Reflection

Key Project 1

Overall, the master plan provided good guidance for working with the key area. Our main goal of flood resilience continued to be one of the main goals in developing the project. The area was not clearly defined in the master plan, which opened up a lot of possibilities, but also provided a little too much freedom.

However, the analysis that was conducted helped to better understand the area and its opportunities and made it easier to be able to define the area.

Throughout the process, minor changes were made to the density and land use of the area. The northeast connections defined in the master plan will need to be further reviewed based on more information about future developments. Key Project 2

The masterplan gave a clear vision what is most important for this area: human-scale and water-sensitvity which was a very helpful guideline on a rather undefined keyproject location. In general was the analysis done for the whole masterplan area very important for a good understanding of the plot and its challenges. The masterplan did not give a clear answer how the keyproject area should be handled except from it being part of the green area. This gave lots of freedom to experiment within the boundaries of the vision. There were still some unsolved connections in the masterplan which lead to some minor adjustments of the motorized streets to be able to cross the highway. The park network also needed some changes now that the place was filled with program, but this does not disrupt the big picture and is still in line with the vision.

Flood District Not a local place

Key Project 3

The masterplan was of great help throughout the key project process. Already knowing the goals of the area, investigation of different theories and methods for design could start straight away. This provided more time to see how the problems of the area could be solved, rather than finding out the problems first. In the masterplan we already had decided on some specific elements that were fixed. It also had suggestions of how certain problems could be solved. Having some elements already decided also helped with the problem-solving process. What could be criticized about the masterplan visions is the vison of human scale. It is a vague expression that could be interpreted in many ways. If you as city planner give such vague instructions, you might end up with a result far from what you imagined. That can be a good thing! But for this specific expression some clarification would probably have been useful. The water resilience goal is better. It opens up for many different design solutions, but the practical benefits would still be the same.

Directing streets Key Project 4

As a whole the masterplan gave very clear guidelines for what the key project should consist of. But in order to make it function, adjustments to the road network, exact placement of the ecological corridor and which functions should be housed directly next to it needed to be changed.

In order to ensure that the infrastructural network functions correctly already at the masterplan level, more time would likely be needed to be spent at this stage. This gave me an understanding of the importance of making the correct decisions at the masterplan level and the complexity of working on that scale, because the decisions made there has a large impact on what follows.

Bridging the gap