WiMBY!
The
International Building Exhibition Rotterdam - Hoogvliet
Introduction
The International Building
Exhibition Rotterdam . Hoogvliet,
which carries as a brandname and a slogan . WiMBY!
Welcome into My Backyard!. is a project for the restructuring of the Rotterdam Satellite
town of Hoogvliet. It is sponsored by a consortium of the central
city of Rotterdam, the borough of Hoogvliet, The Dutch Ministry of Planning and
Housing and two large housing corporations turned private real estate developers
is in itself a recognition of the totally different conditions for planning and
building outside of classic urban centrality. The WiMBY! project runs
parallel to the mega-project for the new Highspeed trainstation in the center
of Rotterdam and the real estate explosion this entails. The WiMBY! approach
practiced in Hoogvliet and Will Alsop. s approach of the central
station could not be more different. Alsop. s train station project is
Magnificently . Centralist. on a scale not seen in Europe since Rem
Koolhaas. s Euralille. It conceptualizes the city as a dot, a node in global
network and then proceeds to pump up this node with a maximum of complex and
monumental architectural substance. It provides not only a new . skyline,. a
new logo for Rotterdam but also a gigantic concentration of square meters and
thereby an economical machine which churns out urban identity and metropolitan
money and services. Mostly, this project strengthens and confirms the classic
position of the town planning department, the powerful hand of the government
and the magician-like authority of the architect.
WiMBY! by contrast consists of a small group of people overseeing
a constantly expanding and contracting cluster of projects in and around the
satellite town of Hoogvliet. Due to its inbetween location in the
industrial-urban region of Rotterdam, the satellite town of Hoogvliet not only
typifies many of the problems and challenges seen in the area as a whole, it is
also emblematic of situations found in similar areas around the globe. The town
itself is an example and a product of the relentlessly optimist planning that
halted so suddenly in the late 1960s. The abrupt stoppage of the pre-68 project
is immediately recognizable in Hoogvliet, where the masterplan was completed
for only three quarters of the town. The remaining unplanned portions of the
town were filled up with small-scaled pseudo-village tissue. It is as if the
sudden loss of faith that marks the industrial region or Rotterdam is repeated
on a small scale within Hoogvliet itself. WiMBY is a set of discrete projects,
each of which seeks to use various formats to inject new ideas into the
amorphous complexity of the urban region around Rotterdam. Instead of building
one thing, or trying to work towards one master plan, coalitions have been
formed between parties that usually would not communicate thereby creating new
hybrid clients for new sorts of urban program/project realizations. WiMBY does
not converge towards a built object, but endlessly diverts and diverges.
Currently parallel tracks are being developed: a corporation is being formed
that can take responsibility for the huge, infrastructure-saturated strip of
land between Hoogvliet and the Petrochemical plats of Shell; and, an extremely
light sociological scan is being taken of the human diversity hidden behind the
modernist facades of the satellite town so that it can be projected into the
public space. In between these two extremes of heavy-duty technocracy and
sensitive, anthropological artistry lies a cluster of interventions in diverse
fields: education, industrial estates, recreation, ecology, public space,
popular culture, reuse of apartment buildings, temporary architecture,
infrastructure, regional planning and of course innovative architecture and
urban design. By refusing an institutional role, the WiMBY! team is
free from the constraints of professional agendas; by refusing direct
realization power, the team can form coalitions, thereby laying the groundwork
for projects, curate the design and/or
trigger the realization process and then leave. The aim is not defined
by a master plan, but by a deliberately idealist slogan that speaks about
professional, bureaucratic and social curiosity. Welcome into My Backyard!
The
satellite town Hoogvliet
Hoogvliet is a satellite town to the southwest of Rotterdam, at the
confluence of the Old and New Maas rivers. It is bounded to the north by the
A15 motorway, with the Vondelingenplaat petrochemical industrial area on the
other side, and the future route of the southern extension to the A4 to the
east. Nine neighborhoods were built around the town center starting in 1951,
following a 1949 plan that envisaged a satellite town for 60,000 residents.
About 37,500 people live there now, in over 17,000 housing units, of which 77%
were built prior to 1968. Twenty percent of the housing is privately owned.
Fifty-three percent of the housing consists of multi-family houses, that is to
say, walk-up apartment buildings, and 75% falls into the low-rent category.
Hoogvliet was once a 17th-century dike village on the left bank of the Maas river,
part of a whole network of villages on the island of IJsselmonde. The construction
of the harbors from the end of the 19th century meant that these villages
were cut off one by one from their rural environment by the laying of
railways and digging of dock basins. They were absorbed by the urbanization of
the harbor delta centered on the Nieuwe Waterweg (new waterway). This
happened in turn to Katendrecht, Charlois, Pernis and Hoogvliet, and
later to IJsselmonde, Spijkenisse and Rozenburg. The designation of Hoogvliet
as a satellite town was a direct result of the lightning growth of the port
westward and the intensification of petrochemical industry activities on the
Vondelingenplaat. Planners based their projections of scale and urban planning structure
for the Netherlands. first satellite town on the New Towns that were
then being built around London under the 1946 New Towns Act. The intense speed
at which the port was growing and the resulting housing demand would dominate
the development of Hoogvliet. The first neighborhood, Nieuw Engeland (New
England), was built even before the plan. s major points were approved.
A row of walk-up flats fanned out towards the Shell refinery, across a
wide park and the port railway. The neighborhoods followed one another in quick
succession, transforming the old dike village into a modernistic town center
with high-rise flats encircling a pedestrian shopping center. The Groene Kruisweg
(Greencross Road), which had served as the main traffic artery between IJsselmonde
and Voorne-Putten since the 1930s, was to disappear, along with the last
remnants of the dike village. Only the 17th-century village church was allocated
a place in the new town center. This was to become a very large diamond-shaped
site encircled by a ring road. Roads radiating from this ring road
would link it to an outer ring, with the neighborhoods to be built in between
these spokes, each with its own neighborhood center and elementary school.
The modernistic architecture and urban plans were designed by H.C. Milius,
Huig Maaskant and Herman Bakker, and the former . Bauhausler. Lotte
Stam-Beese..
Despite the extreme speed of planning and building, changing circumstances and
perceptions outpaced the realization of the Netherlands. first satellite
town. In 1966, the village of Spijkenisse on the opposite bank of the
Old Maas was identified as a growth area, which diminished the status of Hoogvliet as
a regional amenities center. For no explicable reason, the construction of
the metro toward the end of the 1960s took no account of the satellite town.
s urban planning structure. The two stations were placed not in the
center, but to the south. In addition, the sentiment about monotonous, high-density
buildings changed at the beginning of the 1970s, and it came to be considered
as undesirable and unacceptable as large-scale infrastructure and industry.
The combination of these perceptions ensured that . the Hoogvliet
project. ground to a halt. It was decided that the as yet unbuilt neighborhoods
of Hoogvliet, as well as the rest of its unfinished center, would be filled
with low-density housing, which would complement the village setting of Poortugaal
and the suburban setting of Spijkenisse. In line with this, it was decided not
to dismantle the last remnants of the dike village and the Groene Kruisweg but
to integrate them into a green oasis, thereby shattering the rigid hierarchy of
the satellite town as originally planned. Consequently only three quarters of
the town was built according to the strict system of design that had been
intended for Hoogvliet. This created a town with two faces, urban as well as
suburban, geared as much toward the port as toward the villages of the polder.
The 1970s and . 80s also brought the oil
crisis and automation, leading to fewer and fewer job openings in the port and
the petrochemical industry. Infrastructure and industrial pollution grew, as
did environmental regulation. The closing of Shell Curaçao led to the immigration of
large numbers of Antillians to the Netherlands, and the general multiculturalization of
Rotterdam took off. This combination of external factors made
the partition of Hoogvliet into urban and suburban sectors a painful social
reality. People on a low-income, in receipt of social benefits, or of
foreign origin, moved into the northern neighborhoods in increasing numbers, and
the . average. Dutch polarized increasingly towards the south wards. In
the north people lived in walk-up flats . once built for Shell workers . near
small shopping centers, which could not survive the steady fall in income levels
and were shuttered up. This led to crime, poverty and degeneration. In the
south the life of an automobile suburb perfected itself, and residents could
take advantage not only of the Hoogvliet shopping center but also of rapid
metro connections to Rotterdam and Spijkenisse as well. In the north, people
live in the shadow of the stench, noise and danger of the petrochemical industry
and the infrastructure bundle surrounding it, while the south. s
residents has so far escaped the barrier effect and nuisance from the
construction of the extension to the A4 motorway. What was once planned as a
modern, green town around a regional center, where people could cycle across a
park to their jobs in the port, has become an example of the excesses of
progressive thinking during the post-war reconstruction.
Furthermore the very laws that
are supposed to protect urban dwellers crippled the town. Pollution control
legislation made large-scale intervention impossible, precisely in the
neighborhoods that needed such intervention in order to survive.
Hoogvliet-Noord falls within planological zones where housing construction is,
in principle, prohibited, resulting in an embargo on any increase in the number
of housing units and public facilities.
During the 1990s, the
privatization of housing associations became the dominant external factor in
Hoogvliet. The Hoogvliet housing associations decided to tailor the housing
supply to market forces and were supported by the city council, which saw the
building of pricier housing as an opportunity to increase the average income
levels of residents in the northern neighborhoods and rebuild facilities. The
result is a restructuring project that is in full swing anno 2000, involving
the demolition and construction of 4,000 new housing units. Without
intervention in the urban planning framework, the housing statistics will see
drastic changes over coming years: the percentage of multi-family housing will
be not 53% but 45%; the proportion of low-rent housing will total not 75% but
55%; instead of 80% rental units there will be 60%. Housing statistics,
however, do not tell the full story of the nature of urban life in the
satellite town, now or in the future. The problems and opportunities for
Hoogvliet come into sharper focus when we add in other factors. In 1996 in
Hoogvliet there were 3 darts centers, 1 taxi stand, 12 pedestrian crossings
with stoplights, 1,262 traffic signs, 2 metro stations, 2 fountains, 1 public
toilet, 33 telephone boxes, 12,139 trees and not a single disco for 37,500
residents. Since then, a lone metro station has been added.
WiMBY!
. A new urban planning ethic for the twenty-first century
Hoogvliet is part of the extended family of twentieth-century Garden
Cities, and this means that its problems parallel those of its distant
relatives, even of those yet to be born. During the coming decades, the
population of California will increase from 37 million to 50 million. New
Urbanism seems to be the only viable option to counter the urban sprawl that
already plagues large parts of the landscape. But how will the fact that most
of the new Californians will be immigrants from Mexico, Asia and South America
be dealt with? And the fact that these people have low levels of education,
which their offspring will eventually surpass? That they are highly mobile and
not easily distributed according to the classical neighborhood hierarchy?
Finally, how will these towns be incorporated in a region criss-crossed by
large-scale infrastructure, nature reserves, military industries and endless
suburbs? The question is whether urban development based on a predetermined and
self-referential model remains a valid option for the twenty-first century.
The same questions arise in Britain,
where the need for 1.4 million new housing units over the next few decades
will probably be met by building a new generation of New Towns. Here too
we are dealing with a future urban population which can no longer be circumscribed
within fixed hierarchies, is increasingly multicultural, and is evolving
in so far unpredictable directions. An additional complication in Britain
is that the government will not allow new towns to make use of virgin areas,
but allows instead the use of so-called . brownfield. sites: abandoned
airfields, former industrial zones, the outskirts of urban areas, and
infrastructural margins. What will remain of the traditional New Town model now
that the Howardian dream of keeping the countryside far away from the economic
pressures of the city is no longer an option? How should one design when the
existing idiosyncrasies of a location renders any preconceived spatial model
irrelevant from the outset? The most burning issue will soon no longer be where
to locate the primary school in relation to the neighborhood, but rather the
affordable decontamination of polluted ground or the combination of the
construction of a railway line with archaeological digs.
The future of Hoogvliet is less a function of its formal planning than of
the fact that the surrounding industry and infrastructure continues to evolve
and expand. The landscape, moreover, is being filled out with residential
areas and industrial zones and Hoogvliet. s residents are becoming
increasingly mobile within ever more extensive and finely meshed networks. The
challenges for Hoogvliet can be split down into a number of problem areas. The
social problems include poverty, aging populations, and the formation of
ghettos and isolation. There is a planological problem of zones subject to
pollution control measures and noise contours, and there is a city marketing
problem because of its relatively poor reputation in the light of popular VINEX
developments. A political problem lies in a chain of administrative levels: the
local council versus the city council versus provincial government versus
national government. And lastly, the lack of demand for good amenities is an
economic problem. A fundamental conclusion is that the adapted model in its
current form is no longer suitable for the real situation. The overbearing
presence of industry and infrastructure adjacent to Hoogvliet has become a big
problem because of its increasing scale and the decreasing social and judicial
acceptability. The direct economic relationship between an industrial area and
the families in the neighboring (satellite) town is defunct because of
globalization, automation, mobility and so on. The way in which the urban
planners subdivide the town into neighborhood, community, street and family is
no longer representative of the way that the people use the town. Nor are the
consistency and hierarchy within the urban plan representative for a government
that is no longer directly engaged in the provision of public housing, but
watches from the sidelines and facilitates.
Urban planning in the twenty-first century will be fundamentally different
to that of the twentieth century, because a fresh start on virgin terrain
will never be an option again. Every urban planning project will be dominated
by the interaction with existing infrastructures, communities, urban fabrics,
organizational and governmental structures, cultural-historic factors, environmental
and ecological regulations. Urban planning in the twenty-first century
will always be like tinkering around with a turning engine. The challenge
for the IBE Rotterdam-Hoogvliet and for urban planning in the twenty-first
century is not the development of a new urban model that satisfies the
requirements of the urbanite of the twenty-first century, as the model of Ebenezer
Howard did for the urban dweller of the twentieth century. The challenge
is rather to practice urban planning without a prescriptive model of the
qualities and quantities that a good town should satisfy, in order to always
make the best of a given set of circumstances. In future the quality of new
towns will depend on how planners seize the physical, infrastructural, economic
and cultural opportunities that are already present and mould them together
into something new. From this outlook on urban planning, Hoogvliet is the
eye of the storm of urban development on the scale of the whole Rijnmond region.
The construction of residential areas to the south of Rotterdam in IJsselmonde,
Voorne-Putten and the Hoekse Waard turns Hoogvliet into a center of
an urban region instead of a town on the periphery. The unavoidable construction
of the southern extension to the A4 motorway, the widening of the A15
to twice its current size, and the presence of the new metro line, the Betuwe
rail-freight line and the docklands railway line, will turn it into a multimodal
intersection. The many youngsters from ethnic backgrounds and the way
in which they swarm around schools, discos, sports fields and music studios makes
the town a spawning ground for activity. The variation in housing types compared
with the VINEX developments gives the town . content. in a market that
is increasingly dominated by niches. Its situation close to the largest
concentration of old economy in the Netherlands, the port of Rotterdam, gives
it the opportunity to be a gateway to the new economy. The poor image of
Hoogvliet today will be the springboard for an exemplary and heroic
reincarnation (be the ashes from which the phoenix will rise).
If the IBE Rotterdam-Hoogvliet wants to be an example for urban planning
projects in the twenty-first century it can not limit itself to a value-less
pragmatism. In order to build on the model provided by its predecessors in the
last century, the IBE must also formulate an idealistic concept of
collectivity, urbanism and urban planning and link it with an equally ambitious
and assertive slogan: WiMBY! (Welcome into My Backyard!).
One of the biggest barriers to a contemporary urbanism is the NIMBY (Not In
My Backyard) phenomenon. It stands for the personal fear of the urbanite for the
implications of collectivity, as much as for everything that is unusual and new
that comes too close. It also refers to the fear and unwillingness of large institutions,
companies, professional communities and government to integrate their
knowledge bases and agendas in communal projects. WiMBY! (Welcome into My Backyard!)
represents a new design and organizational culture in which complexity is
deliberately confronted in order to discover and apply innovative and pioneering
possibilities. It also marks the application of an urban ethic in which
the changes that overcome the urban dweller are seen as potential sources of
enrichment for the individual. s life within the collective city. The town is
then no longer judged by the extent to which it fulfils our preconceived
desires, expectations or norms, but by the opportunities it presents for
renewal and integration arising from unlikely juxtapositions and conjunctions
of urban and other programs. Urban planning today must not be based on new
beginnings on virgin territory based on a pure and appropriate model, as in the
twentieth century, but on the local reorganization of the tangle of networks
and settlements with which we have already circled the planet.
Michelle Provoost & Wouter Vanstiphout/ WiMBY!
International Building Exhibition Rotterdam-Hoogvliet
