Entwicklungspfad und Transformation der Hüttenstadt Völklingen im Spiegel industrieller Krisen und Schrumpfung in den 1960er bis 1980er Jahren

Abstract

Even though the industrial crises of the 1970s and 1980s had severe repercussions onindustrial cities, the contemporaries did not adequately apprehend them. Using the example of Völklingen, a medium-sized city firmly based on the steel and coal industry, the paper argues that leaving the earlier industrial path is a long-term process. Völklingen, with its socio-economic and cultural development strongly connected to the local iron and steel plant, underwent a gradual decline since the 1960s. With the global steel crisis of the 1970s, the city experienced a severe structural crisis due to its monostructure. The city followed the industrial path for a long time; the structural changes in the industry came only to be realised at a very late point in time and the city continued to stick to the 'old' path despite severe crises. There was no sudden breach, but a gradual increase of irritation. Spatial structures, constellations of actors in the political, administrative, and union contexts as well as the self-concept as a city of iron works stabilised the path and hampered change.