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    • Ruhr Metropolitan Region
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Inhalt

Ruhr Metropolitan Region

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. 5.2 million people live in the 11 district-free cities and 4 districts with a total of 53 independent municipalities. The population density here is nearly 1,220 inhabitants/km². Following London and Paris, the Ruhr Metropolitan Region is the third-largest conurbation in Europe.

158,000 taxable companies with their 2.2 million employees generated a gross domestic product of approx. 133 billion euros in 2006. Of this figure, 70 percent was accounted for by services and approx. 29 by the manufacturing industry. The Ruhr Metropolitan Region is the corporate headquarters of 16 of the 100 or 43 of the 500 top-selling companies in Germany, including such well-known names as RWE, Thyssen-Krupp, Hochtief, RAG, and Aldi.

The industrial sectors energy, chemicals, logistics and healthcare are the main fields of competence in the Metropole Ruhr region. The total revenue in these industries is not only significantly high, but these sectors also provide many new jobs and enforce the development of new technologies. En route to a high-tech region, cross-cutting issues such as microsystemtechnology, nano technology and new materials accelerate new developments in numerous user branches. Information and communication technology forms another significant cross-cutting issue.

These research-intensive sectors are supported by a dense university landscape: 5 universities, 14 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 Metropole Ruhr Region possesses on of the most superbly constructed traffic infrastructure in Europe. : 598 km of freeways, 70 rail stations, 5 marshaling yards, 272 km of navigable waterways, the world's largest inland port in Duisburg, Europe's largest port in Dortmund and the Dortmund airport, and the nearby airports in Düsseldorf and Cologne ensure excellent connections in every direction.

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