The article reports on the conference "Landscapes of Urban Modernity: Istanbul and the Ruhr 2010," which was held at Istanbul Bilgi University in Istanbul, Turkey, from December 15-18, 2010, on the occasion of Istanbul and the Ruhr region in Germany, having been designated as joint "European Cultural Capital" for 2010. Papers presented compared the social, economic, and cultural histories of the two urban conglomerations from the 19th to the early 21st century.