Industrial heritage in tourism marketing: legitimizing post-industrial development strategies of the Ruhr Region, Germany

Many post-industrial regions reinterpret their industrial past as a heritage resource for marketing purposes. This paper explores how two sites in the Ruhr area in Germany, Zollverein and Landschaftspark Duisburg-Nord, are narrated in marketing brochures with selective industrial heritage narratives. Industrial heritage is utilized for both immediate marketing purposes and as a tool for memory and identity politics. Through thematic analysis, we uncover that industrial heritage legitimizes the Ruhr–Europe’s largest post-industrial region–as a distinct region by providing a seemingly uncontested, neutral and universal industrial history targeted at a wide audience. Simultaneously, the established narratives reinterpret industrial heritage as places of consumption, valued for their aesthetics and facilities for sports, arts and leisure. Such a marketing practice attempts to tap into the growing demand for postmodern consumption of culture, and simultaneously justifies and institutionalizes a specific, consumption-driven post-industrial development strategy for the Ruhr. The study reveals how the marketing of a post-industrial region promotes a select set of industrial heritage narratives that aim to strengthen the region’s economic position in a neoliberal setting of interregional economic competition