"Vision with sea view"

Copyright: © Welt am Sonntag

Christa Reicher looks to the future. Standing on the edge of the Hambach opencast lignite mine, her words paint a picture of a picturesque lake landscape with lush vegetation, elegant housing and happy tourists. The director of the Institute for Urban Planning and European Urbanism at RWTH Aachen University describes it so vividly that you might think the workmen are already on their way. In fact, all you can see is a huge hole where excavators are extracting lignite to be turned into electricity in the nearby power plants.