Post VINEX Questions about how to deal with the spatial organization in the Netherlands exist as long as the history of this country. Nowadays the next phase in this history will be reached with the questions about the future of urbanization. Even though at this moment still not all the developments in the VINEX locations have been completed, the discussion about the post VINEX period seems to be on fire. But a clear and strong supported vision still seems to be missing. By: Floris van der Zee; b1258273, feb 2010
the city provides the possibility to use the facilities, which the city supplies. Next to this, the psychological distance to the city gives the idea of a quiet living environment, just as what had been the idea about these new living areas. Most of the vinex-areas are residential areas and their standard of service provisions can be qualified as too low. Next to this there is a lack of density which again has caused a waist of open space. As a consequence the distances between dwellings and other facilities became so far that the residents are still forced to use a car.
VINEX In the early 1990s the Fourth Memorandum on Spatial Planning Extra, vinex (Vierde Nota Ruimtelijke Ordening Extra) was published by VROM (the Dutch Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and Environment). It acted as a guide for a total of 120 development locations throughout the country that had been selected by the government to provide space for hundreds of thousands of new dwellings. The vision of VROM was to supply in housing in a compact way and close to existing cities. An important motive was to prevent the landscape from total urban sprawl. Besides this, the people living in these areas could make use of facilities that the cities offer and thereby the future of these services would be guaranteed. The vinex period had to provide living areas for people who wanted to live not far for the city but in a quiet and safe environment.
THEORITICAL CONTEXT: A New Social & Spatial Reality At the same time this is part of the start of a new society, which has been called the network society by Manuel Castells. In this society the traditional city is absorbed in the irregular urbanized landscape. The boom in terms of mobility is connected to activities that are widespread in space. This all leads to a new kind of the urban form in which the urbane, the rural and the suburban environments are all interlinked. In this new cultural geography everyone, is able to compose its own city by combining diverse places, which are important to that particular person. This is a tendency that of course doesn’t only occur by vinex-residents but can be found everywhere.
In fact this was an answer to what had happened in an earlier stage. Since the 1960s together with the rise of wealth, the number of cars started to grow. This resulted in a planning strategy, which anticipated on the occurrence of emancipation, freedom of choice and auto mobility. Urbanity as a way of living would no longer be connected to the multifunctional city of that day, but would be 1 supported by wealth and auto mobility. During the 1970s the policy of ‘bundled deconcentration’ with its introduction of new towns and other growth centers was proposed, which caused a high pressure on the highways. The development of new dwellings in the vinex-period therefore needed to be done in the close surroundings of the existing cities.
Two conditions form the origin of the existence of this individual city. The first one is an increasing demand of monofunctional and often cultural and social homogeneous areas, like residential areas, office parks, shopping centers and theme parks. Out of these areas a personal city can be ‘build’. As the second condition the decreasing quality of the urban environment can be seen. Feelings of insecurity play an important role, because the effect is that people start to choose very carefully whether they want to go to a place or rather avoid that place. Thereby mainly places
In a way the solution that vinex tried to provide wasn’t successful. Although the vinex-areas are located next to the cities, they are very often separated from the cities for example by highways. As these elements form barriers it will be hard for these new expansion areas to 2 really become a part of the city. For the residents this doesn’t even seem to be any problem, because the physical closeness of
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that people know as safe and which are easily accessible by car become part of their own 3 composed city.
functioned for the last century. The modernistic approach, which has lead to division and separation of functions on every scale, turns out to be functioning not in the most effective way, at least not any more. The faith in auto mobility has contributed to the fact that a large number of people is working in totally different surroundings as they are living. The low densities, segregation of functions and monofunctional areas designed in the past are the subjects of the discussion today. Transformations with densification and mixed use need to be seen as a part for a solution. In several different areas present ideas about the future will be described.
This has resulted in a structure of archipelagos with different enclaves, as has been described in for example “In Search of New Public Domain”. A large percentage of the movement in mobility can also be seen as mobility to avoid. The archipelagos can be understood as a variety of different small environments that are interconnected with each other by a network of mobility. This offers the possibility to move from one place directly to another and in this system some compartments can simply be skipped. A consequence of a further evolvement of this process could be the 4 capsular society , as is described in Lieven De Cauters “De Capsulaire beschaving”. It sketches a worst-case scenario in which fear, the separation in different social groups and the speed of technological developments have started a process that is unstoppable. Certain social groups will even be excluded from the system and there will be no other option, besides to use capsular vehicles and to retreat in closed entities.
INSIDE CITIES
The last memorandum of spatial planning stated that 40% of the new housing needs to be developed in existing urbanized areas. With this turn to an increasing focus on the transformation of areas inside the existing cities and urban areas, it seems like “Urban life 6 is back again”. The interest in this subject has recently even resulted in a Dutch translation of Jane Jacobs “The Death and Life of Great American Cities”. In this influential book of the early 1960s she wrote what is essential for a vital city. In the current situation her four principles of mixed use, small building blocks, a mix of both old and new buildings and concentration, are still up to date.
While this could hopefully be qualified as a little too pessimistic, undoubtedly the signs of such a progress are recognizable and should be taken seriously. For instance the first gatedcommunities-like developments are taking place and the identification of 40 problem neighborhoods across the country can be seen as just an example. Some even state that the vinex-areas will be the ghettos of tomorrow. But the question should not be how to stop these developments. It would be more interesting to search for models that make use of the opportunities that this new spatial and 5 social reality can provide.
Two aspects for the turn to a focus on the existing city can be mentioned. The first aspect is related to a social agenda. Discussions dealing with the multicultural society have evolved to a feeling of more urgency, as has been experienced ten years earlier, for the 7 need of urban regeneration. The second one is more significant to discuss in terms of the urbanization question. Several parts inside the urbanized areas have lost their function and become vacant for new use. Former industrial and harbors areas, military complexes and non-used holding yards for trains, are a few examples of these areas. The transformation of these areas into housing, shops and offices could be an impulse for the 8 city and the economy. But a remark needs to be made, because in an increasing number of cities seem to run out of possibilities for redevelopment of such areas. The Assistant Director of Bureau Stedelijke Planning, Ries van der Wouden among others has already tried to warn for this process.
PAST-PRESENT-FUTURE Today’s debate on the housing question in the Netherlands tries to find new answers for the future. But the housing question can no longer be seen separate from a total vision for the urbanization. The ideas about where or how to work, and how to move from one place to the other need to be changed too, since there is not only a problem in the housing market but the troubles with the traffic jams are considerable as well. Next to this, the ‘verromeling’-discussion about the business parks and industrial areas does still exist too.
Large-scale transformations since the end of the 1980s had a positive effect on the popularity of living inside the city. For example
In fact all these problems, are for sure partly, caused by the way urban planning has
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the eastern harbor areas in Amsterdam, ‘De Kop van Zuid’ in Rotterdam and ‘Het Paleiskwartier’ in Den Bosh have successfully been turned into a combination of living and working areas. But there is an important difference in the economical situation at this moment and those potential transformations areas that are left, are smaller in size. They will be more expensive as well because of the complexity in landownership besides a long development time. All together this doesn’t make it interesting for developers. This is why developer Stroink of TNC, has stated nowadays it should be more important to focus on maintenance and the repair of the urban 9 tissue on a low-scale-level.
doing this more diversity will occur in the transition-zones. As a consequence there will be more differentiation in urbane and suburban 11 areas. THE CONNECTING NETWORK
For all of the described areas the new approaches are necessary, but on a higher scale level the relations between these areas need to be linked with each other as well. Actually what is needed is a coherent vision about how to deal with the urbanization in the whole of the Netherlands and especially in the Randstad. This region, which is not functioning as one real city, could be characterized as fragmented urbanity in time and space. Instead of a continuous urban structure, different urban areas are scattered over this region. It’s important to intensify this system and really create a well working network of urban 12 places.
BUISINESS AREAS
The monofunctional locations meant for work really need to be reconsidered, because in terms of compactness and densification of cities these areas could make a big difference, as Van der Wouden mentions as well. The current policy of municipalities is to sell plots for a low price to offer all kind of businesses a space inside their borders. This is the source of an inefficient use of space in business areas and why a lot of businesses settle in these areas where they would fit better in other city districts. These conditions result in the need of big reorganizations for these areas. This process should be changed, in the benefit of an efficient use of land in the existing urbanized areas. In addition the developing of high standard combined living-working environments could result in a quality improvement inside the existing urban area. Besides the need that municipalities have to make agreements together about their policies concerning the business areas, to make this happen the locations with a lot of potential 10 should be fitted in the regional plans as well.
POST VINEX: Towards a sustainable model The post-vinex-period asks for a clear vision in which living, working and mobility are integrated and that could provide the possibility for a regional differentiation of urbanization. The current task is to define not only new approaches for issues concerning the spatial organization itself but as well for current problems in economy, society and the environment which are related. This is the time to search for a sustainable solution for urbanization in the Netherlands. Therefore it is important to be aware of the position of the Netherlands and in particular the Randstad-region. Together with agglomerations like ‘De Vlaamse Diamant‘ and the Ruhr-area these regions form a very important structure in the functioning of Western Europe today. They can operate like this because of their information-networks, physical accessibility for people and the distribution potential of goods in an even bigger sphere of influence. Monofunctionality and division in different compartments can only be naturalized when the accessibility/reachableness, called openness by Kees Christiaanse, and concentrated points 13 of physical meeting are guaranteed.
SUBURBIA
At the same time, for the more suburban areas lessons can be learned as well, for instance in the new towns which have indeed become a kind of cities too, but with a strong suburban character. The vinex-areas can be seen as an example of Dutch suburbia too. The task is to find approaches for further urbanization of these low-density residential areas, without losing the suburban qualities everywhere. For the new towns transformation into more urban environments of the surroundings of the center areas is necessary. In these cities proper environments for an increasing number of small households and small-scale economical activities are required, therefore it’s important to let loose the formulated regulations which have a restrictive result. By
If the Randstad has to continue and still wants to be able to fulfill this role, which is also important on a higher scale-level as for the whole of Europe or even the World, a next step needs to be made. Therefore the model that
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need to be introduced for the Randstad-region, is one in which the best accessible locations need to be the most dense.
promising development in the South-Wing of the Randstad. The fact that a rail track network connects different cities and villages with each other is in this project seen as an opportunity to realize a stronger economical region. Thereby the concept tries to protect the spoil of rural areas and to reduce the environmental costs, because the station locations should be used more sufficient and will be intensified with housing, offices and other facilities. It tries to establish a better relation between a chain of mobility and the surroundings of the train stations.
Urban areas could be understood in different layers, like the morphology, structures of green & water and infrastructure, borders, history 14 etc.. It applies an interpretation of a specific place in its broader context and its position in the physical surrounding. This gains value, since it provides the chance to discover location-specific characteristics that could be adopted to form new relationships in the present context. The goal needs to be to establish coherence between the layers of the occupied urban landscape. To reach this, sometimes it would be necessary to use demolition as a tool. Which also means that negative criticism on demolition need to be changed to see the profits of the possibilities that can be accomplished, also in terms of densification.
In the proposed model the left-over & in between places and spaces in the existing urban areas of today need to be used well. Obviously in a model like the Stedenbaan especially the spaces surrounding the train stations will play an important role. It will be essential to design this kind of public domain properly, since there will be a lot of people who all come together. In fact they form the spaces that function as the links in between the earlier defined different compartments or archipelagos of the enclaves. Exact these inbetween-spaces become interesting and maybe even the most important spaces in today’s society because this is where an exchange of several different social groups takes place. The task in the design of these spaces can be seen as an opportunity to reconnect the decomposed parts with each other and to find a new way in how they can 18 interrelate with each other.
A lot of possibilities to densify in the existing 15 urban areas can be found inside the cities. The ideas of TANGRAM could be seen as leading concepts for this densification. Densification is not only necessary to preserve rural areas, but there are multiple other benefits as well, for example the use of energy. Australian research in 1999 by professor Peter Newman (Murdoch University) has proved that the level of density and compactness of an area is related to energy use in such a way that the total energy use of an urban environment will decrease by a 16 higher level of density. The spaces which are not used in the most sufficient way at this moment, but do provide a lot of potential should be used for transformation. It’s time to take advantage of these extensive used spaces, which doesn’t only mean a lot of highrise. Especially the leftover spaces alongside all kind of infrastructure, like roads/highways, rail tracks and canals, offer a variety of opportunities.
This model fits to the tendencies on a higher scale-level. It’s the idea of the city constantly in development with a vital hinterland. This will lead to new definitions for use of space that 19 can change if necessary.
This is why the combination of densification with mobility is so important. Urban places in the existing urban areas need to function as the pivot points in the proposed model for the Randstad. In urbanized areas therefore a strategy with different densities combined with the development of infrastructure is required. In 2004 such a spatial development strategy is 17 published for Greater London. The example of Curitiba, a Brazilian and also world-known as a sustainable city, could be mentioned and should be studied more carefully as well. In that sense the concept of the Stedenbaan is a
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