The "Ruhrpott" is the area of the "Ruhrgebiet", named after the river Ruhr - and it's THE region of coal and steel, traditionally. All of this hard, dirty labour.
Nowadays, however, there ain't much of it anymore, steel yes, but no more a lot of coal mining since the mines are empty on the surface and mining becomes more and more expensive …
They are trying to transform the Ruhr-Region into something better nowadays, into something with more culture and arts in it. The loss of heavy indistries firms must be counterweighed by something else … and this is what they (the gorvernment there) tries to do …
But because of the closing of so many heavy indistry companies, there was once a relatively high rate of unemployment, too. I don't know how muh this has changed, but as far as I know the region is slowl growing again … Into another direction than heavy industry, though …
If I was to chose from a similar region somewhere else to compare it … I think I'd take the Manchester (UK) region, according to its cliché …