Dutch new worlds by Planum. The Journal of Urbanism

Dutch New Worlds

010 Publishers, Rotterdam 2012

Scenarios in Physical Planning and Design in the Netherlands, 1970â&#x20AC;&#x201C;2000

Christian Salewski

1 Synoptic Table of Contents 8 1 Foreword 10 1 Introduction 12 1 Scenarios and the Scenario Method 20 1 Thinking About the Unthinkable 21 1 Scenarios, the Paranoid-Critical Method, 1 and Decision-Making 24 1 Futurology and Its Techniques 28 1 Scenarios as Planning Method: the French ‘Prospective’ 39 1 The Scenario of the Unacceptable 1971 41 1 The Scenario Method 1975 45 1 Trends and Threats: Scenarios for Public Policy 54

The Image of the Future in Dutch Physical Planning 2 and Design 56

2 Dutch Water Works and Large-Scale Engineering 56 2 From Architecture to Socio-Spatial Constructions 60 3 Making Society: Support for Physical Planning Policy 76 3 Scenarios for National Physical Planning 1971–1983 76 3 The Development of the Southwestern Netherlands 1971 76 3 Scenarios for the Urbanisation Report 1974 81 3 Manual for Designing Scenarios 1981 93 3 The Signiﬁcance of Explorations of the Future for Physical Planning 1981 95 3 The Future of Randstad Holland 1983 97 3 Scenarios as Planning Device: Limits of Control 108 4 Mechanisms of Variaton: Models and Design Choices 110 4 Evolution of Form: Almere Models 1970–1975 111 4 Explorations Concerning the Development of the New Town Almere 1970 114 4 Explorations 2. Urban Area Almere 1972 117 4 Almere 1985 1974 121 4 Almere in the Regional Frame: Spatial Structure Alternatives 1975 126 4 Instant Alternatives: IJplein Reference Collages 1979–1983 132 4 Scenarios as Option Generation Device 137

5 Relative Utopias: Visualising Contradictory Objectives 140 5 Hopes and Fears: Markerwaard Scenarios 1970–1981 140 5 Explorations Markerwaard 1974 144 5 Plan Waterlely 1974 160 5 Markerwaard Report 1976 164 5 Working Hypothesis Structure Plan IJsselmeer Area 1979 165 5 Concept for the Structure of the IJsselmeer Area 1981 172 5 Nowhere Land 1987 176 5 Another Light on the Completion of the Zuiderzee Project 1972 177 5 From Options to Alternatives to Visions 180 6 Exploring Visions: Testing Political Decisions 6 and Consequences 184 6 Models and Forecasts: Trend Scenarios 1955–1977 185 6 Future Models By the Central Planning Agency 185 6 The Next Twenty-Five Years (ATV) 1977 188 6 Value Patterns: Policy Scenarios 1980–1986 192 6 Policy Oriented Explorations of the Future (Btv) 1980/1983 192 6 Spatial Explorations, Three Sketches (NNAO) 1986 199 6 Scenarios as Analytical Device 208 7 Design as Politics: Campaigning for Makeability 210 7 Ideas Market: Planning as Entrepreneurship 1983 211 7 Lobbying for Design: The Netherlands Now as Design 1985–1989 216 7 The Netherlands in 2050 According To the Nnao 230 7 Careful Netherlands 230 7 Dynamic Netherlands 232 7 Critical Netherlands 234 7 Relaxed Netherlands 236 7 Scenarios as Communicative Device 244 8 Stages for Action: Constructing Situations 246 8 Negative Utopia: Critique Through Radicalisation 247 8 Situationism and Radical Architecture 247 8 Eropolis 1987 255 8 New Urban Frontieres, Los Angeles Alexanderpolder New York 1993 256 8 Pig City 2001 260

8 Ideal Cities of Pluralism: Frameworks for Uncertainty 266 8 Ofﬁce for Metropolitan Architecture – Early Projects 1972–1989 266 8 Agribusiness in the Haarlemmermeerpolder 1987 272 8 Wildlife, a Thought Experiment for the Emptiness in the Randstad 1993 275 8 Buckthorn City 1995 278 8 Scenarios as Thought Experiments 284 9 10

Scenario Machine: Popularity and Disillusion Scenarios as Tools

296

8 List of Abbreviations 313 8 Dutch Future and Spatial Studies 314 8 Plans and Documents Concerning the Markerwaard 316 8 Corpus Scenario Studies 319 8 Corpus Scenario Theory 319 8 Interviews and Conversations 320 8 Bibliography 322 8 Image Sources 337 8 Register 339 8 Acknowledgements 350

288

1960

1965

1970

1975

1980

1 KAHN THINKING ABOUT THE UNTHINKABLE

REPORT TO THE CLUB OF ROME – THE LIMITS OF GROWTH

KAHN WIENER THE YEAR 2000

DATAR SCENARIO OF THE UNACCEPTABLE

JANTSCH OECD TECHNOLOGICAL FORECASTING

DATAR THE SCENARIO METHOD

LAW ON PHYSICAL PLANNING RNP REPORT WEST OF THE LAND

RPD SECOND REPORT ON PHYSICAL PLANNING

RNP FIRST REPORT ON PHYSICAL PLANNING

OECD INTERFUTURES

RPD SIGNIFICANCE OF EXPLORATIONS OF THE FUTURE

RPD THIRD REPORT URBANISATION REPORT

2 THIJSSE SPATIAL IMAGE OF THE NETHERLANDS IN 2000

ROTHUIZEN ET.AL. SEARCHING FOR LIVING SPACE

STEIGENGA MODERN PLANNING

RPC THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE S.W. NETHERLANDS

RPD SCENARIOS FOR THE URBANISATION REPORT

RPD THE FUTURE OF RANDSTAD HOLLAND

RPD MANUAL FOR DESIGNING SCENARIOS

BAKEMA VAN DEN BROEK PAMPUS CITY

4 RIJP EXPLORATIONS NEW TOWN ALMERE

VAN EESTEREN LELYSTAD

SOUTHERN FLEVOLAND RECLAIMED START BUILDING LELYSTAD

RIJP/PBA EXPLORATIONS 2 URBAN AREA ALMERE

RIJP/PBA ALMERE RIJP/PBA 1985 ALMERE IN THE REGIONAL FRAME

ENKHUIZER DIKE CLOSED START BUILDING OF ALMERE

RIJP REPORT VAN DUIN

RIJP STRUCTURE PLAN FOR THE IJMEER AREA

OMA IJPLEIN

RIJP REFLECTIONS ON THE MARKERWAARD

RIJP EXPLORATIONS MARKERWAARD

RIJP WORKING HYPOTHESIS IJMEER AREA

RIJP MARKERWAARD REPORT

VBIJ WHITE BOOK IJSSELMEER

VBIJ PLAN WATERLELY

MARKERWAARD OFF THE MAP!

VAN KLINGEREN ANOTHER LIGHT ON THE COMPLETION OF THE ZUIDERZEE PROJECT

RIJP CONCEPT FOR THE STRUCTURE OF THE IJMEER AREA

WRR THE NEXT TWENTY-FIVE YEARS

WRR POLICY-ORIENTED EXPLORATIONS

7 SUPERSTUDIO CONTINUOUS MONUMENT

8 GUY DEBORD NAKED CITY/UNITARY URBANISM

CONSTANT NIEUWENHUYS NEW BABYLON

WRR PLANNING AS ENTREPRENEURSHIP

SUPERSTUDIO TWELVE IDEAL CITIES

REM KOOLHAAS CITY OF THE CAPTIVE GLOBE

CEDRIC PRICE FUN PALACE

REM KOOLHAAS DELIRIOUS NEW YORK

OMA PARK DE LA VILLETTE

ARCHIGRAM INSTANT CITY AIR KOP VAN ZUID

1985

1990

1995

2000

REVISION LAW ON PHYSICAL PLANNING

RPD FOURTH REPORT ON PHYSICAL PLANNING EXTRA

RPD FOURTH REPORT ON PHYSICAL PLANNING

2005

RPD FIFTH REPORT ON PHYSICAL PLANNING

REPORT SPACE

9 RPD REPORT SPATIAL PERSPECTIVES

RPD THE NETHERLANDS 2030

VROM RANDSTAD 2040

THE NEW MAP OF THE NETHERLANDS

DECISION TO NOT YET RECLAIM THE MARKERWAARD

RIJP/DAS CONCRETE PLAN OF THE MARKERWAARD

MARKERWAARD: THE OTHER SIDE OF DESIGN (NOWHERE LAND)

CPB THE DUTCH ECONOMY IN THE LONG RUN

CBS LONG RANGE EXPLORATIONS

CPB SCANNING THE FUTURE

MNP THE NETHERLANDS LATER

CPB FOUR GROWTH SCENARIOS 2040

UVA SPATIAL EXPLORATIONS THREE SKETCHES

NNAO NEW NETHERLANDS 2050

NNAO NOW DESIGNING ARNHEM & NIJMEGEN

THE METROPOLITAN DEBATE

FIRST REPORT ON ARCHITECTURE SPACE FOR ARCHITECTURE

DELTAMETROPOLIS

SECOND REPORT ON ARCHITECTURE THE ARCHITECTURE OF SPACE

REPORT BELVEDERE

REPORT DESIGNING THE NETHERLANDS

ACTION PROGRAM SPACE AND CULTURE

REPORT A CULTURE OF DESIGN

MVRDV PIG CITY EO-WIJERS FOUNDATION FIRST COMPETITION

AIR ALEXANDERPOLDER

ROTTERDAM 2045 VISION ON CITY, HARBOUR, REGION

EO-WIJERS FOUNDATION SEVENTH COMPETITION

AIR HOEKSE WAARD

SCENARIO THEORY INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

URBAN INFILL IJPLEIN OMA

CONTRA MARKERWAARD NON-GOVERNMENTAL VBIJ/VAN KLINGEREN

PRO-MAKEABILITY NON-GOVERNMENTAL NNAO/FRIELING

LAWS ON PHYSICAL PLANNING

REPORTS ON ARCHITECTURE

DUTCH PLANNING THEORY

NEW TOWN LELYSTAD ALMERE RIJP/PBA

SITUATIONISM RADICAL ARCHITECTURE EARLY OMA

RESEARCH BY DESIGN NON-GOVERNMENTAL AIR/EO W/NEW MAP/RO2045

REPORTS ON PHYSICAL PLANNING

CHAPTER

NATIONAL PLANNING RPC/RPD

NEW LAND MARKERWAARD RIJP

POLICY ANALYSIS WRR/CPB/UVA

RELATED PROJECTS

LAND RECLAMATION NEW TOWNS

1965

TIMELINE

Scenarios and the Scenario Method

1 ‘La modernité, c’est le transitoire, le fugitif, le contingent, la moitié de l’art, dont l’autre moitié est l’éternel et l’immuable!’ Charles Baudelaire, L’Art Romantique (1869). Chapter III ‘Le peintre de la vie moderne’, paragraph IV ‘La modernité’.

Any view into the future reveals major uncertainty and complexity. In the 1960s, scenarios were introduced as a new method to counter this problem. Since then, the use of plausible mid- and long-term scenarios instead of predictive forecasts has become ubiquitous in politics, business, and academia. Many of these scenarios seem threatening and extreme. To evaluate and judge them, a closer look at their underlying thought is helpful in understanding the way in which the world is viewed through scenarios. Charles Baudelaire once wrote that the fugitive, transitory, and contingent modernity required new ways of seeing the world.1 One of these ways was the enlightened, rational exploration of the world according to the scientific method. Its promise was to help understand causes and effects and thereby the underlying workings of the world, enabling us to predict its development, at least in part. However, for most mid- to long-term developments, forecasting proved impossible, mainly due to the uncertainty that results from an overwhelming degree of complexity. In contrast to the scientific method, a very different way to see the world anew was to seek delirious states, hallucinations, drug-induced illusions, fantasy, or trance in an exploration of the unspoken and subconscious realm of one’s own mind. These experiences may have been mind-enhancing for those who experienced them directly, but were impossible to communicate to others, since the world of imagination is foremost a personal experience. Recognising the potentials and limits of both approaches, there have been many attempts to consolidate these two methods of thought into a single, integrated view of the world. Scenario thinking is one of these attempts, neither strictly scientific nor purely imaginative, but a combination of both. It is speculative, eclectic, closely related to filmmaking, and, not least of all, to the paranoid-critical method.

Scenarios and the Scenario Method

The term scenario originates in theatre, describing the stage-set and secondary cast for a speciﬁc scene of main actors. In cinema, scenarios are synonymous to storyboards, a rough sketch of a sequence of actions including the setting, lighting, and auxiliary action. Scenarios were introduced as a concept for experimental urban planning and design in the 1950s by French artists and, in the 1960s, as a planning method for military strategic planning and public policy in the United States of America and in France. This chapter traces the history of scenarios as a planning method by exploring their underlying theoretical basis, the challenges of planning in a democracy that led to the use of scenarios for public policy, the techniques of futurology used to construct scenarios, and the elaboration of the scenario method through French governmental planners in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Thinking About the Unthinkable

2 Louis Menand, ‘Fat Man. Herman Kahn and the nuclear age,’ The New Yorker, 27 June 2005, 92.

In the 1960s, military analyst Herman Kahn invented the scenario method to improve military strategic analysis and decision-making. This innovation arose as a consequence of sudden and extreme uncertainty. The ﬁnal weeks of the Second World War brought about the end of an era through the destruction and mass devastation of the Japanese cities Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in the ﬁrst aggressive use of new nuclear weapons technology. It was the dawn of a new age, shattering long-held and hard-won knowledge about security and military strategy. Not surprisingly, political and military leaders immediately clambered for control of this ultimate new nuclear weapon. A full understanding of the weapon’s consequences for military and political decision-making was to come much later. Accordingly, the early years of the Cold War became the stage for military strategists and think-tanks. As nuclear weapons were deployed by air, the air force became its own separate branch of the military, taking over the leadership of overall military strategy, a role traditionally held by the navy.2 In the United States, the RAND corperation, short for ‘Research ANd Development’ of military strategy, became the main think-tank for the air force. It was based in Santa Monica, California, close

to the aviation industry and Hollywood. Unexpectedly, RAND’s military analyst Herman Kahn became a controversial celebrity due to his unique way of thinking and communicating. 3 In 1959, 3 Sharon Gamari-Tabrizi, The Worlds of Herman Kahn (Cambridge, MA, London: Harvard University Press, 2005), 45, 24. After his death, Herman Kahn’s celebrity status amongst a wider audience faded. Today, he is probably best known to business scenario consultants. However, Hollywood saw to it that Herman Kahn remains an iconic ﬁgure to this day, albeit under a different name. Stanley Kubrick based his 1964 ﬁlm ‘Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb’ on

4 Herman Kahn, On Thermonuclear War (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1960).

5 Herman Kahn, Thinking about the Unthinkable (New York: Avon, 1962).

Herman Kahn’s ‘On Thermonuclear War’, which he even required the film’s producer to read. The character of Dr. Strangelove embodies a combination of several protagonists of the nuclear age, amongst them Werner von Braun, the German-born engineer of the German National Socialists’ and the United States’ post-war ballistic missiles program whose physical disability Dr. Strangelove shares. But above all, in his reasoning about the world-destroying Doomsday Machine,

Dr. Strangelove was a portrayal of Herman Kahn: ‘The Doomsday Machine – a device that automatically decimates the planet once a nuclear attack is made – was one of Kahn’s heuristic ﬁctions. [...] In Kahn’s book, the Doomsday Machine is an example of the sort of deterrent that appeals to the military mind but that is dangerously destabilizing’. Menand, ‘Fat Man. Herman Kahn and the Nuclear Age’, 92.

he began to analyse the politics of deterrence. The administration of President Dwight D. Eisenhower had issued a statement that the United States would answer with massive, ﬁrst-strike nuclear retaliation against any unacceptable aggression by the Soviet Union. Herman Kahn heavily criticised this strategy of ‘mutually assured destruction’, or MAD, as neither smart, nor credible. During a brief sabbatical, he held a lecture in which he explored the possible future developments of a nuclear confrontation. The lecture was published as ‘On Thermonuclear War’, a hardly readable 600-page agglomeration of facts, numbers, ideas and graphs.4 He approached the issues of nuclear warfare with unprecedented directness, posing fundamental questions such as: How could a nuclear war start? How could it be led? How could it be brought to an end? How – and here, even the question was considered explosive – could you win it? The mere thought of winning a war that included a high probability of the loss of hundreds of thousands, if not millions of lives was considered indecent. Herman Kahn thought differently. He argued that without thorough consideration of the possible future patterns of actions and reactions by antagonistic political blocks, it would be impossible to improve the military strategy and decision-making procedures that were necessary to prevent a nuclear war, or to allow for the best possible outcome of a future nuclear war. In a response to the severe, often personal critiques and seeking to reach a wider public, Herman Kahn wrote a second book in a much more readable and condensed form. Its title expressed his approach in a nutshell: ‘Thinking about the Unthinkable.’5 Considering possible

Scenarios and the Scenario Method

6 John Ratcliffe, ‘Scenario building: a suitable method for strategic property planning?’, Property Management 18, No. 2 (2000), 128.

7 Kahn, Thinking about the Unthinkable, 150.

8 Ibid., 152.

9 Ibid., 150.

future developments, he set out to outline different plausible future scenarios in parallel. This allowed for a comparison of the consequences of strategic choices in different future conditions. As a physicist and weapons engineer, Herman Kahn had a thorough understanding of the novelty of the nuclear age, which made traditional thinking patterns obsolete. In an unprecedented situation, experience would be useless and abstract analysis insufficient. Therefore, Herman Kahn saw his work as a supplement, or ersatz experience, to analysis. In order to inspire his audience to imagine a hypothetical future, he employed vivid and convincing stories. RAND’s proximity to Hollywood’s film studios eventually helped to establish the name of this new method: scenarios.6 His approach compared well to that of a movie set: the scenario for a speciﬁc scene featuring a film’s primary actors was described as the totality of background, lighting, secondary cast, and all minor details. In military strategy, a scenario would similarly describe a possible, overall course of military and political action and reaction over time, establishing a context against which military and political decision-making could be tested. Herman Kahn’s simple deﬁnition was that: A scenario results from the attempt to describe in more or less detail some hypothetical sequence of events.7 As these stories about the future were clearly unusual and deviated from past experiences, they were accompanied by specific, detailed information and many number-based causal chains to render them plausible. It was an approach based on the new analytical methods common to the work of RAND: systems analysis, war gaming, and game theory, all supported by the increasing calculation power of new computer technology. Their main question was ‘What if?’ Yet scenarios offered a quality beyond those of strictly analytical tools: If a scenario is to be plausible, it must, of course, relate at the outset to some reasonable version of the present, and must throughout relate rationally to the way people could behave though it is important not to limit oneself to the most plausible, conventional or probable situations and behaviour.8 Scenarios relied not only on logical analysis and deduction, but also on intuition, imagination, and the creation of vivid and convincing mental images of the possible future. Their purpose was not only knowledge, but also to serve as ‘an aid to the imagination.’9 This goal stemmed from Herman

10 Kahn, On Thermonuclear War, 456–457.

Kahn’s understanding of the limitations of the scientiﬁc method, and his belief in the need for ‘informed judgement and intuition’ in dealing with the uncertainties of a complex problem.10 Through his scenarios, he sought to broaden the horizon: to think about the unthinkable.

Scenarios, the Paranoid-Critical Method, and Decision-Making

11 Kahn, Thinking about the Unthinkable, 152.

12 Ibid.

13 Ibid.

Critics viewed Herman Kahn’s construction of possible futures based on an eclectic chain of observed facts and causal relations as a form of paranoia, particularly because his focus lay on military aggression and escalation. While agreeing that his method was somewhat paranoid, Herman Kahn saw it as both necessary and legitimate. His response to his critics was pivotal for understanding scenario thinking: the criticism is sometimes that only the paranoid personality [...] could conceive of such plots. This criticism hardly seems relevant, or, if relevant, justiﬁed. The analyst is, of course, interested in what devilish means others might contrive to destroy him; he is also interested in what they might not do.11 Obviously, the task of a military analyst of deterrence politics is to consider all possible risks. However, Herman Kahn warned that a scenario was not a valid method of risk assessment, since it lacked sufficient hard data: However, one must remember that the scenario is not used as a predictive device. The analyst is often dealing with the unknown and unknowable future.12 In his view, a scenario was not a forecast, but a speciﬁc form of thinking about the possibilities of the future: Imagination has always been one of the principal means for dealing in various ways with the future, and the scenario is simply one of many devices useful in stimulating and disciplining the imagination.13 Essentially, Herman Kahn’s scenarios were systematic constructs used to translate imagination into plausible, rational descriptions. As such, his approach was similar to the paranoidcritical method, invented by Surrealist painter Salvador Dalí in the 1930s to provide access to the paranoid’s personal imagination to the non-paranoid: My whole ambition in the pictorial domain is to materialise the images of concrete irrationality with the most imperialistic furor of precision, so that the world of imagination and

Scenarios and the Scenario Method

14 Salvador Dalí, ‘The conquest of the irrational’. In Finkelstein, Haim N. (ed.), The Collected Writings of Salvador Dalí (Cambridge, U.K.; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998 [1935]), 262–272, 265.

15 Salvador Dalí, ‘The stinking ass’. In Charles Harrison, Paul Wood (ed.), Art in Theory, 1900–2000: an Anthology of Changing Ideas (Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub., 2003), 486–489, 487.

16 Richard Rorty. ‘Pragmatism and romanticism’. In Philosophy as Cultural Politics. Philosophical Papers (Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 105–119, 105.

17 Herman Kahn, ‘A paradigm for the 1965–1975 strategic debate’. In Sharon Gamari-Tabrizi (ed.), The Worlds of Herman Kahn (Cambridge, MA. and London: Harvard University Press, 2005 [1963]), 147.

concrete irrationality may be of the same objective clearness, of the same consistency, of the same durability, of the same persuasive, cognoscitive and communicable thickness as that of the external world of phenomenal reality.14 The search for ‘concrete irrationality’ was a quest for a plausible image and the construction of a firm reasoning to sustain an irrational thought. The resulting, realistic expression of the subconscious had new, revolutionary, but also destructive powers, as Salvador Dalí conceded: paranoiac activity always employs material admitting of control and recognition. [...] Paranoia uses the external world in order to assert its dominating idea and has the disturbing characteristic of making others accept this idea’s reality.15 The subordination of the external to the internal world should allow new readings and understandings of reality. According to philosopher Richard Rorty, this was essentially a romantic approach: At the heart of romanticism is the thesis of the priority of imagination over reason – the claim that reason can only follow paths that the imagination has broken.16 The paranoid-critical method was a tool for this path-breaking between imagination and reason, and an attempt to consolidate them in a single act of exploring fears and obsessions by giving them a rational and real form. The romantic priority of imagination over reason was also necessary for the scenarios of Herman Kahn, who stated that To be fully aware of the shape of reality it is necessary to glance beyond its boundaries on all sides.17 Beyond those boundaries, scenarios conceive different, plausible interpretations of the past, the present, or the future: a seductive, essentially romantic way of constructing new worlds. At their best, the new insights gained through scenarios can help us to not only learn about ourselves and the way we see the world, but they can inspire us to take action. To evaluate and judge scenarios, it is helpful to keep in mind that they are always the mirror of a specific time, reflecting the fears and desires of their creators. The scenarios of Herman Kahn about a possible nuclear war not only show paranoid-critical thinking and the culture of fear governing his time, but also the problems that can result from this approach. His overrating of weak signals and constructing of a threat are best illustrated by a central item of incorrect information underlying Herman Kahn’s scenarios. In 1960, the United States Air Force feared the massive superiority of

06 ‘«SÉSAME», or the Study System for the Development Scheme of France, is not an institution: it is a network of groups that rely on one another to further the exploration of the future and utilise it for decisions about the long-term. For those interested in geography and regional development, 5 groups (circles), who are in contact with French and foreign specialists and their opinions (the semi-circle depicted here is the one of the international center of reflections on the future at Arc-et-Senans, France), work together to research the social prospective. Other ‘grounded’ groups (in the blue waves of the drawing) prepare long-term inter-ministerial programs in specific fields which are submitted to the public powers; in return, their experience will be useful for the first groups that work on a 3-year program.’

06 DATAR, Système d‘Études du Schéma d‘Amenagement S É S A M E, 1968 (Revue 2000)

Scenarios and the Scenario Method

75 DATAR distinguished between two basic types: the ‘tendencial’ or ‘trend scenario’ within the ‘cone of development’ or ‘cone of the plausible’ would sketch the expected and usually undesirable future development, whereas ‘contrast scenarios’, also located within the ‘ﬁeld of possibilities’, showed desirable futures and included the necessary policy measures to attain them. ‘Extremist’ scenarios would test the limits of this ﬁeld by exaggeration and the exploration of the ‘seeds for contrast scenarios’ without having any ‘prospective value’ themselves. Durand, ‘Scénarios d’aménagement du territoire. Essais méthodologiques’, 3, 32ff. 76 Ibid., ‘OTAM (Omnium Technique d’Aménagement) was an agency of SEMA (Société d’Etudes et de Mathématiques Appliquées) founded by Jacques Lesourne which developed numerous tools used in the prospective’. Prosophia, ‘Note de Synthèse: DATAR, Une image de la France en l’an 2000, Scénario de l’inacceptable’, TRP 12, 1971 (2005 [cited 26 July 2009]); available from http://www.diact.gouv.fr/fr_1/evaluation_ prospective_48/prospective_235/ memoire_prospective_237/ancienne_ collection_trp_639/une_image_1248. html, 1. 77 ‘France with 100 million inhabitants’ sketched two images for an explosive demographic development, either catastrophic in an industrial or paradisiac in a post-industrial society. ‘Littoral France’ imagined a population shift towards the coastal regions due to a mixture of economic and cultural reasons. ‘Agriculture without soil’ pondered on the spatial, economic and cultural consequences of a break-through of food-generating technology that would no longer rely on soil. Despite contemporary critiques on the study, the term ‘Littoralisation’ has today become standard in French geography. 78 Durand, introduction to ‘Scénarios d’aménagement du territoire. Essais méthodologiques’. 79 Ibid. Introduction. 80 Ibid., 3. 81 Ibid., 5f . 82 Ibid., 8.

scenarios were built up in a formalised manner.75 The first use of scenarios was commissioned by DATAR and elaborated on by the Omnium Technique d’Aménagement (OTAM) between 1968 and 1969, eventually published as ‘Scenarios of Physical Planning, Methodological Essays’ in 1971.76 It contained three scenarios: ‘France with 100 million inhabitants’, ‘Littoral France’, and ‘Agriculture without Soil’.77 The commission was meant to geographically sketch out the possibilities and examine the implications contained in the initial hypothesis by using logical analysis to determine the major relationships between the various phenomena.78 These ‘three frescos of France’ should ‘force the imagination and stimulate the methodological reflection’, and, above all, define the new methodology of scenarios despite its imprecisions.79, 09 The authors classified ‘agriculture without soil’ as a contrast scenario, sketching a possible desirable future development, which was similar to a tendencial scenario, which was a trend scenario that would usually show an expected but undesirable development. The other two were regarded as extremist scenarios, testing the limits of the ‘field of possibilities’ by exaggeration.80 Three different groups had developed the scenarios, and the report criticised each for their ‘latent subjectivity’, their superficiality, and even for the mere elaboration of an already defined primary hypothesis.81 The resulting recommendation was a guide for building scenarios in the future. Along these lines, the entire scenario was based on an initial hypothesis that would define the elements of investigation, such as demographic change. Subsequently, the ‘primary matter’ for the scenario would be derived from an analysis of history, present, and future; the latter, for example, with the Delphi method. The next step would be to equally apply: – the reasoning by coherence, which we will call from now on ‘synchronic’ analysis, that is, analysis relying on the functional mechanisms of a phenomenon at a given moment, – the dynamic preview of development or ‘diachronic’ analysis, that is, analysis relying on the process of evolution of a phenomenon over a period of time.82 For the synchronic analysis, the implication of such a hypothesis would have to be constructed, using imagination and dialectic reasoning. The synchronic analysis would identify four aspects of a situation that defined any given development: invariant, heavy, or other tendencies along their measure of inertia;

234

235

Critical Netherlands

The most eye-catching feature of the plan for the ‘Critical’ Netherlands by landscape architects Riek Bakker, Hans van Beek, and Wim Hartman was the hexagonal pattern used to structure most parts of the country.75 It seemed to be a sort of extended block map of the ‘Second Report’, distributing the functions over the land with high precision and narrowly defined housing densities. The ‘Critical’ scenario was based on conflicting principles: the 77 ‘Critical’ society put high value on metropolitan concentration and living, and on environmental protection; but the over-importance of selffulfilment of the ‘Critical’ individual also sharply encouraged suburbanisation. The northeastern wing of the Randstad featured continuous urbanisation from Utrecht to Amsterdam. In the south, a metropolis from Den Haag to Dordrecht had emerged. Both were divided by an ecologic reserve featuring significant water and swamp areas as well as an undefined ‘magical centre’, for which Alphen a/d Rijn had been flattened. Renewed water areas were a prominent feature of the plan. The Markerwaard remained unbuilt, and the northeast polder was now surrounded by side lakes connected to the IJsselmeer. The dam at Enkhuizen had disappeared. Large new sandy islands had appeared off Seeland, which remained largely uninhabited, as did many of the low-lying parts of the country. Outside the Randstad, 20 highly specialised and politically autonomous regions showed clustered developments around existing cities, but also much suburbanisation. The transport network was evenly distributed on a national, regional, and local scale. The regional design showed the most peculiar feature of ‘Critical’ Netherlands: the city ‘Fiveglo’ between Groningen and Delfzijl.76 The design integrated all other detail projects for agriculture, water management, energy, housing, and public infrastructure. The result was a plan for an ideal city in the long tradition of architecture, showing a harmonious living situation that integrated all human functions and nature in a totally designed environment. Hans van der Cammen commented about the national plan: ‘a building of goodwill, erected on the painful lessons of the past’.56 City components included an ingenious new water system that allowed recolonisation of the dehydrated former moor areas, a legacy of a 19th century ecological disaster.

The overall grid was rigid, but on the lower scale of the individual urban building block, a radical liberty was possible both in design and in program. Mobile housing systems, underground ‘NeoCaveman’ dwellings, natural reserves and various living environments catered to everyone’s speciﬁc style. Some irony remained in the design for the so-called ‘Decision Centre’ by the architects Jan Benthem and Mels Crouwel.77 At public transport nodes, large squares were sheltered by huge glass roofs to form a sort of modern agora for the ‘Critical’ society where communal meetings took place and experimental forms of housing or agriculture could be tested. The futuristic design recalled Buckminster Fuller’s domes, if they were combined with the monospace of Frank van Klingeren’s Meerpaal in Dronten and designed in the high-tech architectural style of modern airports. It remained just as contradictory in its function to house mass-meetings for a highly individualised society. And just as in traditional designs of ideal cities, the social relations and the daily routines of the inhabitants were deﬁned by strict rules.

The Critical [scenario] is designed for a society that changed radically in three ways: energy systems are based on sunlight, wind, and biomass; working hours are reduced to three days per week; and all urban regions are connected to the European network of high speed transport. The combination of less work and better connections extends the job market to Hamburg, Berlin, Frankfurt, Brussels, Paris and London. The western part of the country is transformed into an ecological balance area. The former Green Heart is changed into a huge water-realm and cities and wetlands are integrated into one ecological system. Elsewhere also large areas are transformed into wetlands and nature reserves. Agriculture for the international market is concentrated in the clay areas in the north, middle and southwest. Frieling, Dirk. ‘Design in strategy.’ In Ways to Study and Research Urban, Architectural, and Technical Design, edited by Taeke Marten de Jong, 491–500. Delft: DUP Science, 2002.

56 Van der Cammen, ‘De ontwerpen voor Nederland’, 104.

75 76

Foundation The Netherlands Now As Design, H. E. Bakker, W. Hartman, G. Nassuth, E. Overdiep, P. van Beek, New Netherlands 2050, 1987: Critical Netherlands Foundation The Netherlands Now As Design, C. Schöne, S. Bakker-Wennink, New Netherlands 2050, 1987: Fiveglo City

(Critical Netherlands) Foundation The Netherlands Now As Design, Jan Benthem, Mels Crouwel, New Netherlands 2050, 1987: Decision Center ‘The Hills’ (Critical Netherlands)

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56 Van der Cammen, ‘De ontwerpen voor Nederland’, 104.

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(Critical Netherlands) Foundation The Netherlands Now As Design, Jan Benthem, Mels Crouwel, New Netherlands 2050, 1987: Decision Center ‘The Hills’ (Critical Netherlands)

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If ‘Fiveglo’ city could be regarded as an ideal city concept, the entire ‘Relaxed’ scenario was truly utopian science fiction. Taeke de Jong was not required in his commission to use the WRR or the ‘Interfutures’ studies and chose not 79 to, perhaps explaining the heavy spatial impact of the ‘Relaxed’ society’s governing principles. Conflicts between market forces and social emancipation had been overcome by ingenious planning, supported by abundant cheap energy 80 from nuclear fusion, wind, and sun, and all sorts of other technological progress. Spatial development followed a perfect decentralised concentration, and all valuable natural areas were protected and restored. Individual traffic had been largely replaced by automated, high-speed public transport systems for goods, information, energy, and people, which connected the country and 81 made it an international transport hub for Europe. The national plan by Henk de Boer and Alle Hosper was characterised by these infrastructure lines and extensive facilities for combined complexes of energy generation, industrial, agricultural, and aquacultural production.78 In the plan, these facilities were depicted as heavy black circles and stripes in the North Sea and covered large parts of the southern and western country. The Rhine had been restored for recreational purposes, as it was no longer needed for shipping. All goods were now transported via magnetic trains and other high-tech systems. The Randstad, Brabant’s cities and southern Limburg had become cosmopolitan metropolises with high densities. Former underperforming industrial, harbour, and agricultural sites had made way for new developments in urbanisation, recreation, or nature. Even though the Randstad was featured as a single metropolis due to its fast public transport, it had not become a single conurbation. The cities remained strictly separated from each other by nature reserves and recreational areas. Elsewhere, Rotterdam had more than doubled its size on the former harbour areas on both sides of the Maas, while Amsterdam remained strangely confined to its 1987 size. The Markerwaard had been built, albeit much smaller than in the other scenarios. The resurrection of the water landscapes was more drastic than in other scenarios. The national plan suggested at first sight an archipelago of islands and peninsulas, strongly exaggerating the

topography. While in the ﬁrst versions, the ‘Careful’ scenario showed the delta situation most explicitly, it was the ‘Relaxed’ scenario that emphasised this understanding of the Dutch situation in the ﬁnal version.79 The social relations and values of such a society remained obscure. The detailed designs featured mostly technological dreamscapes, such as for Rotterdam’s port area, detailed plans for massive-scale aquaculture; and a housing and science project for Delft.80 However, two projects seemed at odds with this brave new world. Seemingly as a counterweight to the extremely rational social and economic system, Francine Houben and Erick van Egeraat drew evocative images of a highly romantic seaside landscape in Seeland under the name of ‘Zeezoo Badzoo’; while Carel Weeber’s gigantic love-hotel ‘Eropolis’ was a biting criticism of the scenario narrative.81

The Relaxed [scenario] combines all technological and political breakthroughs one can think of. The essence of this [scenario] is that all these breakthroughs put together will not lead to ongoing urban dispersal but just the other way round, to a new period of urban concentration. [...] The central technological breakthrough will be the availability of cheap energy by nuclear fusion and by harvesting sunlight, for which 2000 SqKM are allocated. Energy not being a problem anymore, the speed of transport can be multiplied. The political breakthrough [...] is that the technology of communication will be the driving force to break through old world political boundaries. This will have geo-political influence and change the traditional political decision process into interactive policy development. Frieling, Dirk. ‘Design in strategy.’ In Ways to Study and Research Urban, Architectural, and Technical Design, edited by Taeke Marten de Jong, 491–500. Delft: DUP Science, 2002.

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Foundation The Netherlands Now As Design, H. R. de Boer, A. G. Hosper, New Netherlands 2050, 1987: Relaxed Netherlands Foundation The Netherlands Now As Design, H. R. de Boer, A. G. Hosper, New Netherlands 2050, 1987: Relaxed Netherlands (second version) Foundation The Netherlands Now As Design, Henk de Boer, Alle Hosper, New Netherlands 2050, 1987: The Coastal Strip from Katwijk to Domburg

(Relaxed Netherlands) Foundation The Netherlands Now As Design, Francine Houben, Erick van Egeraat, New Netherlands 2050, 1987: A Bathing Landscape/Seazoo Bathzoo (Relaxed Netherlands)

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(Relaxed Netherlands) Foundation The Netherlands Now As Design, Francine Houben, Erick van Egeraat, New Netherlands 2050, 1987: A Bathing Landscape/Seazoo Bathzoo (Relaxed Netherlands)