Essen: At the beginning of our trip to the Ruhr area we got some fundamental information about Essen. Essen is after Dortmund the second largest city in the Ruhr area. The city has about 570000 habitants. The majority works in the service sector. Companies like RWE, Eon and Stiak are located there. The focus of our excursion was on the huge company-constellation Thyssen-Krupp. The company Krupp deals with steel production and shows some important features of the structural change in the Ruhr area. In 1970 the worldwide steel- and coal crisis influenced the Ruhr area which strongly focused on the secondary sector. This created a monoculture which forced many companies to register insolvency.

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