NOISE
LAND
SCAPE
A Spatial Exploration of Airports and Cities
Benedikt Boucsein Kees Christiaanse Eirini Kasioumi Christian Salewski
nai010 publishers
The Noise Landscape
2
EXPLORATIONS. EIGHT EUROPEAN NOISE LANDSCAPES pp. 47–187 Airport territory
Agriculture
Highways
Runways
Green
Primary roads
Forest
Secondary roads
Water
Tertiary roads
Buildings
Residential and service streets Main public transports (Rail) Secondary rail (Tram, subway, monorail, funicular) Underground infrastructure
3.4 MAPPING SCHIPHOL’S NOISE LANDSCAPE pp. 245–267 Industrial
No new buildings
Highways
Agriculture
No new offices
Roads
Green
No new housing
Streets
Forest
No bird zone
Main public transports (Rail)
Leisure
Height limitations
Secondary rail (Tram, subway, monorail, funicular)
Water Buildings White: Area outside the 20ke zone (2012)
LIVING
GASTRONOMY / HOTELS
ECONOMY
House boat
Fast food
Business park / headquarters
Housing
Hotel
Car service / car sales
Residential home for elderly
Restaurant
Data center Disposal site
PUBLIC INFRASTRUCTURE
LEISURE
Greenhouse
Bus station
Beach / swimming
Harbour industry
Cemetery
Beauty salon / massage
Logistics
Church
Camping
Scrapyard
Hospital
Dog training
Shopping
Park
Equestrian sport
Storage
Parking
Festival area
Valet parking
Police
Golf
Prison
Gym / Fitness club
Sewage plant
Model aircraft area
Agriculture
Solar panel
Motorcycle / car course
Airside facility
Town hall
Museum / theater / art gallery
Education facility
Train station
Paintball
Industry
Waste treatment plant
Planespotting
Windmill
Race track Sailing Sport facility Water sport
OTHER USES
NOISE
LAND
SCAPE
A Spatial Exploration of Airports and Cities Benedikt Boucsein Kees Christiaanse Eirini Kasioumi Christian Salewski nai010 publishers
1 Background. The Occurrence of the Noise Landscape 1.1 1.2
Under the Noise 7 Benedikt Boucsein The Airside Logic of Noise Eirini Kasioumi, Benedikt Boucsein Landscapes 23 Benedikt Boucsein, Eirini Kasioumi 1.3 Regulatory Landscapes 32
2 Explorations. Eight European Noise Landscapes 2.1 Amsterdam Schiphol [AMS] 47 Benedikt Boucsein 2.2 Paris Orly [ORY] 67 Eirini Kasioumi 2.3 Madrid Barajas [MAD] 87 Benedikt Boucsein, Joris Jehle, Eirini Kasioumi 2.4 Frankfurt [FRA] 103 Benedikt Boucsein, Andreas Schmitt, Joris Jehle 2.5 London Heathrow [LHR] 121 Benedikt Boucsein, F. Peter Ortner, Joris Jehle 2.6 Zurich [ZRH] 139 Benedikt Boucsein, Christian Salewski 2.7 Paris Charles de Gaulle [CDG] 155 Eirini Kasioumi 2.8 Munich [MUC] 175 Benedikt Boucsein, Andreas Schmitt 2.9 Noise Landscapes in Europe: A Typological Paradigm 189 Benedikt Boucsein, Eirini Kasioumi, Christian Salewski
3 Investigations. Noise Landscape Mechanisms and their Workings on the Ground 3.1 The Noise Landscape as a Spillover Space: The Case of Cher / Bäuler in Zurich-North Christian Salewski, Benedikt Boucsein 3.2 Metric as Mediator: Data-Driven Negotiations about Heathrow’s F. Peter Ortner Noise Landscape
208
215
3.3 Noise Landscapes Caught between Spatial Layouts and Systems of Governance: Mark Michaeli, Andreas Schmitt The Example of Frankfurt 227 3.4 Mapping Schiphol̢۪s Noise Benedikt Boucsein Landscape 245
4 Readings. Past, Present and Future of the Noise Landscape 4.1 What is the Noise Landscape? A Cultural-Historical Benedikt Boucsein Perspective 270 4.2 An Urban Place: Morphology and Morphogenesis of the Christian Salewski Noise Landscape 283 4.3 Designing the Noise Landscape: Inversion and Subtraction in the Kees Christiaanse, Eirini Kasioumi Airport Region 293
Bibliography Credits Acknowledgements Colophon
307 315 318 320
1 Background
The Occurrence of the Noise Landscape 6
Background
Under the Noise
1.1
An airplane approaches the airport, touches down on the runway, progresses to the terminal, discharges people and goods, is refuelled and refilled, taxis towards the runway, takes off, and departs to another destination. At large hub airports, this process takes place once every two minutes, over 1,000 times per day, 400,000 times per year. Every time, the airplane emits noise heard for as far as 60 km under its approach and departure paths – before and after the aircraft’s altitude is so high that its sound is not perceivable to the human ear. Aircraft noise is heard over a large territory, across heterogeneous urban areas and landscapes, and in multiple municipalities, provinces, even nations. We found that aircraft noise and other aviation-related effects fundamentally alter conditions on the ground far beyond the airport fence, both directly through experience and indirectly through laws, rules and regulations. In consequence, spaces that seem heterogeneous at first sight nonetheless share the same condition, and form what we propose to term the Noise Landscape: a specific environment shaped by aviation and by its vicinity to the airport. These Noise Landscapes harbour peculiar forms of aviation-conditioned urbanity, and they play a crucial yet often underestimated role in their metropolitan regions [→ 01]. Between 2010 and 2016, the Airports and Cities research platform undertook a series of research and design explorations of the Noise Landscapes of the Amsterdam, Zurich and Paris Charles de Gaulle Airports.1 We found over-regulated territories that nevertheless had seemingly chaotic images and structures: the co-existence of high-quality infrastructures with informal developments, fine-grained residential communities and vast business parks side by side, attractive recreational spaces amid derelict buildings and fallow land. We discovered a multitude of niches, small functions and spatial situations that settled like small biotopes around the airport: reused greenhouses, converted farmhouses, fields with experimental crops, or recycling areas for car parts. We encountered fenced-off large-scale logistic centres and gigantic parking areas only accessible by car or truck. Our explorations, which we extended to include five more European cases in this book, yielded a first taxonomy of spatial elements that make up the peculiar urbanity of Noise Landscapes. An especially intriguing property of Noise Landscapes is the great contrasts that occur here. Around major hub airports, we can observe a high complexity of scales, different gradations of global and local, and an overlay of multifarious regulations. We see different push and pull factors crossing and sometimes contradicting 1
7
The results of the interdisciplinary ‘Better Airport Regions’ research project (2012–2014) form an important background of this book. For the final report, see: A. van den Dobbelsteen and G.-J. Verkade, Final Report – Better Airport Regions: Models and Development Pathways for Sustainable Urban Transformation (Amsterdam: NWO / NiCiS, 2014). For further sources, see ‘Research Results Chair Kees Christiaanse’ in the Sources chapter at the end of this book.
Benedikt Boucsein, Eirini Kasioumi, Christian Salewski
01 An airplane departing from Paris Orly
each other, and we see conflicts between infrastructures made for speed and everyday living and working needs. These contrasts and contradictions point towards the fact that Noise Landscapes are, just as the airport itself, laboratories of modernity – and ‘Petri dishes’ for its ideologies and mechanisms.2 While the airport is a highly designed and controlled environment, the areas around it merge local and global, nature and infrastructure, and seem to work according to different, largely oblivious mechanisms.3 Most importantly, though, these places are not accidental. Although they may repel or even scare us, they are representative for the future tasks of urban design and architecture. To have any impact in such environments, we must find ways to design these areas, although they seem immune to coherent intervention. And to do so, we must first understand how they work, and through which mechanisms they are shaped. The challenge to such an understanding has to do with the extent and complexity of Noise Landscapes, but also with air travel as a comparably new and dynamic development. In many ways, for the surrounding urban environments the development of aviation seems too fast to adapt to. Airports themselves have repeatedly faced chronic obsolescence in relation to changing technology and demands.4 This is reflected in their relationship to their surroundings. For example, there is a discrepancy between the continuous growth of airports and their growing interconnectedness with the surrounding territory, and the stasis of zoning laws, administrative boundaries and regulations. Connected to this discrepancy is the position of the airport and its territory on the mental maps of actors and stakeholders: to some, it remains a technical infrastructure ideally located in a landscape 2 3
4
8
See for example: T. Cresswell, On the Move: Mobility in the Modern Western World (New York: Routledge, 2006). A body of research has been produced on airports as an architectural and cultural phenomenon. See, for example, M. Berkers, K. Bosma, I. Burgers, K. Davids, Ab. El Makhloufi, H. de Mare, A. Nikolaeva and J. de Wijn, Megastructure Schiphol: Design in Spectacular Simplicity (Rotterdam: nai010 publishers, 2013) or M. Augé, Non-places: An Introduction to Supermodernity (London: Verso, 2008). N. Roseau, Aerocity: quand l’avion fait la ville (Marseilles / Paris: Parenthèses; Librairie de l’architecture et de la ville, 2011).
Background
free of settlements, while to others it has become a centre of a new kind of city and should grow indiscriminately by adding ever-more urban functions. Both views lack a proper regard of what is actually happening on the ground, and a concern about why. They simplify and idealize an intricate spatial, functional and political fabric, much of which is site-specific and path-dependent, and more often than not reflects a policy lock-in that seems almost impossible to resolve. Probably now more than ever, there is need for a vision of what the airport and its area could become in its city-region. This vision needs to be rooted in the actual situation and must be performative in changing our mental maps in considering the impact of the airport on urban form holistically. 1.1.1 Understanding Contemporary Urbanized Landscapes Researchers of contemporary urban landscapes have been trying to describe, analyse and systematize an object of enquiry that is in constant evolution. The long and ever-expanding genealogy of terms for our urban environment points towards the difficulty to name, and therefore understand, what we are dealing with. Terms are provisional and represent specific theoretical approaches and scientific contexts.5 Some terms endure longer than others, though eventually we may have to acknowledge that it is impossible to fully comprehend or comprehensively describe contemporary metropolitan conditions. Yet despite this overwhelming complexity and specificity, we can distinguish recurrent variables, such as underlying driving forces, typical constraints, tendencies for places to develop into centralities or peripheries, and so forth. This is the approach we follow in this book. We refer to the Noise Landscape as a specific form of contemporary urbanized landscape, which is expansive in terms of surface, not uniformly structured, and largely composed of heterogeneous, mono-functional elements.6 The automobile and its infrastructures dominate, providing broad accessibility while concurrently impermeably dividing space into separate spatial compartments.7 Urbanized landscapes that cannot be described as either urban or rural have been termed Zwischenstadt – in-between city and countryside – by Thomas Sieverts,8 nebula city by Koos Bosma,9 or middle landscape by Peter Rowe.10 This book builds on their work. It also heavily owes to Robert Venturi, Denise Scott-Brown, and Steven Izenour’s Learning from Las Vegas in our attempt 5 6
7 8 9
10
9
For a list of terms, see R. Lang, Edgeless Cities: Exploring the Elusive Metropolis (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 2003), 31. Recently, the term Airport Landscape was put forward as a designation for the area that is, or was, covered by the actual airport and can be designed as such. See: S. Dümpelmann and C. Waldheim, Airport Landscape: Urban Ecologies in the Aerial Age (Boston: Harvard Graduated School of Design, 2016). It should not be confused with the Noise Landscape, which covers a far greater area and is in many respects beyond the influence of urban designers and landscape architects. The ‘Logistics Landscape’ put forward by Charles Waldheim and Alan Berger in 2008 is more closely related to our concept of the Noise Landscape (C. Waldheim and A. Berger, ‘Logistics Landscape’, Landscape Journal, vol. 27 (2008) no. 2). Noise Landscapes contain Logistic Landscapes. A. Pope, Ladders (Houston: Rice School of Architecture, 1997). T. Sieverts, Zwischenstadt: Zwischen Ort und Welt, Raum und Zeit, Stadt und Land (Gütersloh: Bauverlag, 2005). K. Bosma and A. El Makhloufi, ‘De ruimtelijke metamorfose van Schiphol: Van polderdorp naar nevelstad’, in: E. Taverne, L. de Klerk, B. Ramakers and S. Dembski (eds.), Nederland stedenland: Continuïteit en vernieuwing (Rotterdam: nai010 publishers, 2012). P. Rowe, Making a Middle Landscape (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991).
Under the Noise
1.1
to read the current state of architecture and urbanism by choosing the view from the road (and the field)11 – and not, as others have tried, the view from the airplane. 1.1.2 The Current State in the Discussion of Airports and Cities As airports and their surroundings continuously evolve, research has closely followed to investigate the reasons and impacts of this reciprocal evolution. Over the past years, a number of edited volumes have sketched out the broad scope of interest in the relation of airports and cities.12 One of the most important topics in this debate concerns the economic effects of airports. Airports are certainly economic assets for their regions, and several studies have indeed found a positive correlation between airport growth and metropolitan population and employment.13 The Airport Council International (ACI), a global organization representing airports, has set the standard for characterizing airport economic effects.14 It is widely used, but some recent studies have cast doubt on its appropriateness.15 Evidence exists that in mature economies with well-developed transport systems, improved transport infrastructure or increased capacity likely results in only modest overall increases of growth. It produces winners as well as losers in its metropolitan region.16 In fact, there is a spatial asymmetry between the regional economic benefits of airport operation, and the environmental and social disadvantages, felt mostly locally. These include aircraft noise, CO2 emissions, air pollution, territorial disruption and depreciation of local property values.17 Noise is by far the most debated issue, as will be seen in the discussion of its effects later in this introduction. Another important theme in the discussion concerns the evolution of airport development models, rooted in structural changes in the airline industry and airport operation. By the early 1990s, the deregulation of the airline industry had put airports in fiercer competition with each other, while the evolution of airline networks from point-to-point into hub-and-spoke networks further meant that some airports became privileged as hubs. During the last 20 years, a trend towards greater specialization has 11 12
13 14
15
16 17
10
R. Venturi, D. Scott-Brown and S. Izenour, Learning from Las Vegas (Cambdrige, MA: MIT Press, 1972). S. Conventz and A. Thierstein (eds.), Airports, Cities and Regions (London / New York: Routledge, 2015); Institut d’amenagement et d’urbanisme de la région d’ile de France (ed.), Aéroports et Territoires. Les Cahiers de l’IAURIF no. 139–140 (Paris: IAURIF, 2003); B. Buthe, and J. Schlaack (eds.), ‘Neue Perspektiven für Flughafen und Stadt‘, Informationen zur Raumentwicklung (2011) no. 1 (Bonn: BSSR im BBR, 2011). The sociological implications of aviation (mobilities) are dealt with in: S. Cwerner, S. Kesselring and J. Urry, Aeromobilities (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2009). J. Brueckner, ‘Airline Traffic and Urban Economic Development’, Urban Studies, vol. 40 (2003) no. 8: 1455– 1469; Green, R.K., ‘Airports and Economic Development’, Real Estate Economics, vol. 35 (2007) no. 1, 91–112. ACI Europe, The Social and Economic Impact of Airports in Europe (Brussels: ACI Europe and Y. A. Research, 2004). Economic effects are categorized in direct (income from airport operation), indirect (income generated in the chain of suppliers of goods and services), induced (spending of incomes by people directly and indirectly employed at the airport) and catalytic effects (employment and income generated by the wider role of the airport in improving the productivity of business and in attracting economic activities). F. Thießen, Vermeintliche und tatsächliche Wachstums- und Beschäftigungseffekte des Luftverkehrs. Eine kritische Würdigung angewandter Berechnungsmethoden. WISO Diskurs, 6 (Bonn: Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, 2014). J. Whitelegg and N. Williams, The Plane Truth: Aviation and the Environment (London: Ashden Trust, 2000), 23–24. J. Cidell and J. Adams, The Groundside Effects of Air Transportation. Research Report (Minneapolis: Center for Transportation Studies and University of Minnesota, 2001); J. Whitelegg and H. Cambridge, Aviation and Sustainability: A Policy Paper (Stockholm: Stockholm Environment Institute, 2004).
Background
02
Aerial image of Amsterdam Schiphol, 2005
ensued: there are mega airports, specialist cargo airports, low-cost carrier terminals, etcetera. In parallel, with public funding for their operation increasingly coming under criticism, most airports have been privatized or corporatized, shifting from being a branch of government to commercially oriented businesses, which were forced to adopt strategies to gain competitive advantage and secure sources of revenue besides traditional ‘airside’ charges, such as landing charges, passenger and cargo fees, security, parking and hangar charges.18 Additional revenue was thus sought on the ‘landside’, mainly of two types: retail facilities and real estate development.19 In turn, extensive real estate development on the airport site, such as hotels, office parks, industrial facilities, logistics parks, offices, and retail and leisure spaces, has transformed many airports into integrated nodes and destinations in their metropolitan regions. In Europe, Amsterdam Airport Schiphol [→ 02] was early to embrace the value of this evolution by terming its development strategy Airport City, a term previously used in the USA for fly-in communities.20 Such development has in many 18 19
20
11
A. Graham, Managing Airports: An International Perspective (New York: Routledge, 2014). S. Conventz and A. Thierstein, ‘Airports and the Knowledge Economy: A Relational Perspective’; R. Freestone and I. Wiesel, ‘The Rise of the Airport Property Market in Australia’; M. Schaafsma, ‘Amsterdam Mainport and Metropolitan Region: Connectivity and Urban Design’, all in: Conventz and Thierstein, Airports, Cities and Regions, op. cit. (note 12). H.M. Conway, The Airport City: Development Concepts for the 21st Century (Atlanta: Conway Publications inc., 2000 / 1982); Schaafsma, M., ‘Airports and Cities in Networks’, DISP, vol. 154 (2003) no. 3, 28–36.
Under the Noise
1.1
cases spread beyond the airport fence, with various types business parks locating in the vicinity especially of hub airports. Studies have sought to identify reasons why businesses choose to locate at or close to airports, and have identified as critical pull factors the immediate access to flows of people and goods, attractive land prices and availability, good land transport connections and agglomeration economies. These factors are especially attractive for knowledge-intensive firms, which show a trend towards locating in airport areas.21 At the same time, airports exercise push forces for most urban uses through excessive space requirements, emissions and heavy ground traffic. The study of urban morphology and land use in airport areas was triggered by such observations about real estate development and business location. In 2002, ARC Europe commissioned a young architecture firm, Güller and Güller, to produce a study entitled ‘From Airport to Airport City’.22 This was one of the first of a series of attempts to interpret so-called ‘airport-driven’ or ‘airport-related’ development in spatial terms and conceptualize it in urban models. Four such models have come under discussion in recent years: the Airport City is based on the experiences at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol, portraying the airport as a new urban node in the metropolitan network;23 the Airport Corridor stresses the infrastructural development of the area between airport and the according city centre mainly as a location for internationally oriented service firms;24 the Aerotropolis is a real estate-oriented model that promotes the efficient organization of the airport’s surroundings with multimodal logistics, international headquarters and dedicated infrastructure as necessary for securing global competition, and has been applied in the construction of several ‘airport cities’ especially in Asia;25 and the Airea is an attempt to generalize the functional relationship of the airport, airport-related industries and their urban surroundings.26 We have contributed to this discourse by attempting to take a more fine-tuned look at the different spatial / urban conditions of the airport area, and identify airport area types such as the ‘airport front side’ and the ‘airport backyard’. We also suggested a categorization in five effect types to describe the general reciprocity of airport and urban development: territorial, aviation, flows, allocation and urbanization. These types have different territorial expressions in different airport areas, depending on geography, topography, airport oldness and distance from the city, availability of land, and not least spatial planning controls.27 Urban morphology and functions around airports have been subject to individual case studies. For example, Amsterdam Airport Schiphol has been analysed with a focus on the emergence of specific urban functions according to an underlying 21 22 23 24 25 26 27
12
M. van Wijk, Airports as Cityports in the City-Region (Utrecht: KNAG /  Faculteit Geowetenschappen Universiteit Utrecht, 2007); Freestone and Wiesel, ‘The Rise of the Airport Property Market in Australia’, op. cit. (note 19). M. Güller and M. Güller, From Airport to Airport City (Barcelona: Editorial Gustavo Gili, 2003). R. Freestone and D. Baker, ‘Spatial Planning Models of Airport-Driven Urban Development’, Journal of Planning Literature, vol. 26 (2011) no. 3, 263–279. M. Schaafsma, J. Amkreutz and M. Güller, Airport and City: Airport Corridors: Drivers of Economic Development (Amsterdam: Schiphol Real Estate, 2008). J. Kasarda, ‘The Evolution of Airport Cities and the Aerotropolis’, in: J. Kasarda, Airport Cities: The Evolution (London: Insight Media, 2008), 39. J. Schlaack, Flughafen und Airea: Impulsgeber für Stadtregionen (Berlin: Dom Publishers, 2015). C. Salewski, B. Boucsein and A. Gasco, ‘Towards an Effect-Based Model for Airports and Regions’, in: Conventz and Thierstein (eds.), Airports, Cities and Regions, op. cit. (note 12), 257–281. Also see chapter 4.2.
Background
disturb sleep.46 Frequency also plays a role: low frequencies destabilize, this is also why aircraft and wind turbines are found more distressing than noise from traffic.47 While the perception of noise has considerable individual aspects – especially the ‘apparently random way people react to aircraft noise’48 – the exposure to it has been scientifically proven to cause health problems. During the last two decades it has been shown that exposure to noise from transport sources and industry can cause severe irritation and sleep disturbance, and is further associated with blood circulation problems and heart disease, high stress levels, psychological problems and cognitive impairment, especially for schoolchildren. Very high levels of noise can further lead to hearing pain, hearing impairment and mental disorders.49 And the problem is not marginal: According to EU data from 2012, as many as 145 million people, or about 20 per cent or the European population, of which more than 70 per cent reside in urban agglomerations, are estimated to be exposed to noise levels above 55 dB(A) Lden due to transport noise.50 The European Commission estimates the economic costs of these negative impacts to human health at 40 billion euros in the EU countries alone. These costs are related to ‘a reduction of house prices, reduced possibilities of land use, increased medical costs and the cost of lost productivity in the workplace due to illness caused by the effects of noise pollution’.51 1.1.5 Noise as Spatial Imprint The spatial extent of noise impact is commonly illustrated though noise contours: lines enclosing areas where a certain noise level is reached or exceeded. Noise contours are usually drawn for average noise levels above 45 dB,52 and follow an incremental scale. The threshold above which noise levels are recognized as ‘high’ – meaning, above which noise is perceived as an annoyance – is usually set at 55 dB.53 Superimposing the contours of the noise generated by the three main traffic modes (automobile, train and airplane) can therefore provide an illustration of its cumulative spatial extent. In testing this superimposition for the case of Switzerland [→ 04, 05], we find that although a rather unimpressive 3 per cent of the country’s surface is affected by airport-, railway- and motorway-generated noise above 55 dB, this percentage reaches 52 per cent in urban areas.54 The maps show 46
Environmental noise is usually measured in A-weighted dB, designated as dB(A) or dBA (see more details in the section ‘Making the Subjective Objective: Objectifying Noise’) The A-weighting is so common that it is often left out in specifications. For the dB indications in this chapter, A-weighting can be assumed. 47 Stewart, Why Noise Matters, op. cit. (note 40), 16–17. 48 Ibid., 102. 49 Several reports and studies provide evidence of the relation between noise and health issues, as well as of the broader environmental impacts of transport, for example: World Health Organization, Community Noise, Environmental Health Criteria Document, WHO, European Office (Copenhagen, 1993); W. Babisch and I. Van Kamp, ‘Exposure-Response Relationship of the Association between Aircraft Noise and the Risk of Hypertension’, Noise and Health, vol. 11 (2009) no. 44, 161–168. 50 European Environment Agency (EEA), Noise in Europe 2014. EEA Report 10 / 2014 (Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union, 2014). 51 Ibid., 9–10. 52 In practice, contours are based on calculations of average noise levels, as will be explained later. 53 For the European Union, ‘high noise levels’ are defined as noise levels above 55 dB during the day and 50 dB at night. Similar thresholds are adopted in non-EU countries. EU, Decision No 1386 / 2013 / EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 20 November 2013 on a General Union Environment Action Programme to 2020, ‘Living Well, within the Limits of our Planet’ (OJ L 354, 20.12.2013, p. 171–200). 54 For this measurement, we defined as urban areas all artificial surfaces with urban, industrial and transport uses, as included in the CORINE land cover categories 111, 112, 121, 122, 123, 124, 131, 132, 133, 141, and 142.
17
Under the Noise
1.1
04 Transport-generated noise contours over 55 dB in Switzerland (2012) Area affected by noise ≥ 55 dB
Highway
Railway
05 Superimposed noise contours above 55 dB for highway, railway, and major airports in Switzerland (2012) Urban area Urban area affected by noise ≥ 55 dB
06 Superimposed noise contours for highway, railway, and major airports in the Zurich urban agglomeration (2012) ≥ 45 dB ≥ 50 dB ≥ 55 dB ≥ 60 dB ≥ 65 dB ≥ 70 dB
18
Background
Major airports
14
The 100 largest airports in Europe classified by number and type of runways 1 RUNWAY [43]
LGW
SAW
KBP
CTA
SIP
BEG
STN
CRL
GVA
BLQ
RHO
LTN
BRS
NCL
ALC
IBZ
EMA
STR
FAO
NTE
BGY
NAP
DLM
GOT
BHX
ACE
TRD
LIN
CIA
BGO
EIN
TFS
LCY
VCE
LCA
GLA
ADA
RIX
SXF
OPO
VLC
FUE
SVQ
2 RUNWAYS [40]
LHR
TXL
WAW
BOD
MUC
LIS
SVO
MIL
EDI
ATH
LPA
PMO
DME
PSA
VKO
HAM
BUD
MLA
DUB
AGP
OTP
SVG
BFS
LYS
OSL
PMA
LED
MRS
MAN
ESB
TLS
BSL
ADB
HER
VIE
DUS
NCE
HAJ
SKG
BVA
3 RUNWAYS [12]
IST
CGN
BCN
ORY
AYT
CPH
ZRH
30
STO
HEL
KEF 6 RUNWAYS [1]
4 RUNWAYS [4]
CDG
BRU
FRA
Background
MAD
FCO
AMS
PRG
SINGLE RUNWAY [43]
LGW
SAW
KBP
CTA
SIP
BEG
STN
GVA
CRL
BLQ
RHO
LTN
ALC
BRS
NCL
IBZ
EMA
STR
BGY
FAO
NTE
NAP
DLM
BHX
GOT
TRD
LIN
TFS
VCE
ACE BGO CIA LCA
EIN
LCY
GLA
ADA
SXF
OPO
RIX VLC
FUE
SVQ
CLOSE PARALLELS [13]
SVO
MAN
DUS
TXL
MIL
ESB
ADB
NCE
LPA
LYS
MRS
TLS
PSA
INDEPENDENT PARALLELS [12]
LHR
CDG
ATH
MUC
LED
BUD
DME
OTP
AYT
OSL
PMA
HAJ
INTERSECTING OR V [21]
ORY
ZRH
DUB
VIE
LIS
VKO
HAM
AGP
PRG
HER WAW
EDI
BSL
SKG
BOD
PMO
KEF
MLA
SVG
BFS
BVA
COMBINATIONS [11]
FRA
STO
31
IST
HEL
AMS
MAD
FCO
BCN
CPH
BRU
CGN
The Airside Logic of Noise Landscapes
1.2
Regulatory Landscapes
1.3
1.3.1 Flight Paths While the form of an airport’s Noise Landscape is largely determined by its runway layout, flight paths can be adjusted to a certain degree to shape the distribution of aircraft noise in the surrounding region. Accordingly, they are a constant topic of negotiation between airport operators and inhabitants, as they determine where and when the noise is felt most [→ 15]. The determination of actual flight paths around a particular airport in order to minimize noise exposure falls within a larger framework of noise management in the airport areas. In the EU, major guidance in this direction is provided, since 2002, by Directive 2002 / 49 / EC.66 Large airports are advised to follow the ‘Balanced Approach’ concept for noise management established by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO). The Balanced Approach follows an ‘airport-by-airport approach’, and sets certain standards of how noise can be reduced around airports, with the goal of addressing aircraft noise problems ‘in an environmentally responsive and economically responsible way’.67 It encompasses four principal elements: reduction of noise at source (quieter aircraft), operating restrictions on airplanes (withdrawal of noisy aircraft), land-use planning and management (building restrictions), and noise abatement operational procedures (adjustment of flight paths and continuous descent procedures). Effects of flight routes on their urban surroundings are calculated using mathematical models in a noise impact reduction and optimization system (NIROS) that takes factors such as airplane types, population density and topography into account. The chosen flight routes are presented to a commission with a consultative function, followed by a presentation to national authorities for approval, before finally being passed as a decree. Besides aircraft noise, which will be dealt with separately later on, height regulations for departing and approaching aircraft are the most straightforward result of the flight paths towards and from the airport [→ 16]. The height of an airplane’s approach path is determined by security regulations set up by national laws. Glide paths of landing aircraft are usually at the order of 3° (although for some airports, for example the City airport in London, they can be as steep as 5.5°). For climbing 66
67
32
Directive 2002 / 49 / EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 25 June 2002 relating to the assessment and management of environmental noise (Brussels, 2002). The goal of the directive is to give a common European approach towards a better noise management in Europe. It also deals with road traffic and major railways. Airports that have more than 50,000 airplane movements a year are defined as major airports and fall under the directive. International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), Guidance on the Balanced Approach to Aircraft Noise Management. Second Edition (Montréal: ICAO, 2008), I-1-2.
Benedikt Boucsein, Eirini Kasioumi
15 Position lights indicating flight paths from the airport at Paris Charles de Gaulle
16 Plan of the height limitations around Madrid Barajas, 1999
33
Regulatory Landscapes
1.3
2 Explorations
Eight European Noise Landscapes 40
Explorations
AMS First airfield established Airport area Passengers / year Freight / year Flights / year Noise Landscape (>55 dB Lden) Area Number of people affected by noise (>55 dB Lden)
1916 27.9 km2 63 600 000 1 700 000 t 480 000
229 km2 55 400
AMS.2 Historical development 1920
47
1940
Amsterdam–Schipol Benedikt Boucsein
1967
2003
2.1
AMS Development and Current Airport Layout Amsterdam Airport Schiphol is one of the oldest large airports in Europe. It is located entirely within the Haarlemmermeer Polder, which is a piece of artificial land reclaimed from the sea – the municipality of Haarlemmermeer was established in 1852. Today, the drainage canal grid of 1000 x 200 m is still dominant in the landscape. The first airfield on the site of today’s airport was established in 1916. In the 1960s, was shifted from a position west to its current position.3 As the airport grew, so did urbanization around it. In terms of its layout, the airport can be read as having a core of four intersecting runways with an additional runway, but also as a system of three independent parallels and two crossing runways. For the configuration of the runways, topography played no role. The surroundings are completely flat and the airport could be deliberately expanded into the landscape. However, in the early years of the airport’s development – when arrival and departure paths still depended on wind directions – the frequent and strong changing winds due to the position near the North Sea made a configuration of runways in different directions necessary. Although this changed with the arrival of the jet engines, the airport is today still structured around a central core, around which four large runways are arranged in different directions [→ AMS.2]. The Polderbaan (18R / 36L), the sixth and most recently constructed runway of Schiphol, is placed at a distance and parallel to the airport’s easternmost runway [→ AMS.1]. The runway, opened in 2003, was placed to lessen the impact of aircraft noise on the greater metropolitan region. While at first sight it seems like an addition to increase capacity, the Polderbaan was built to affect less people by airport noise than before and aims to inflict noise on empty urban surroundings – basically to decrease the conflict between the expansion logics of airport and city. As a consequence, it substantially enlarges the Noise Landscape of Schiphol to the north. There is a reservation for a seventh runway to the southeast, but this runway will probably not be built in the near future and the space is now partly built over. Schiphol is highly integrated into the Dutch railway network. It was connected to the regional railway in several stages between 1978 and 1993. The connection to the high-speed railway network followed in 2009, directly linking the airport to Antwerp, Brussels and Paris. Another notable connection is the Zuidtangent express bus line, which links Schiphol directly to Haarlem since 2002 and to the Zuidas since 2008. AMS Location in the Surrounding Urban Structure Although Schiphol is one of the few examples of airports in the world that can be reached by bicycle in various ways, the runway layout has generally created a strong geographical separation of the airport centre from the rest of the urban surroundings. By contrast, the railway station of Schiphol is topologically extremely central in the region’s railway network – the reachability of Schiphol is paramount. The station serves as an important railway node in the larger Randstad 3
48
M. Berkers, K. Bosma, I. Burgers, K. Davids, Ab. El Makhloufi, H. de Mare, A. Nikolaeva and J. de Wijn, Megastructure Schiphol: Design in Spectacular Simplicity (Rotterdam: nai010 publishers, 2013).
Explorations
region (composed of the cities Amsterdam, Almere, Utrecht, Rotterdam, Leiden, The Hague, Amersfoort and Haarlem) around it. With the development near the core of the airport, marketed as Airport City – a term coined by the Schiphol Group starting in the 1980s – Schiphol also serves as one of the prime examples of airport-driven urban development.4 Allegedly, the rents paid here for offices are higher than in the centre of Amsterdam. The airport is also five minutes by train from the Zuidas CBD development between the airport and the city centre of Amsterdam, where many high-rises have been developed in the last ten years. The location of Schiphol in the Haarlemmermeer polder, as well as its proximity to Amsterdam, are the most defining factors in the development of its surrounding area [→ AMS.3]. The polder is a prototypical Dutch type of landscape that was once water or swamp and has, through technological effort, been turned into land for settlement and infrastructure. The Haarlemmermeer Polder was created as a protection against floods for the city of Amsterdam, a speculative effort to create more agricultural land, but also as a gigantic programme to put people to work. Since the middle of the twentieth century, it has served as an important expansion area for the metropolitan region around Amsterdam. Owing to the proximity of the airport, but also of the city of Amsterdam, and the growth of car traffic, the town of Hoofddorp to the southeast of Schiphol in particular has experienced a period of strong population growth since the middle of the twentieth century. This is also because previously imposed growth limits caused by defence lines were dropped after the Second World War. And although farming remains the prevalent land use in the area, considerable parts are built up with facilities such as logistics centres and office parks. As Schiphol is a very central location in the Netherlands, the Noise Landscape is not only under development pressure from airport-related facilities, but also from logistics movements that are triggered by this central location in the surrounding metropolitan area. For instance, the Aalsmeer flower auction, the largest such facility in the world, is located near Schiphol airport. At the same time, some areas around Schiphol are developing into leisure landscapes. Due to a decision in 1959 to create settlement-free areas between the cities of Amsterdam and Haarlem to avoid the merging of the two communities, a Rijksbufferzone (state buffer zone) was created between the two cities. The Polderbaan is situated in this buffer zone. AMS Regulatory Framework The noise regulations around Amsterdam Airport Schiphol are generally divided into two parts: The Luchthavenverkeersbesluit (airport traffic law, LVB, which contains regulations for the airplane sector and concerns persons and environment)5 and the Luchthavenindelingsbesluit (airport allocation law, LIB, which gives rules for the use of space, concerning spatial ordering and buildings).6 In addition, there is 4
M. Schaafsma, J. Amkreutz and M. Güller, Airport and City. Airport Corridors: Drivers of Economic Development (Amsterdam: Schiphol Real Estate, 2008). 5 Ministerie van Verkeer en Waterstaat, Luchthavenverkeerbesluit Schiphol (2002 / 2016). 6 Rijksoverheid, Integrale versie van het Luchthavenindelingbesluit Schiphol (LIB) 2014 (The Hague, 2013).
50
Explorations
the National Policy Strategy for Infrastructure and Spatial Planning, which contains additional restrictions on spatial use within a given contour.7 The heart of the LVB is to minimize the inconvenience and risk for inhabitants caused by air traffic. For this, the LVB sets certain flight paths as well as rules on how much noise, exhaust and security risk can affect a certain area. It defines the amount of people that are allowed to be disturbed by noise each year, both night and day – limiting the yearly quota to what was measured in 1998, namely 1.1 Million inhabitants affected by noise. To see whether the limits have been met, the number of affected inhabitants is calculated each year according to four contours: The 48 Lden / 58 Lden and the 48 Lnight and 40 Lnight. As construction after 2005 is not taken into account (as well as houses torn down since 2005), these contours are not relevant to the development of housing in the noise contour. They are just a means of measuring flight movements and the general impact of airplane activities on the surrounding urban structure. Statistically, around 55,400 people are affected by noise above 55 dB Lden.8 The LIB, by contrast, is much more relevant to urban development. It defines four zones, restricting the type of building activities after 2003 [→ AMS.4]. The LIB zones set up a complicated regime around the airport. It is given in detail here to show the complex regimes that are part of planning in Noise Landscapes – but which are also prone to exceptions. The restrictions on dwelling are severe, but there are exceptions. In LIB1 (71 dB(A) Lden) – the ‘sound zone’, only individuals who rightfully owned a house (or a caravan) before 2003 are allowed to live. If individuals leave a house in LIB2 (individual risk contour 10–5) – the ‘safety demolition zone’ – it will be demolished. In LIB3 (individual risk contour 10–6) or ‘external security zone’, housing is allowed if it was in place before 2003 – and if a ‘statement of no complaint’ has been given. In the LIB4 area (58 dB(A) Lden) – the ‘noise restriction zone’, housing is generally not allowed (expect when a ‘statement of no complaint’ has been given), but can be built under certain exceptions, such as apartments for employees or filling up the gaps between existing houses. Health care facilities are also not allowed in the LIB4 area. While the number of apartments in the LIB2 area has declined by 40 per cent since the regulations were instated and has stayed more or less constant in the LIB3 area, the number of apartments in the LIB4 area has increased marginally since 2004. The limitations are less strict concerning office buildings. Existing office buildings in the LIB1 and LIB2 zones can continue to be used. Outside of the ‘safety demolition zone’, office activities are allowed if a ‘statement of no complaint’ has been given. On the basis of the same statement, small office buildings and logistics companies can be newly constructed in the LIB3 zone, but only if they are related to the operations of Schiphol. In the much larger LIB4 zone, commercial uses (but also such uses as barracks) are allowed. Office buildings, especially those for logistics companies, have since flourished in many of these areas.
7 8
51
Planbureau voor de Leefomgeving (PBL), Monitor Infrastructur en Ruimte 2016: Zicht op de effecten van de Structuurvisie Infrastructuur en Ruimte (The Hague: PBL, 2016). Ministerie van Infrastructuur en Milieu, Actieplan omgevingslawaai Schiphol, periode 2013–2018 (2014).
Amsterdam Schiphol
2.1
AMS.4 Land use / building restrictions
TYPE OF CONSTRUCTION Zone 1 Zone 2 Zone 3 Zone 4 ZONE 1
ZONE 2
ZONE 3
ZONE 4
New Housing
no
no
no
no
New Offices
no
no
no
yes
Housing/ office before 2005
yes
yes
yes
yes
AMS.5 Height restrictions MAX BUILDING HEIGHT -4 – 65 m 42 m 43 – 45 m 66–145 m -4 –41 m
from the runways outwards from the airport outwards from the airport outwards superimposed limitation
AMS.6 Other restrictions NO BIRD ZONE No storage / waste (which attracts birds) extramural No fishing pond No natural reserve No water surfaces more than three hectares NO WIND TURBINES & LASERS No wind turbines higher than 35 m above surface level or no wind turbines on a building with a total height of more than 35 m No fixed laser installation
52
Explorations
The Nota Ruimte, which is in place for the much larger 20ke9 area around the airport, is not a law and much less restrictive. In this area, no large-scale housing developments – very common in the Netherlands – are allowed, expect if they were already laid out in the large, existing programmes realized in the VINEX housing programme that started in the middle of the 1990s. Adding to the existing structure, on the other hand, is allowed. This regulation exists as a means of spatial ordering, and is not so much about protecting people from noise: it serves to allow a further development of the economically important airport of Schiphol and to discourage dwelling activities in a zone that is affected by noise, although maybe not in a way that is directly hazardous to health. From 2004 to 2012, the number of inhabitants in this area has increased by 7,5 per cent.10 There are two types of height restrictions around Schiphol: the height limitations for the radar around the airport, which are more circular and are important for the airport’s operation, and the height limitations in relation to the runways, which are important for the safe take-off and landing procedures of the airplanes themselves [→ AMS.5]. Also here, exceptions can be made under certain circumstances (‘statement of no complaint’).11 In terms of other restrictions, the ban of wind turbines above 35 m as well as laser installations around the airport affects quite a large area, but concerns a marginal aspect of the built environment. The restrictions to keep birds away from airplanes are more important, as they limit the storage of food or waste under the open space, but also fisheries, nature reserves and especially bird reserves [→ AMS.6]. They also restrict new water bodies to a size of 3 ha, which has a considerable effect on new landscaping projects, most notably the ‘Park 21’ project currently under construction between Hoofddorp and Nieuw-Vennep. Here, the large water bodies are located to the west of the park, as this part lies outside of the ‘no-bird-zone’. There are 24 fixed measurement points in the region that regularly monitor the noise around Schiphol. The system can be accessed through an online tool. The values put on approaching and departing airplanes are determined by the sound levels of the according planes. Night-time flights are especially expensive. Overall, communication about aircraft noise takes place in a clear and planned way, and flight routes and runway usage were amended according to the results of different institutions as well as workgroups. Also, landscaping is experimented with to prevent ground noise. There are noise insulation and compensation schemes around Schiphol. A ‘Quality of Life Foundation’ is trying to find ways to implement further projects and provide noise insulation measures to buildings that fall outside of this scheme.
9
ke means Kosteneenheid – named after its creator Kosten - and is a particular way to calculate aircraft noise, established in the Netherlands during the 1960s. 10 At the time of writing of this book, changes to these noise regulations are currently accessible to the public and will probably take effect soon. The 20ke contour is being integrated into the new LIB (as LIB5), and the LIB regulations themselves will also be changed in some respects. Depending on how the new regulations will look after this process, they will change the building activity around Schiphol substantially in some places. The height regulations have already changed in this process. 11 Rijksoverheid, Integrale versie van het Luchthavenindelingbesluit Schiphol (LIB) 2014 (The Hague, 2013) – Bijlage 4, Maatgevende kaart toetshoogtes (2014).
53
Amsterdam Schiphol
2.1
AMS The Paradigmatic Noise Landscape Schiphol is probably the most infrastructural Noise Landscape of the examples examined in this study. The airport is built entirely on reclaimed, artificial land and lies below sea level. It must constantly be drained to keep it stable. And, since its creation, the Haarlemmermeer Polder was settled by inhabitants with an enormous pioneering spirit. All of this is felt in the landscape when one traverses it by bicycle: almost without restraint, the landscape is transformed into what is deemed most suitable at the respective time. There is no room for nostalgia. Obsolete structures are torn down immediately – although the old polder grid remains intact in most cases. Even large motorways are diverted, as the reallocation of the A9 motorway around the village of Badhoevedorp shows.12 One of the prominent features of this Noise Landscape is that it has, besides the usual functions such as office parks and logistics centres, also one of leisure. Large recreational areas have been developed or are developing in every direction. While the ‘Park 21’ project is developed to the southwest, in the east there are already two long-established recreation areas: the ‘Amsterdam Forest’ to the east, a large park created in the course of Amsterdam’s modernist expansion as an employment programme during the Great Depression, and the area around the Westeinderplassen Lake in the south. North of the Polderbaan, there are more recreational areas – the Spaarnwoude Park, sailing clubs, two large golf clubs, but also a fun park where paint-ball games can be played. To the west of the airport, the Floriade exhibition took place in 2002 [→ AMS.7]. The area around Schiphol is one of Europe’s oldest Noise Landscapes, and accordingly many of the phenomena that motivated us to write this book are very dominant here. In many ways, it is paradigmatic of what distinguishes Noise Landscapes from their urban surroundings: the density of infrastructure, both airport- and ground-related, the diversity of uses, the prevalence of large-scale developments and the ubiquity of niches in between them, as well as a strong dynamic in its development, giving it a somewhat provisional character. The case of Schiphol also shows that a maturing Noise Landscape does not tend towards a homogenization or balance of the different heterogeneous elements that comprise European Noise Landscapes. Instead, the different elements seem to become even more accentuated as the effect of the airport and its positive and negative externalities on its surroundings play out over time. In the last decades, Schiphol has been the object of a number of research projects, as well as of attempts to better coordinate the planning and policy of the area. The Alderstafel, for example, was an advisory committee that existed from 2006 to 2015. Its goal was to reach an understanding of Schiphol’s development in relation to its surroundings.13 A general consensus was reached in 2008, and in 2015, the Alderstafel merged into the Environmental Council Schiphol (ORS). Also, many important actors of Schiphol’s Noise Landscape were included in the Structural Vision Mainport Amsterdam Schiphol Haarlemmermeer (SMASH), which represents 12 13
55
The construction, clearly visible on the satellite images, is due to be finished in 2017 / 18. B. de Jong, The Airport Assembled: Rethinking Planning and Policy Making of Amsterdam Airport Schiphol by Using the Actor-Network Theory (Delft: Eburon Academic Publishers, 2012).
Amsterdam Schiphol
2.1
a government-led effort to understand how airport and regional development could be coordinated.14 The dynamics that determine the development of Schiphol’s Noise Landscape remain unbroken – the case of Schiphol shows that even if most of the actors in the Noise Landscape agree to take coordinated action based on the lines on the map, it is extremely difficult to change the heterogeneous and strong dynamics that form it. The coming decades will see a further urbanization, especially on the edges of Schiphol’s Noise Landscape. This will also put the area inside the noise contours under increasing pressure. Principally, there are two directions that Schiphol’s Noise Landscape can take: it can be further colonized by landside infrastructures, largescale uses and marginal uses that each work according to their own logic. Or it can, with a collective effort by the actors involved, be transformed in a productive landscape that serves both recreational and infrastructural purposes for the surrounding urban areas and as a testing ground for new approaches. There are tendencies that point in both directions. Just as the Airport City concept pioneered the joining of airport and urban realm, the Noise Landscape as regional park could be a paradigm for future developments elsewhere.
14
56
D. Zandbelt, Ruimtelijke modellen SMASH 2040: Amsterdam-Schiphol-Haarlemmermeer (Rotterdam: Zandbelt&vandenBerg, 2012).
Explorations
1 The Plaza is the place to arrive, but also to pause in Schiphol. A public square at the centre of an airport is an exception in the international comparison. And although it is very noisy and not flanked by buildings on all sides, the feeling of a city square clearly exists here.
Schiphol Plaza is an international, highly curated and commercially exploited place. At the same time, it is possible for non-consumers to sit and observe here as well.
3
other uses – storage, but also meeting facilities. The car-based society is leaving its traces all around the Noise Landscape.
Other adaptations can also be observed. A lot of the terrain around Schiphol is dominated by greenhouses, which are often adapted for
58
Explorations
2 Just south of the airport, a few minutes by bike through the Airport City and along the motorway, the contrast to Schiphol Plaza could not be bigger. Businesses in the field of valet parking spring up around the airport on farmland or abandoned commercial estates. While their
owners fly to destinations around the world, their cars are fetched by these businesses and parked somewhere in the vicinity of the airport. Airport and municipalities are in a constant battle with valet parking, as it causes congestion and pollution.
4 Surface-bound mobility constantly needs new and broader access. This motorway was cut through the landscape in 2011. In the background, the office buildings of the Beukenhorst office parks loom, as well as a
number of logistics parks – large vertical and horizontal slabs on the horizon.
59
Amsterdam Schiphol
2.1
5
In the landscape around the airport, machines and other things are stored. Accordingly, much of the ground is sealed off. Together with the office buildings of the Airport City, Schiphol̢۪s tower is omnipresent.
7
In small pockets behind these logistics centres and office buildings, users appropriate the urban structure around them, often in unexpected ways, such as fishing in the canals. Such images of spontaneous
60
Explorations
recreation do not correspond to a classical image of urbanity. In Noise Landscapes, however, they are common.
6
De Hoek, south of the airport, is a very centrally located piece of land that is at the same time completely cut off from its surroundings. The express bus from Schiphol exits the tunnel here, only a few minutes
away from the terminal, and drives through a landscape of fenced-in fields, warehouses that are several hundred metres long, and a railway line that can be crossed at only very few places.
8
low density and its car-based character. Most importantly, owing to its position in the noise contour, there is little possibility for transformation, for example into a mixed-use quarter.
The office park Beukenhorst Oost, built in the 1990s, lies right at the train station of Hoofddorp, another point that is extremely close to the terminal. However, the real estate crisis hit very hard here. The office park has several shortcomings, one of which is its comparably
61
Amsterdam Schiphol
2.1
9
Exiting the office park and the town of Hoofddorp, the express bus enters a tangle of landside infrastructures, each of which is made exclusively for one traffic mode. The route of the express bus line between Schiphol and Haarlem, like many other roads in the area, cannot be
traversed by foot or bicycle, sometimes even not by private car. Thus, the urban structure becomes impenetrable, made solely for predetermined traffic from point a to point b.
11
them – still host low-value functions. Surfaces are used seemingly wastefully to store material in an inefficient way, a stark contrast to the efficiency machine in the background.
The landscape around the airport is still used intensively by agriculture. On the horizon, the cranes testify to the building activity linked to the airport’s global economy. At the same time, many peripheral areas – due to their less central location or to the infrastructures surrounding
62
Explorations
10
Just a few hundred metres further south, the traditional landscape of the Haarlemmermeer Polder takes over. The airplanes are omnipresent, landing and taking off regularly.
12
And – when one explores the landscape around the runway long enough – peculiar niches appear. Where there seems to be no place to
63
Amsterdam Schiphol
inhabit, right next to the runway, children are jumping on a trampoline and playing in the sand.
2.1
13
The Hoofdvaart is the central canal of the Haarlemmermeer polder. In the middle of the nineteenth century, it was used to drain the Haarlemmermeer. Accordingly, for many decades the main road of the
polder was the Hoofdweg – until the arrival of the motorways and the airport. The Hoofdweg was lowered below the level of the Hoofdvaart to allow for the taxiway to the Polderbaan.
15 In many places in the polder, aircraft noise is dwarfed by the noise from motorways. The large motorways that circle the city of Amsterdam
and connect it to the surrounding municipalities dominate the landscape, especially to the north.
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Explorations
14
Right across the canal, hidden in a park, lies the Wilgenhof graveyard. No-one has been buried here since the decision to build the Polderbaan was made. Not because the graveyard obstructs airport
operations (and the airport does not obstruct the dead either) – the graveyard is not suitable for ceremonies because of the noise.
16 On the way back to the airport, sudden situations of functional diversity and density appear. Like many other agricultural areas located near metropolitan centres, the areas around Schiphol are often used for
horse-riding. Around Schiphol, this is mixed with logistics, large infrastructural lines, and the Fokker aviation technology park.
65
Amsterdam Schiphol
2.1
ORY First airfield established Airport area Passengers / year Freight / year Flights / year Noise Landscape (>55 dB Lden) Area Number of people affected by noise (>55 dB Lden)
1918 13.4 km2 31 000 000 115 000 t 234 000
ORY.2
123 900
Historical development 1940
67
93.3 km2
1966
Eirini Kasioumi
1991
2013
2.2
MAD First airfield established Airport area Passengers / year Freight / year Flights / year Noise Landscape (>55 dB Lden) Area Number of people affected by noise (>55 dB Lden)
1931 27.8 km2 50 500 000 420 000 t 378 000
112 km2 31 200
MAD.2 Historical development 1956
87
1975
1991
2011
Benedikt Boucsein, Joris Jehle, Eirini Kasioumi
2.3
FRA First airfield established 1934 Airport area 21.6 km2 Passengers / year 60 500 000 Freight / year 2 100 000 t Flights / year 463 000 Noise Landscape (>55 dB Lden) 276 km2 Area Number of people affected by noise (>55 dB Lden) 207 300
FRA.2
Historical development 1936
103
1949
1984
2011
Benedikt Boucsein, Andreas Schmitt, Joris Jehle
2.4
LHR First airfield established Airport area Passengers / year Freight / year Flights / year Noise Landscape (>55 dB Lden) Area Number of people affected by noise (>55 dB Lden)
1946 10.9 km2 75 500 000 1 600 000 t 473 000
LHR.2
704 300
Historical development 1946
121 121
211 km2
1955
1977
2005
Benedikt Boucsein, F. Peter Ortner, Joris Jehle
2.5
ZRH First airfield established Airport area Passengers / year Freight / year Flights / year Noise Landscape (>55 dB Lden) Area Number of people affected by noise (ZFI)
ZRH.2
93 km2 62 100
Historical development 1948
139
1946 8.6 km2 27 500 000 430 000 t 269 000
1958
1980
Benedikt Boucsein, Christian Salewski
2008
2.6
CDG First airfield established Airport area Passengers / year Freight / year Flights / year Noise Landscape (>55 dB Lden) Area Number of people affected by noise (>55 dB Lden)
1974 27.5 km2 66 000 000 1 800 000 t 473 000 247 km2 256 600
CDG.2 Historical development 1974
155
1982
Eirini Kasioumi
1994
2000
2.7
MUC First airfield established Airport area Passengers / year Freight / year Flights / year Noise Landscape (>55 dB Lden) Area Number of people affected by noise (>55 dB Lden)
1992 16.2 km2 42 000 000 350 000 t 394 000 159 km2 11 300
MUC.2 Historical development 1992
175
Benedikt Boucsein and Andreas Schmitt
2.8
17
Design studio proposal for the transformation of the ‘inner periphery’ of the Glatt valley near Zurich airport into a regional park
18
Design studio project for the ‘airport tangent’ south of Schiphol airport, showing the urbanistic potential of the strip-like development
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Readings
9 789462 083554 Printed and bound in the Netherlands
The expansive areas around large airports that are affected by noise, infrastructure, and transient forms of architecture have never before been researched as a phenomenon. But these Noise Landscapes are emerging worldwide, often surpassing their neighbouring city in size, and sometimes rivalling it in economic importance. On the basis of eight European case studies (Amsterdam, Zurich, London Heathrow, Frankfurt, Munich, Madrid, and Paris Orly and Charles de Gaulle) this publication provides the first account of how these landscapes emerged as the result of technical determinations, what takes place in them, and how they can be interpreted. The book is the outcome of several years of research done by the Chair of Kees Christiaanse at the ETH Zurich.
nai010 publishers