The Ruhr Region as a Landscape of the Anthropocene

When I want to give visitors a sense of the Ruhr region, I like to take them up to the rooftop terrace of the former Union Brewery, built in 1926–27 as Dortmund’s first high-rise. Almost invariably someone looks out over the city and remarks, with some surprise, how green it all is. That observation rarely matches the image many outsiders still associate with the Ruhr region: gray, sooty, and dirty.