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The Ruhr Metropolitan Region is the industrial center of North Rhine-Westphalia. A third of the population of NRW live on 4,435 km² – 13 percent of the state's area. Approx. 5.3 million people live in the 11 district-free cities and 4 districts with a total of 53 independent municipalities. The population density here is 1,190 inhabitants/km². Following London and Paris, the Ruhr Metropolitan Region is the third-largest conurbation in Europe.
153,000 taxable companies with their 2.25 million employees generated a gross domestic product of approx. 126 billion euros in 2005. Of this figure, 70.7 percent was accounted for by services and 28.1 by the manufacturing industry. The Ruhr Metropolitan Region is the corporate headquarters of 18 of the 100 or 49 of the 500 top-selling companies in Germany, including such well-known names as RWE, Thyssen-Krupp, Karstadt, Hochtief, RAG, and Aldi.
On the way to becoming a service and high-tech location, important competence centers have developed in the areas chemicals, health industry, energy, information and communications technology, mechanical engineering, medical technology, microsystems technology, logistics, and new materials.
These research-intensive sectors are supported by a dense university landscape: 5 universities, 9 universities of applied sciences, 1 art college, 3 Max Planck Institutes, 4 Fraunhofer Institutes, 4 Leibnitz Institutes, and 130 non-university technology and research facilities ensure qualified young people and technology transfer.
The Ruhr Metropolitan Region is one of Europe's most highly developed regions: 598 km of freeways, 70 rail stations, 5 marshaling yards, 272 km of waterways, the world's largest inland port in Duisburg, Dortmund airport, and the nearby airports in Düsseldorf and Cologne ensure excellent connections in every direction.
