Introduction: 'Industrial Cities-History and Future'

Clemens Zimmermann

Preliminary remarks

In 2012 Frankfurt am Main celebrated the jubilee of its Eastern harbor, which-a hundred years ago-secured the metropolis' ascendancy as industrial city that it remains until today despite the importance of financial services. What was built then were not just port facilities; big plants and workshops settled around it and Riederwald estate, too, is a 'child of the Eastern harbor'. Even today, 8,000 people work there, although the real estate sector "is eager to grab the area" (Riebsamen 2012). Currently, the production of Opel's Astra model in the near-by Rüsselsheim (Zimmermann 2014) looses out and in the long run, the existence of the traditional automobile production is in jeopardy. Yet today, the car city Rüsselsheim is already more dependent on the jobs provided by Frankfurt Airport than on those provided by Opel. Both the Eastern harbor in Frankfurt and Opel as well as the airport imply the dangerous potential of industrial jobs and their situation in cities and regions. Frankfurt itself and its metropolitan region stand par excellence for contemporary urban spaces that feature mixed economic functions. Jobs are not just provided by the financial sector and logistics companies, but also by both traditional and knowledge sector industries. At the same time, the area features individual classic, previously mono-structural industrial cities, such as Rüsselsheim that is drudgingly asserting its position and has to deal with the general structural transition and constant sales slumps of Opel in a globalized automobile market. In the meantime, the structural transition equally progresses for example in the Saar region. Whilst the once determining coal extraction came to a halt last year, steel production continues and the Saar region has developed into a location of the automotive industry (Freitag 2012).

The number of scientific publications on the industry city is great. In the southwestern German library catalogue, there are 422 publications to be found under the entry 'industry city', in the National Union catalogue, the key word 'industrial town' comes up with 526 entries and 'industrial city' with 3,456. And these are only monographs that are categorized under history, social and spatial sciences, to a somewhat lesser degree under literary studies and urban studies and even more rarely under architecture. The fact that there is a certain consensus in all these disciplines over what characterizes 'industry city' is due to three circumstances: Firstly, the development of the industry city was in general tightly related to industrialization and social modernization in general, which presented decisive paradigms of the historical and social sciences disciplines. Secondly, throughout the period of urban boom, the growth of industry cities was a strong focus: 'urban and urbanization history' in Germany, urban history and urban studies in Anglophone contexts. Admittedly we know today that cities such as Brighton and London did not primarily grow from an industrial basis, equally Vienna and Berlin were characterized by a rather mixed structure and strong central and cultural functions. Industrialization and urbanization were tightly interrelated, yet not as tightly as it was conceptualized until recently. Contemporary mega cities such as Lagos, Bangkok and Mexico City are a point in case (Osterhammel 2010, 366-464).

Furthermore, research into industry cities was strongly tied to migration and protest research. Thirdly, common imaginations of industry cities were based upon-and are still based on-contemporary discourses, on works of painters and writers. They passed on to us external and internal imaginations: of dynamic, chaos, apocalyptic insecurity, dirt, dark living conditions, strong and intense protest and desperation of the individual. These highly charged, negative images-especially of cities with heavy industry a