Mapping the Unknown: Deep Spaces of a latent Supercity

The work on Deep Spaces and their impact on a postindustrial urbanism partly originates in the research project Städteregion Ruhr 2030 funded by the Federal Ministry for Education and Research (bmbf) in Germany. Städteregion Ruhr was one of about twenty parallel research projects of Stadt 2030, a national research programme to explore the future of cities and city regions in Germany. In the Ruhrgebiet eight cities between Dortmund and Duisburg and the Faculty of Spatial Planning at the University of Dortmund worked together in Städteregion Ruhr 2030. The nine project partners developed long-term visions for the core area of the Ruhrgebiet, especially for its regional spaces and a regional design, and looked for new forms of urban (and regional) governance in the Ruhrgebiet (Davy 2002). Städteregion Ruhr 2030 and Deep Spaces also contribute to the general debate about post- or transurban landscapes. In addition to the increasing number of research programmes and studies, which deal with urbanistic phenomena that e.g. Thomas Sieverts describes as Zwischenstadt (Sieverts 1999), Lars Lerup as Suburban Metropolis (Lerup 2001) or Edward Soja as Exopolis (Soja 2000), Deep Spaces tries to find out, what kind of transfigurations of traditional ideals of urbanity and metropolism could take place in a region like the Ruhrgebiet (with five million people but almost no serious urbanistic tradition).