Since the onset of the industrial revolution, the relationship between the Port of Rotterdam, Europe's largest, and the industrial powerhouse of the German Ruhr region, for many years, the continent's dominant industrial region have been intimately intertwined.

As Rotterdam is in the Netherlands and the Ruhr in Germany, the way the relationship developed can only be properly analysed from the transnational point of view; new economic geography and new approaches in geography such as the global value chain, supply chain and global cities approaches having called for greater...