Neue Regionalisierungsansätze in Nordrhein-Westfalen

There have long been levels of planning action located between the State and municipalities. Until recently, however, in North Rhine-Westphalia these have led a niche existence. Over the last few years this situation has changed dramatically with the emergence of a plethora of new forms of regional co-operation in diverse areas and in pursuit of quite different goals. They range from examples of intermunicipal co-operation focusing on one specific problem or goal (e. g. regional retail strategies), to integration-based approaches (such as the REGIONALE programme), and even institutional innovations (e. g. the land-use planning at the regional level or the Aachen city region). This development is dynamic and especially in the Ruhr region has attained a quality which even just a few years ago would have been unimaginable. It is against this background that the ARL’s Regional Working Group for North Rhine-Westphalia created a work group to look into “New Approaches to Regionalisation in North Rhine-Westphalia”. This work group examined a host of new approaches to regionalisation from various perspectives, focusing equally on the way in which they are embedded within regional structures. The individual contributions are supplemented by a survey offering an audit of new approaches to regionalisation in North Rhine-Westphalia, a comparative analysis of the procedures employed in the demarcation of planning areas for regional planning in other states in Germany, and a discussion on the changing demands placed on spatial observation which flow from these new approaches to regionalisation. The conclusions the work group arrived at in the course of their investigations form the final section.