Recently at the digital forum for urbanists Ruimtevolk an article was written by Jurgen Hoogendoorn (municipality Amsterdam) en Herman Swen (municipality Zaanstad) about the topic. Summary and translation of the article 'Slow Urbanism as answer to the crisis' (' Langzame Stedenbouw als antwoord op de crisis'):
The crisis pushed major blueprint detailed planning accompanied with beautiful impressions to the past.
Existing business models have collapsed, both demand and supply remains off. This raw reality begins to penetrate into the professional world. The question is what now?
Lenny Vulperhorst held in late 2009 at the Amsterdam School of Real Estate a lecture entitled "Blindman or co-producer”. The next decade will be used to make the construction and real estate industry self sufficient in creating enough workload for itself. And not to dependent on credit for financing it’s projects, but on it’s consumers and users. Forming co-productions and alliances will be the key. The customer must take center stage, and be involved in the process (slow development). The challenge for governments is not designing new projects, but the channeling, guiding and encouraging the urban development. But this provides no ready-made solutions.
The development area of Zaan-IJ-area provides some interesting ways forward for a possible answer.
Spontanoues unpredicted development or until now not targeted usergroups are re-discovered or become accepted nowadays. In the Netherlands there are movements with a long tradition acting against the prevailing doctrines. Was not the squatters' movement that began with the cracking of houses (obstructing city forming and projects) and then ‘developing’ increasingly larger buildings (warehouses along the IJ, the NDSM wharf site)
Slow UrbanismSpontanoues unpredicted development or until now not targeted usergroups are re-discovered or become accepted nowadays. In the Netherlands there are movements with a long tradition acting against the prevailing doctrines. Was not the squatters' movement that began with the cracking of houses (obstructing city forming and projects) and then ‘developing’ increasingly larger buildings (warehouses along the IJ, the NDSM wharf site)
The Zaan-IJ-area extends from Zaan in northern Zaanstad to IJburg in Amsterdam The harbour area is an attractive place to live and work, something that increasingly goes hand in hand. Many (creative) companies like Vanilia, MTV, VNU, IDTV, Jumbo (games) have settled in or near industrial heritage. Urban design projections may speak of space for more than forty thousand homes and twenty thousand new jobs in the coming decades. Challenge for the municipality is how to facilitate the transformation regarding strict environmental laws
How the development of the Zaan-IJ-area continues unpacking is not clear. There is no final stage and no (end-) planning. But that's no problem when there is open source urbanism and regional development. Open source in area development means (more) alternative approaches to the previous complex projects. Input from users (residents), experts and companies are taking from the start. This is critical for the planning, operation and management. Essential is that the development in fact is already taking place, before it started. Municipality and developers are in a facilitating position, guiding and only designing the main (easy) phasable (infra-)structure. And therefore the Slow Urbanism development will be never finished or complete. For the Dutch this is a new approach and is developed by ‘learning by doing’ in the Zaan-IJ-area.
Buro Breidablik
The article got a lot more (positive) reactions than other articles showing the urgence and agreement on Slow Urbanism. Reactions range from political party members asking how to apply it in their city to government advisors pointing out a recent government resolution on stimulation private house commissions and organical development instead of big area projects with a few developers. Reactions point also out that slow urbanism and open source development are still a bit vague terms. Some question if this strategy has a spatial component and can boast against the strict environmental laws preventing common housing but also experimental housing needed to make former industrial areas into mixed urban quarters. I hope to show that slow urbanism has spatial component in my graduation project Slow Urbanism
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| Slow urbanism is nothing new |
this is the same as the struggle for new energie
ReplyDeleteall new things its hard to bring, finally everyone understand it and then we have a change.
good things always will come, you can't stop it. someone who knows.