Jan. 1, 2008: 11,450,528
- Nov. 1, 2008: 11,424,034

The Rhine-Ruhr reached its highest peak of population in 1997. Since 2003 the population decline has accelerated. Of course the population of the Rhine-Ruhr already declined between 1974 and 1987, and then recovered, but this time, unlike in the 1970s and 1980s, it is the entire Germany that is experiencing population decline, so it will be much harder for the Rhine-Ruhr to halt its current population decline (21,204 inhabitants lost in 2007, 26,494 inhabitants lost in the first 10 months of 2008).


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## Chrissib

brisavoine said:


> I calculated the population of the Rhine-Ruhr some time ago, for every year since 1963. These population figures refer to the Metropolregion Rhein-Ruhr (Rhine-Rurh Metropolitan Area) officially defined by German authorities. The officially defined Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Area has a land area of exactly 10,819 km². Here on this map you can see the limits of the officially defined Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Area (all the territories that have bright colors are part of the Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Area).
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> And here is the population of the officially defined Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Area since 1963, with its peaks and throughs:
> - Jan. 1, 1963: 11,066,754
> - Jan. 1, 1974: 11,535,178
> - Jan. 1, 1987: 10,922,944
> - Jan. 1, 1997: 11,574,717
> - Jan. 1, 2005: 11,507,401
> - Jan. 1, 2006: 11,491,395
> - Jan. 1, 2007: 11,471,732
> - Jan. 1, 2008: 11,450,528
> - Nov. 1, 2008: 11,424,034
> 
> The Rhine-Ruhr reached its highest peak of population in 1997. Since 2003 the population decline has accelerated. Of course the population of the Rhine-Ruhr already declined between 1974 and 1987, and then recovered, but this time, unlike in the 1970s and 1980s, it is the entire Germany that is experiencing population decline, so it will be much harder for the Rhine-Ruhr to halt its current population decline (21,204 inhabitants lost in 2007, 26,494 inhabitants lost in the first 10 months of 2008).


The rise between 1987 and 1997 was just because Germans from the former communist states migrated home. The Soviet Union was one of the countries with the highest shares of Germans in the world. Population is shrinking because of the very low birth rates in the Ruhr areas and the cities of Düsseldorf and Köln. Birth rates in the suburban areas are higher but also very low. 

You can also see that the Rhein-Ruhr-Area had over 10 million inhabitants long before Ile-de-France reached that mark. Paris became Megacity in the early 80s, and the Rhein-Ruhr-Area in the early 50s. Rhein-Ruhr was the third or fourth metro-area to break the 10-million barrier.


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## brisavoine

Here is a graph showing the population in the officially defined Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Area (10,819 km²) and in the Greater Paris (aka Île-de-France) administrative region (12,012 km²) since 1963. Population in the Greater Paris region passed the officially defined Rhine-Ruhr during the year 2005. Historically the Greater Paris region had 1.4 million inhabitants at the beginning of the 19th century. I wonder how many inhabitants there were in the Rhine-Ruhr at the time.


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## bayviews

brisavoine said:


> I calculated the population of the Rhine-Ruhr some time ago, for every year since 1963. These population figures refer to the Metropolregion Rhein-Ruhr (Rhine-Rurh Metropolitan Area) officially defined by German authorities. The officially defined Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Area has a land area of exactly 10,819 km². Here on this map you can see the limits of the officially defined Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Area (all the territories that have bright colors are part of the Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Area).
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> And here is the population of the officially defined Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Area since 1963, with its peaks and throughs:
> - Jan. 1, 1963: 11,066,754
> - Jan. 1, 1974: 11,535,178
> - Jan. 1, 1987: 10,922,944
> - Jan. 1, 1997: 11,574,717
> - Jan. 1, 2005: 11,507,401
> - Jan. 1, 2006: 11,491,395
> - Jan. 1, 2007: 11,471,732
> - Jan. 1, 2008: 11,450,528
> - Nov. 1, 2008: 11,424,034
> 
> The Rhine-Ruhr reached its highest peak of population in 1997. Since 2003 the population decline has accelerated. Of course the population of the Rhine-Ruhr already declined between 1974 and 1987, and then recovered, but this time, unlike in the 1970s and 1980s, it is the entire Germany that is experiencing population decline, so it will be much harder for the Rhine-Ruhr to halt its current population decline (21,204 inhabitants lost in 2007, 26,494 inhabitants lost in the first 10 months of 2008).


Interesting, that's quite a contrast with the San Francisco Bay Area, where the population nearly doubled from 3.7 million to over 7 million between 1960 & 2000.


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## Xusein

So was the Rhur area, in the sixties, one of the largest agglomerations in the world?


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## Chrissib

brisavoine said:


> Here is a graph showing the population in the officially defined Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Area (10,819 km²) and in the Greater Paris (aka Île-de-France) administrative region (12,012 km²) since 1963. Population in the Greater Paris region passed the officially defined Rhine-Ruhr during the year 2005. Historically the Greater Paris region had 1.4 million inhabitants at the beginning of the 19th century. I wonder how many inhabitants there were in the Rhine-Ruhr at the time.


Maybe a bit less than half a million perhaps. Köln had 50k at that time, Düsseldorf 13k, Duisburg 5k, Essen 4k, Dortmund 4k and Bochum 2k. They were all little towns 200 years ago.


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## brisavoine

Chrissib said:


> Maybe a bit less than half a million perhaps.


Well, at the French census of 1806, the Roër département had a population density of 108 inh./km². The Roër département covered the left bank of the Rhine from Cologne to Cleves:



















If we assume that the rest of the Rhine-Ruhr on the right bank of the Rhine had also a density of 108 inh./km², that means the officially defined Rhine-Ruhr had 1,170,000 inhabitants in 1806. Of course, I don't know if the Ruhr was as densely populated as the left bank of the Rhine, so this is just a wild guess. The Ruhr was never part of the French Empire, so there's no way to know its population density at the time.

PS: I've just discovered that the Ruhr was turned into two French-style départements, the "Département Rhein" and the "Département Ruhr", which were part of the Grand Duchy of Berg. The Grand Duchy of Berg was in theory not part of the French Empire, but it was in fact ruled first by the French marshal Murat and then by Napoleon's nephew who was only 5 y/o at the time, so it was French bureaucrats who in fact administered the Grand Duchy. They may have carried out a census just like in the French Empire, I don't know. If they published population figures, I don't know where they are stored now. Perhaps at the archives of North Rhine-Westphalia.

That was the territory of the Grand Duchy of Berg between 1806 and 1813:


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## brisavoine

After some further research, I was able to find some statistics for the Grand Duchy of Berg. Here you have a map of the 4 départements that made up the Grand Duchy of Berg in 1809 (Rhein département, Ruhr département, Ems département, and Sieg département):










The Rhein département and Ruhr département (on the right bank of the Rhine) were significantly less densely populated than the Roër département (on the left bank of the Rhine). If I sum up the population of these three départements at the time of the First French Empire and calculate their population density, in the end I find that the officially defined Rhine-Ruhr (10,819 km²) must have had about 800,000 inhabitants in the beginning of the 19th century.

So in 200 years (from the beginning of the 19th century to the beginning of the 21st century), the population of the Rhine-Ruhr increased from 0.8 million to 11.4 million, i.e. it increased slightly more than 14 times. In comparison, during the same 200 years the population of Greater Paris (Île-de-France) increased from 1.4 million to 11.8 million, i.e. it increased almost 8.5 times. This is less than the Rhine-Ruhr, which shows how attractive was the Rhine-Ruhr until the mid-20th century. Also, the birth rate in Germany was much higher than in France in the 19th century and first half of the 20th century, so that's another reason why the Rhine-Ruhr grew much more than Greater Paris, despite the fact that Greater Paris attracted migrants from all across France.


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## brisavoine

Xusein said:


> So was the Rhur area, in the sixties, one of the largest agglomerations in the world?


No. At the time the Rhine-Ruhr was three separate urban areas (agglomerations). There was the Central Ruhr-Essen urban area, the Southern Ruhr-Wuppertal-Düsseldorf urban area, and the Cologne-Bonn urban area. In the beginning of the 1990s, the Central Ruhr-Essen urban area had 4,669,000 inhabitants, the Southern Ruhr-Wuppertal-Düsseldorf urban area had 2,503,000 inhabitants, and the Cologne-Bonn urban area had 2,220,000 inhabitants. It is only in the 1990s that these three urban areas finally merged with each other (no more than 200 meters of unbuilt land between the extremities of each urban area), with 10,015,000 inhabitants in 2000 according to the Geopolis database (the 11+ million figures that I previously gave are for the metropolitan area and not for the urban area), so the Rhine-Ruhr can now technically be considered a megacity, although as has been pointed out it doesn't really feel like a single city due to its history and its thinly spread urbanization (instead of a big large center).


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## tablemtn

What is the economic output of the Rhine-Ruhr cluster compared to that of Paris or London?


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## urbane

Azia said:


> so are the rhine ruhr area in germany in megacity or just clumped together cities ??
> 
> the ruhr area is located in germanys state nordrhine westphalia and have an population of 12 million people
> 
> it icludes cities like essen, bonn , düsseldorf,cologne mönchengladbach , duisburg , bochum , dortmund and hamm


I can see the Ruhr area as one polycentric metropolitan area (interestingly, the actual Ruhr river is located at the southern fringe of this area, and not centrally: but it's still called Ruhrgebiet because the area by the Ruhr is where coal was first heavily mined, until those seams were exhausted and the mining as well as industry moved northwards), but I find it hard to see the whole Rhine-Ruhr region as one metropolis.


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## brisavoine

tablemtn said:


> What is the economic output of the Rhine-Ruhr cluster compared to that of Paris or London?


It's easy to compare between the Rhine-Ruhr and Paris, because both have officially defined metropolitan areas which correspond quite well with administrative units, but it's much harder to compare with London because there is no clear definition of what's included within the London metropolitan area, so we can only give tentative numbers.

In 2006 the GDP of the officially defined Rhine-Ruhr (11.5 million inhabitants in 2006) was 338 billion euros. That same year the GDP of the Greater Paris (Île-de-France) region (11.5 million inhabitants in 2006) was 511 billion euros.

For London it would be best to calculate the GDP of the London LUZ (a statistical area defined by Eurostat and akin to a metropolitan area which encompasses Greater London and scores of districts surrounding Greater London), but it is impossible to do so because GDP figures are not available at the English district level. All we have are GDP figures at the English county level. If we take Greater London and all the counties surrounding it, which is an area larger than the London LUZ and which includes far away places such as Dover (and thus the GDP generated in Dover by the cross-Channel traffic), then in 2006 the GDP of this vast area (14.3 million inhabitants in 2006) was 425 billion sterling pounds. At today's exchange rate that's 477 billion euros.

I've also calculated the Randstad (Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague, Utrecht, etc.). In 2006 the GDP of the Randstad (6.9 million inhabitants in 2006) was 255 billion euros.


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## bigbossman

^^ Surely because the Euros value against the pound has increased (and inflation of course) if we want to find out the GDP value of London metro in 2006 in 2008 money we need to convert it based upon the 2006 Exchange rates then adjust for inflation?? 

I have the figure of 512 billion euros.


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## bayviews

brisavoine said:


> No. At the time the Rhine-Ruhr was three separate urban areas (agglomerations). There was the Central Ruhr-Essen urban area, the Southern Ruhr-Wuppertal-Düsseldorf urban area, and the Cologne-Bonn urban area. In the beginning of the 1990s, the Central Ruhr-Essen urban area had 4,669,000 inhabitants, the Southern Ruhr-Wuppertal-Düsseldorf urban area had 2,503,000 inhabitants, and the Cologne-Bonn urban area had 2,220,000 inhabitants. It is only in the 1990s that these three urban areas finally merged with each other (no more than 200 meters of unbuilt land between the extremities of each urban area), with 10,015,000 inhabitants in 2000 according to the Geopolis database (the 11+ million figures that I previously gave are for the metropolitan area and not for the urban area), so the Rhine-Ruhr can now technically be considered a megacity, although as has been pointed out it doesn't really feel like a single city due to its history and its thinly spread urbanization (instead of a big large center).


Interesting, I do see that Rhein-Ruhr North ranked as the #7 city region in the world in 1950, with 5.3 million population, the 4th largest in Europe at that time, just below London, Paris, & Moscow, & way ahead of Berlin.


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## Chrissib

bayviews said:


> Interesting, I do see that Rhein-Ruhr North ranked as the #7 city region in the world in 1950, with 5.3 million population, the 4th largest in Europe at that time, just below London, Paris, & Moscow, & way ahead of Berlin.


Berlin had certainly grown to a Megacity if there were no two world wars and the cold war...


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## Mekky II

those "coal" cities are impressive, it's what demography specialists call "grapes"... north of france does have one too, going from Béthune to Valenciennes and hosting 3 millions people, but compared to rhein-ruhr and silesia, here Lille is the leader city...


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## Metropolitan

Mekky II said:


> those "coal" cities are impressive, it's what demography specialists call "grapes"... north of france does have one too, going from Béthune to Valenciennes and hosting 3 millions people, but compared to rhein-ruhr and silesia, here Lille is the leader city...


Not really, Lille is clearly separated at the North of the urban strip linking Béthune, Lens, Douai, Hénin-Beaumont and Valenciennes. Lille's position can somewhat be compared to Cologne's in that regard.

However, the French urban stip from Béthune to Valenciennes is clearly more sparsely urbanized than is the Ruhr area from Duisbourg to Dortmund. Though you're still correct, they are rather similar in nature.


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## Paddington

I was in San Fransisco recently and I got almost the opposite impression. Driving from San Francisco to SFO alone (which is half way to San Jose, or maybe even less) you pass through some distinctly pastoral appearing communities, and some spots that seem almost empty.


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## bayviews

Chrissib said:


> Berlin had certainly grown to a Megacity if there were no two world wars and the cold war...


Quite true. Up thru the 1930s, Berlin was very much the leading, dominant city in Germany....but yea, that all changed.


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