The German Internationale Bauausstellung (IBA) and Urban Regeneration: Lessons from the IBA Emscher Park

The German approach of using international building exhibitions (Internationale Bauausstellung) to provide an impetus for innovation in planning and construction dates back to the early twentieth century and the New Architecture communities atMathildenhöhe in Darmstadt (1901) and the Weißenhofsiedlung Stuttgart (1927), and later the 1957 Interbau exhibition in West Berlin with its presentation of the ‘city of tomorrow’. By the 1980s the IBA Berlin started to embody the broader policy discourses of urban regeneration and renewal, a purpose made yet more explicit by the IBA Emscher Park during the 1990s. This sought to utilise a series of innovative architectural and environmental projects to revitalise landscapes and communities across this former industrial heartland area of the Ruhr Valley. The IBA Emscher Park, which ran over the ten-year period 1989–99, in many respects was a diverse and innovativeapproach to urban regeneration, which attracted the interest of a wide international audience of policy professionals. This chapter, therefore, examines its legacies, transferability and lessons for contemporary approaches to urban renewal. The analysisfocuses on a range of key themes including: the political and governance structures adopted to co-ordinate this project-based approach to regeneration across the municipalities, communities and cities of the Emscher Valley; the guided incrementalism approach and the manner in which sustainability and ecological principles were embodied in the IBA projects; the way the IBA approach promoted regional resilience in a context of shrinking urban regional systems; and lessons that can be learned from the experiences of the IBA Emscher Park.