Slow Urbanism: 'Organical Urbanism' in Almere

Almere is a 'new town' built in 1975 on new polder land where before 1932 was the sea. It started out as a compact city where a lot of commuters lived on 30 train minutes of Amsterdam. Later it developed more suburban with nowadays a lot of (semi)detached and row housing estates. The suburbs are car orientated resulting in a grid lock on the highway to Amsterdam every day. Previously whole estates where developed within 5-10 years with uniformity in architecture and urban styles per developement. Now the developers are not able to build en masse because of lack of finance and demand on this scale a turning point in urban development is reached. Previous plans to build around 60.000 houses till 2030 are being abandoned.

previous plan shows in light red the expansion plans of Almere and needed public transport

Recently, 1 februari, the municipality presented a organical urban design development strategy (organische stedenbouw) and the task to apply it for a specific area called Europakwartier or Europe quarter. The Alderman Adri Duivesteijn is the driving force for these new urban developments. He is known when being Alderman in The Hague to have changed the city renewal projects drastical. Five years ago he introduced on a big scale  the private-house-building method in Almere to offer choice besides the big project developments.

in yellow the future Europe Quarter in Almere

The Homerus Quarter is allready developing more or less organically

Bijschrift toevoegen

The municipality asked Willem Jan Neutelings en Jacqueline Tellinga to make an urban design for Europa Kwartier following the organical development strategy. Targetgroups are families and (groups of) people who want to build their own house. Previously this whole area would be developed by two projectdevelopers who would determine and think for the hundreds of end users whats suited for them. A total urban and architectural design would be presented as a blueprint for the end result how it would be. Now the idea is that the end result is unknown and the urban design should be very robust to handle all kind of infill developments while providing and keeping it's qualitative function.

Amsterdam in the early days, the canals are still under development

The canals of Amsterdam are a good 16th century example of robustity Adri Duivesteijn stated. Previously Neutelings and Riedijk showed somthing similair to the organical growth for the competition of Almere Hout. I am eagerly awaiting the masterplan for the urban design of Europa kwartier!

development strategy of Neutelings and Riedijk for Almere Hout competition