Ruhr Area From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. (Redirected from Ruhr area) The Ruhr Area (German Ruhrgebiet or, colloquially, Ruhrpott) is a metropolitan area in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, consisting of a number of large industrial cities bordered by the rivers Ruhr to the south, Rhine to the west, and Lippe to the north. Southwest it borders the Bergisches Land. Going from west to east, the area includes the cities of Duisburg, Oberhausen, Bottrop, Mülheim, Essen, Gelsenkirchen, Bochum, Herne, Hagen, and Dortmund. The cities of the area have grown into a large complex forming an industrial landscape of unique size, inhabited by circa 9 million people, the third largest urban area in Europe after Greater London and Paris. The area is often mistakenly perceived as a single city because many maps do not show the boundaries between the individual cities. The area is also considered part of the even larger Rhine-Ruhr metropolis of more than 12 million people. Being mere villages for most of their history, the towns of the area first grew during the Industrial Revolution, mainly basing their economy on coal mining and steel production. As demand for coal slowly decreased after 1960, the area went through phases of structural crisis and industrial diversification, first developing the traditionally strong manufacturing, then moving into service industries and high technology. The proverbial air and water pollution of the area are largely a thing of the past. The local dialect of German is called Ruhrdeutsch and contains elements of many more traditional German dialects, some foreign workers' languages, and new expressions arising from the circumstances of industrial work. No unified grammar or spelling of Ruhrdeutsch is available, yet a substantial amount of literature has been published in this language, including the famous Asterix comic books. In the 19th century Ruhr area pulled over 1 million Poles from East Prussia and Silesia due to process called Ostflucht. Almost all of their descendants today speak German only and consider themselves Germans, with only their Polish family names remaining as a sign of their past. In 1900, the main concentrations of Polish minority were: Gelsenkirchen, Landkreis (Provinz Westfalen) 13.1 % Bochum, Landkreis (Provinz Westfalen) 9.1 % Dortmund, Landkreis (Provinz Westfalen) 7.3 % Gelsenkirchen, Stadtkreis (Provinz Westfalen) 5.1 %