Quote:
Originally Posted by Minato Ku
Rhine-Ruhr is an area of several cities close to each other that grew independently of each other.
There isn't a core that dominate because it never was a single city that fueled the growth of a region. It's not a single market.
People don't settle to Duisbourg to work in Essen or Düsseldorf. It's not a single market area. I would say it's not a city but several cities close to each other.
The result is that despite a 11 million inhabitants population, the regional Rhine-Ruhr. S-bahn only carries something like 130 million passengers annual passengers.
That's less than the S bahn of Munich or Frankfurt despite being in less populated region.
People don't commute that far and don't need to use the S-Bahn.
To put thing in perspective, Paris RER/suburban network has a ridership 10 times higher than Rhine-Ruhr S-Bahn.
We have to ask a question, what is a city and what is a metropolitan area? This question is even more important in very dense region or countries where cities can be very close to each other or even touching each and yet still working independently.
I would never say that Rhine-Ruhr is a bigger city than Madrid because I don't considere Rhine-Ruhr to be a single city.
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The Rhine-Ruhr area is a very polycentric but nonetheless highly integrated labour market with several million daily commuters. Of course people live in Duisburg and commute to work in Dusseldorf or Essen.
As of 2020, 315,000 workers commuted into Dusseldorf while 105,000 commuted out of the city, with Duisburg and Cologne being the top 2 sources.
Some 105,000 commuted out of Duisburg (with Dusseldorf and Essen being the top 2 destinations) and an equal number commuted into the city.
Around 335,000 workers commuted into Cologne, 161,000 commuted out of the city; around 160,000 commuted into Essen and 105,000 commuted out of the city (with Dusseldorf being the top destination).
Just for the sake of a rough comparison: in 2010, 265,000 workers commuted into San Francisco and 101,000 commuted out of the city; 119,000 commuted into Oakland and 100,000 commuted out of the city; 155,000 commuted into San Jose and 205,000 people commuted out of the city. Numbers will have increased quite a bit, but it's pretty clear we're not talking about a completely different ballpark.
Does that make Rhine-Ruhr a 'city'? No, just as the Bay Area, Washington-Baltimore, the Greater Boston Area aren't 'cities' either. The truth is that metro areas are just that - they were never meant to represent cities. Sometimes they might overlap, but the more an urban area expands and the more polycentric it becomes, the less likely that is to be the case.