Housing area and business park Nordstern. In 1993 Nordstern colliery stopped its coal production which led to significant economic problems in the neighbouring cities. However, in 1997 the national garden exhibition opened up new opportunities. 100 ha of wasteland were transformed into a park, while the former premises of the colliery became the focal point for new businesses and housing estates.

Rheinelbe Park – “forest of sculpture”. The 50 ha of industrial wasteland of the former colliery Rheinelbe south of Gelsenkirchen City, demonstrate perfectly how successful revitalization looks like. A concept, including a wide variety of activities in combination with the works of art by Herman Prigann (e.g. the “Himmelstreppe”-stairway to heaven), established the basis for the transformation of the wasteland being used as scrap yard for decades, into an interesting open space of nature and art.

Business Park “Erin” at Castrop-Rauxel. A combination of landscape- and business-park hallmarks the new joint use of the former colliery site. After shutting down Erin, only a few witness monuments that may illustrate the 120 years of the local coal mining history were maintained. Today half of the 42 ha of the site belongs to a landscape park of Castrop City forming a greenbelt with a water axis in its centre.

Spoil heap Schurenbach and Richard Serra’s sculpture “slab for the Ruhr”. The American sculptor Richard Serra created at this location “his own” artificial hill – landscaping of intrinsic simplicity. The slab, 64 tons of steel, 15 m high, stands up stringent and archaic, almost perpendicular, in the middle of the black surface on top of the spoil heap. It is one of the most powerful places of art in the Ruhr area.

One can experience the “Palace of projects”, a permanent exhibition by Ilya Kabakov, inside the former salt store of the Zollverein coking plant. A walk-through timber construction, designed like a spiral-shaped sculpture, invites you to take a trip into the world of ideas of the 20th century, loaded with remembrances and dreams. By means of his different installations, Kabakov always asks the same question: How can we make the world a better place?

The inner harbour of Duisburg. A housing- and service-park grows in and in-between the former storehouses and flour mills right next to Duisburg’s inner harbour. “Work, live, enjoy the culture and leisure activities at the waterfront”. The quarter situated close to the city centre owes its quality due to solid planning and architecture as well as to the “Garden of remembrance” by Dani Karavan. The separated part of the port basin may be used as sports- and play-ground.