Sonja Knobbe
Background: from Urban Zero to Ruhrort Plus
Urban Zero was a project aimed to transform Duisburg-Ruhrort, a district in Germany's Ruhr region, into a pioneer of sustainable urban development. The ambitious goal was to achieve environmental neutrality within seven years by 2029. Unlike climate neutrality, which focuses primarily on CO₂emissions, environmental neutrality encompasses the full spectrum of ecological costs associated with urban life, including particulate matter, terrestrial acidification, land use, and water consumption.The project's initiators adopted an optimistic motto inspired by Frank Sinatra: "If we can make it here, we can make it anywhere," positioning Ruhrort as a testing ground for replicable sustainable urban transformation.
Project Trajectory and Challenges
Despite initial motivation and comprehensive planning, the project encountered significant obstacles as early as 2024. By 2025, the original Urban Zero initiative was discontinued and relaunched under a new identity: Ruhrort Plus. This rebranding came with substantially revised objectives, shifting from "environmental neutrality" (umweltneutral) to the more moderate goal of "environmental justice" or "environmental appropriateness" (umweltgerecht). Research Focus Accompanying research has investigated the factors that led to the termination of the original project. The research team now seeks to collaborate with the conference community to identify critical success factors for the project's restart. Key questions include:
- What systemic barriers prevented the achievement of environmental neutrality?
- How can lessons learned inform more realistic yet impactful sustainability goals?
- What conditions are necessary for successful implementation of ambitious urban sustainability projects?
- This case offers valuable insights into the gap between aspirational environmental goals and practical implementation challenges in post-industrial urban contexts.
Workshop Description: Learning from Failure – Urban Zero/Ruhrort Plus
This workshop focuses on discussing and evaluating theses developed during the accompanying research that identified barriers to the successful continuation of the Urban Zero project. The goal is to collaboratively develop a thesis paper with strategic recommendations for those responsible for the project's restart under the name Ruhrort Plus, who will be present at the workshop. This paper can serve as a foundation for developing a shared framework and collaboration network for implementing environmentally just urban transformation in post-industrial contexts.
Workshop Structure
The workshop will begin with a detailed presentation of the case study, including the theses on critical success factors that were formulated through comparative analysis with similar transformation projects in the Ruhr region. Representatives from the City of Duisburg will also present the project from their perspective.
Building on these presentations, we will conduct a workshop using the "Learning from Failure" format – a method for productively examining failure to validate critical theses. Participants will bring their own experiences from real-world labs (Reallabore) and similar transformation projects to analyze recurring assumptions and problem areas, and to explore strategies for addressing them.
Target Audience
(5-20 participants) Experience with implementing urban transformation projects from different perspectives and disciplines is explicitly desired. The focus will be on qualitative research approaches.