Comparing The Cities Of Leeds And Jealore

The two places I have chosen to compare are Leeds and Dortmund. The reason I have chose to compare both cities is due to the fact that they were twinned in 1957 and having close links with each other since the twinning. Both cities have attributes they share and some they don’t.

Dortmund is located in the North Rhine-Westphalia region of Germany in the west of the country. Leeds is located in the region of West Yorkshire which is located north of the centre of England. Both Dortmund and Leeds are the largest cities in respective region, Dortmund’s being the Ruhr Valley and Leeds being the largest city in Yorkshire. Leeds also has the River Aire that runs through the city centre, Dortmund has the Dortmund-Ems canal which links Dortmund straight

When industry in Dortmund kickstarted around the 19th century this was the time when the population started to increase. Around the start of the 20th century the city had over 100,00 people living in it for the first time. However due to the soaring oil prices and the economic crash in Germany in 1973, the population dropped from around 650,000 at its peak to where it is now in 2014 and is still falling. Dortmund has a high percentage of 18 to 25 year olds who come for such attractions as the Universities and educational facilities. Leeds has a population of 751,500 as of 2011 having a 5.1% increase from 2001[Leeds Local Council 2011 Census]. The population of Leeds has never taken any substantial rises or falls unlike Dortmund and has continued to grow for the last 200 years.The population of the urban subdivision had a 100 to 93.1 female–male ratio. [Leaflet Distribution

The Ruhr and Dortmund especially, were a large contributor to the German economical miracle in the 1950’s and 1960’s. However,”After 1973, Germany was hard hit by a worldwide economic crisis, soaring oil prices, and increasing unemployment, which jumped from 300,000 in 1973 to 1.1 million in 1975. The Ruhr region was hardest hit, as the easy-to-reach coal mines became exhausted, and German coal was no longer competitive. Likewise the Ruhr steel industry went into sharp decline, as its prices were undercut by lower-cost suppliers such as Japan.” [Ardagh, 1996] Leeds on the other hand has the had a different sector of industry to Dortmund and boomed in the 1930’s with industries such as clothing and chemicals and that is still seen today as Leeds is the UK’s third largest manufacturing centre. As well as this Leeds is also renowned for having the largest legal market outside of London in the UK. With this, Leeds has the 5th largest finance and service industry worth £2.1 billion [Centre for Cities: Seen 21st October] Leeds has a relatively low unemployment estimated to be around 40,000 [Leeds City Council