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Engineering Society 2

Content
Editorial Arjen Oosterman
3 Principles of Great Stories Dick de Lange
6 User City in a Voter World Christian Ernsten
and Joost Janmaat
Our society seems to be
locked into a position in 10
Society
Seeing Like a Society Interview with James C. Scott
14 Operation Murambatsvina Desmond Kwame
which the user’s and voter’s 22 Engineering Trust Jan Willem Duyvendak
26 TheSpace of Experience Bill Thompson
choices determine how 30 Epistemological Attack! Eyal Weizman
32 Amateur as Pioneer Christian Bunyan
we shall live in the future. 34 Disperse and Rule Justus Uitermark
38 The Mighty Model Gaby Heindl and Drehli Robnik
A disturbing collective 44 Manifesto Christian Ernsten and Joost Janmaat
46 Media Labs and Open Societies Andrew Bullen
urban life in a giant Big 52 Designing Society: Peer 2 Peer Michel Bauwens
56 Utopian History of Architecture
Brother House looms, a
City
material and social world 68 Up-TempoUrbanism Interview with Reinier de Graaf
74 Packaging Utopian Sustainability Matt Lewis
in which sensationalistic 78 Chinese Dreams Neville Mars
84 Manifesto or City Interview with Pier Vittorio Aureli
media and its commercial 90 Free Urbanism Jeroen Heester
96 Slums and Slabs Steven Wassenaar
translation dominate. 108 1 in 23 Urban Think Tank
116 A Retroactive Lens on the Bijlmermeer
Our sense of what is real Wouter Vanstiphout
122 Smart Governance Erik Gerritsen and
and what is quality is on Jeroen de Lange

the verge of collapse. The Gaming


126 Game, Set, Citizen Arjen Oosterman
practice and education 128 How Sim City Changed the Game of Planning
Edwin Gardner
of the engineers of this 130 A New Arena for Collective Activisme Jeremy Hight

society is determined by Dossier


136 Social Engineering in the Amsterdam Metropolis
short-term effect instead Office for Social Engineering
154 From the Volume Archive
of long-term social respon- 160 Colophon

sibility. Culture becomes


little more than a market,
politics its façade and
the city its stage. Instead
of reviving old school high
modernist social engi-
neering or claiming the
need for an intellectual
junta, we solicit new forms
of social engineering.
Where shall this lead?
Editorial

Our society seems to be locked into a


position in which the user’s and voter’s
choices determine how we shall live in the
future. A disturbing collective urban life in a
giant Big Brother House looms, a material
and social world in which sensationalistic
media and its commercial translation
dominate. Our sense of what is real and
what is quality is on the verge of collapse.
The practice and education of the
engineers of this society is determined by
short-term effect instead of long-term
social responsibility. Culture becomes little
more than a market, politics its façade and
the city its stage. Instead of reviving old
school high modernist social engineering
or claiming the need for an intellectual
junta, we solicit new forms of social
engineering. Where shall this lead? school
high modernist social engineering or
Volume 16

claiming the need for an intellectual junta. 2


Principles of Great Stories
by Saatchi & Saatchi’s Dick de Lange
Nova Heliópolis IV by Dionisio González, 2007
180 x 400 cm.

Volume 16

4
5
Volume 16
SER
The User City in a Voter Society
Christian Ernsten and Joost Janmaat
What will be the sphere of activity for the next
generation of social engineers? What will their
society look like? And what instruments will
they have at their disposal?
This scenario is about a world decided by
the voter and made by the user. It is a scenario
for a society in the immediate future, but it
is not a forced vision. Not everything is new,
new, new. It loosely combines insights and
practices from the past, the present and the
foreseeable future. It is sometimes uncom-
fortably improbable, sometimes toe-curlingly
outmoded. With contradictions and incon-
sistencies: a future as messy as the present. It
is selective and random; instead of suggesting
a total image implying a single possible end
result, we take bits and pieces which you as
an individual maker can think about and work
with. Somewhere between a processing
perspective and a reality check. It is a self-
image in which the current situation is elevated
Volume 16

to a system.
We introduce the user city. 6
It is a city in which our perception of the city does not other, but a goal unto itself. Users continually form
exceed the scale of our home and our relations with new peer-to-peer professional groups.
loved ones. It is a city in which in order to give form to A profession is thus not a given, but a form
society our ambitions have atrophied to our direct of behavior. It is not the title, but the act that stands
physical and emotional environment. It is a city which central and is dependent of good health and good
no longer counts as a display of power, civilization presentation. In the user society innovation in the per-
and ideology. It is a city in which the environment in manent development of various professions determines

ITY
which we live is a direct expression of our physical what has priority and how that will be organized. For
desires and the scope of our thinking is small. All of the user, profession is an important form of making
this happens within the perspective of a thoroughly sense of life and largely determines his/her possibilities
democratic society boasting a high level of prosperity, to shape family and environment.
a society in which power is less important because
everyone’s needs are satisfied at a adequate level. The 3. Residences
voter decides, the user is the maker. And thus society Each user makes an icon of its own home. Chiefly
offers something for everyone, an authentic experience door posts, balconies and rooftops are frequently
with corresponding qualities and challenges. used for this purpose. A house’s design is inspired
Welcome to the user city in the voter society by practical necessities and by individual experiences,
memories and desires.
1. The user Simultaneously, there is an enormous urge to
The user city will be inhabited by articulated people. live in a neighborhood with one’s peers, in a peerhood
Some will be educated, others less so. Some will be or peer place. From above, it is possible to recognize
poor, others less poor. Traditional political parties will an urban development cluster pattern in both officially
come to grief in the commotion politics of opinion ordered and the do-it-yourself, illegally built outskirts.
polls and provocations, but the political landscape Users are influenced in construction forms and use
will remain recognizable. The biggest group, consisting by their peers who live in the same user environment.
of poor and rich users, will vote social-democratic, Clusters vary quickly in quality and character.
will feel itself to be liberal and raise their children with Each ‘move’ is a re-evaluation of one’s social status.
religiously inspired values. What will bind all these Users choose not only a cluster, they collectively
users together is working hard and living ambitiously. create it. Stores, pubs and restaurants often establish
Rich and poor alike will live in self-made or self- themselves at the invitation of residents in a cluster.
renovated homes. The entire city will be a slum; the
entire city will be gentrified. 4. Amusement
When a citizen knows his rights and duties, the In both physical as well as in virtual space the user
user sees the world as hindrances and opportunities. plays with others based upon shared interests or
The user sees the city as a highly makeable place, fascination. Just as with other forms of self-writing,
one in which they can give form to all their needs and namely work, politics and making sense of life, the
desires simply by doing. Money is a barrier and the user is capricious. A contributing cause of this is the
law too, but both can be superseded. What remains amusement industry which continuously introduces
as the only essential limitation is one’s own fantasy. new trends in recreation. The user city will be char-
The dividing lines in the city are not formed by acterized and dominated by commercially conducted
income, power or ethnicity, but by use. They are not amusement locales. Consumerism, however, will no
determined by status, responsibility or prerogative, longer be driven by necessity – I need, I want – but
but acts themselves generate value and meaning. by fun: I would love to.
The moment of use is essential. It is there that added
value is created. This is how groups of innovative 5. The voter
users, but also small groups of consumers, re-users The voter is the sixteen years plus user. Politics
and parasitic users arise. They set themselves against is motivated by provocation via opinion polls.
the mainstream and elect, sell and consume without The results of a poll in the morning proliferate over
creating. Their consummation knows no value, no the web and by the afternoon are restated as a
importance and makes no sense. Consumers search parliamentary issue.
for their framework outside of use. To consume is for The voter has no influence, control or power,
them an expression of something greater, something but is the instigator of continual change. Lobbies no
essential: they consume out of principle. longer seek to influence the government, but the voter.
The most important ideology is multiform populism;
2. Professions it is a populism without mass, a populism of provo-
Work is the first publicly recognizable qualification cation because nobody represents anyone more than
of the user. Users have no steady job or profession, themselves.
although they do have a reasonably constant income. Yet the small-scale and local character of the
Careers are determined by continuous technological political debate means that everyone feels as if they
innovation, the rise and fall of markets and global labor have input and political influence. A political system
migration. Jobs both well and poorly paid are all that does not act on mass protest and petitions, but
Volume 16

flexible. It is thus not the job, but the profession by to citizens, opinions and scandals. A government
which the user is profiled. This can also be multifaceted. based on business, commotion and entertainment.
Users continuously create their own work, their own The voter is central; s/he no longer searches for
job, and rediscover their professional qualities anew. lasting influence, which s/he never had, but for instant
7 Social mobility is not a consequence of one or the gratification and satisfaction.
The voter is concerned with spatial order, trade but also media and conflict. Among voters making
rights, public services and safety. The debate on what sense of life can result in a feeling of social responsi-
is civil in the economic, cultural and political sectors is bility for society as a whole as well as a desire for
most fashionable, however. The voter usually chooses change. Yet it can also lead to safety or a lack thereof
to punish the consumer and free the way for the as well as optimism or pessimism. Use adapts to this.
optimization of his/her part of the user city. Organizing changes in the user city is not difficult;
in fact everyone is doing it constantly. Yet how does
6. Media the voter develop a vision of intentional changes
The printed newspaper still has a magic quality among within the voter society? How does he or she reassess
users and voters. Filling it up, however, is farmed intention, legitimacy, goal and sustainability? In a
out to paid contributors. The press is a vanity press, society without central controls, ideology or morals
the writers write about themselves. The media is the users and voters stumble their way forward.
former public. This group has a great influence on
the formation of opinion. See you later in the user city of the voter society.
The proliferation of new and newer media ensures
a hyperinteractivity. Topicality and discussions about
it, not to mention reflection upon it, no longer permits
itself to be guided. Media is an endless variety of
unmoderated, fanning out discussions. The sort and
the quantity of friends the user has determine how
informed he/she is. Instead of quality media, we have
quality publics; in place of pulp media we have pulp

Photo Neville Mars/DCF


publics. No public is anointed from without, but each
generates its own information, news and stories; each
reacts directly to the others. Suspense determines
credibility; boredom makes news untrue. Makeability
within the voter society is largely determined by the
most successful story. Media within the voter society
is communication aimed at success, temptation and
romance.

7. Conflict
The enormous speed in transactions and communica-
tion has quickly given rise to misunderstandings and
incomprehension. The voter society is complicated
and everyone tries to interpret and define. Users collide
with other users, but also with voters and shoppers.
Emotional conflicts top the list.
Many small conflicts will be handled via a digital
court. Based upon conflict resolution and 300 years
of jurisprudence, neighborhood quarrels and labor
disputes will be resolved via online, interactive, binding
mediation sessions
Justice within a single user group can mean
injustice within another. The majority of conflicts on
this subject are solved by webmasters, diplomats,
salesmen and brokers. Sometimes this does not work
and this generates feelings of insecurity among users
and voters. That leads to changes in personal use,
living and work, ultimately culminating in moral mobility.

8. Making sense of life


The user would say: I am the world, the city is my
cosmos. I act, therefore I am. Making sense is the
user’s and voter’s most important activity. He/She
views the calibration of the use and necessity of life
as an essential part of a successful life, psychological
health and inspiration for daily activities. Making sense
generally goes together with the determination of
moral positions. Morality leads to social collisions
and to new ideas of child raising and education.
Moral limits are not formed intellectually, but
are the direct derivations of the behavior of buyers,
voters and users. An especially flexible and variable
interpretation is one in which not only living accom-
modations, entertainment, work and voting play a role,
Showcase apartment for stacked villas
in Beijing’s suburbia
IGH
Seeing Like a Society
Interview with James C. Scott by Erik Gerritsen
Scott is one of the most profound critics of
high-modernist human development planning.
He believes that the process of state-building,
leading to what he calls the legibility and
standardization of society, fosters control and
domination rather than enlightenment and
freedom. Scott started his academic career
studying small village communities in the
forests of Malaysia. When he left the rain forest
he took with him a number of vital observations
on how nation states organize their society.
His monumental book, Seeing Like A State
(1998)1, became the basis for a fundamental
and elaborate critique of how governmental
planning for the advancement of society
can go utterly wrong: compulsory villages in
Tanzania, scientific forestry in Prussia,
high-modernist Brasilia, industrial agricultural
planning in the USSR and its modern day
variant the Millennium Development Goals.
According to Scott, these are all examples
Volume 16

of rational-utopian blueprint thinking that


proved fatal. 10
OD
Erik Gerritsen How did you reach the conclusion to UN-standards. The wonderfully accurate word they
that society cannot be engineered? use for this development is harmonization.
James C. Scott During my research in South East Asia It is all a magnificent piece of propaganda.
I was confronted with the dramatic failures of develop- Of course it means making sure that the institutions
ment projects. I found that successful rural commu- match one another and comply. What’s interesting
nities were all but destroyed in the wake of well- to me is that these institutions are the peculiar, odd,
intended development aid and I tried to understand vernacular institutions of North Atlantic capitalism
the deeper causes of these failures. It occurred to me around the turn of the century. They are now traveling
that in order to have ambitious plans for a society, to back to the Third World as a universal standard, being
change it and intervene in any way at all, the state had imposed by these large multinational institutions.
to create a certain kind of society that could then be The logic of their projects is that a businessman from,
manipulated. It had to create citizens with identities. let’s say, the Netherlands, can get off of a plane in
It had to create citizens with names that could be Assuncion or Kinshasa and find a perfectly familiar
recorded, with matching addresses, put down in world of institutions and structures. They are familiar
cadastral surveys. I found myself mesmerized by the because they are the institutions from the world which
fact that part of the struggle of state-making in early this businessman came from in the first place. We
modern Europe was to create a legible society that must never forget that these are vernacular institutions
could be understood before it was possible to inter- which represent themselves as universal, but they
vene. And it also occurred to me that in the process carry all the cultural baggage of their particular history.
of making society legible it changed it radically. They These tendencies may point to an irreversible
way early-modern states changed the society they path towards the global village, very much along the
governed is very much comparable to the way the lines I described in my book. Luckily, reality is more
World Bank is changing the Third World nowadays. complex. For example, a World Bank program of rural
The example I give in the book is that of scientific development ends up being colonized by the counter-
forestry. This was a form of transforming the forest planning of thousands local farmers who find that the
so it would produce a single product, neglecting scheme doesn’t quite serve their needs. They start
everything else about the forest. It ended up creating deforming it and twist the grand scheme to suit them.
a forest that violated the natural processes of forest Although there’s no way they can resist this condi-
regeneration. It was an abject failure, but not before tionality, the actual projects in the Third World often
becoming the world standard of scientific forestry. have very little resemblance to their original design.
I was intrigued by that insight and tried to apply it to The sad part is that most of the deviation is a conse-
the well-intended planning fiasco of Brasilia and com- quence of a particular government’s effort to increase
pulsory villagization in Tanzania in which seven million its own power and project it into the countryside.
people were moved into villages that didn’t work. Another relevant development in this respect
Finally, I looked into the industrialization and collecti- is the enormous increase in financial capital and the
vization policies of Soviet agriculture. volume and pace of communication. These techniques
I worked out a critique of what I call high- make a kind of detailed control possible that was not
modernist planning. That is, the nineteenth century possible earlier. But it also makes collective failures
ideology grounded in the believe that a scientific- both instantaneous and widespread; we have just
technical trained elite could take responsibility for the witnessed how the American sub-prime mortgage crisis
social planning. The high-modernists claimed to know was instantaneously ramified throughout the world.
how parents should bathe their children, how they It seems that the speed and volume of things which
prepare their food and the design of their houses. The can spin out of control is just as fast as the speed with
hubris of the high-modernist led them to believe in which they are the subject of new forms of control.
unitary and singular answers to all social problems EG From the state to the world to the city. What is
and that solutions to them could be either imposed on your take on big city engineering and the extent
the public or a public could be persuaded that these to which planners and people can actually bring
schemes were in their own interest. change to the city?
EG Since you published Seeing Like a State JCS It happens that I teach in a city, New Haven,
in 1998, the world seems to have profoundly Connecticut, which has the highest per capita govern-
changed. Making society ‘legible’ through ment grants for urban renewal in the entire United
standardization has now been implemented on States. It implemented those plans to the point that
a global scale. Are we witnessing the building they actually destroyed the city. In twenty years of
of another, higher level of state? A world state? urban planning they’ve moved people two and three
JCS In a way. The World Bank tries to control devel- times. New Haven is almost a test case of urban
opment processes in the Third World and by doing government planning gone bad. There was a saying in
so is fundamentally changing those societies. This is Victorian times ‘three moves equal a death’. Once you
comparable to what we saw in early modern Europe. pick people up from a neighborhood where they have
The World Trade Organization, the IMF and the World roots and friends and routines, even if it’s not the best
Bank try to implant the institutions of North Atlantic neighborhood in the world, such a move comes at
liberal capitalism and liberal democracy throughout great social costs. If you move people several times,
Volume 16

the rest of the world. Just look at the massive emphasis some react by not putting down roots at all because
on the development of central banks, the creation of it’s too painful to pull them up again.
private property, the protection of intellectual property, Jane Jacobs wrote a brilliant book on this subject
the repatriation of profits, and also what I call ‘cadas- in 1961, The Death and Life of Great American Cities.
11 terization’ and the collection of statistics according She tried to work out the principles of a successful
community: not a community created by urban If you’re interested in successful social enginee-
planners, but a community that over time had created ring, I guess you want to take this approach seriously.
a successful neighborhood that was safe, prosperous If you’re in charge of urban services for the poor and
and in which people wanted to stay. Jacobs intro- homeless of a city, you ought to do something like this.
duced the concept ‘un-slumming’. Rather than ‘slum Live on the street for a few weeks. And have everyone
clearance’ the way high-modernist would just bull- who works at your department do it as well.
doze an area and rebuild it from the ground up, she EG You research, you write…and you farm sheep.
saw the ‘un-slumming’ capacity of neighborhoods. What do they teach you?
She argued that if people were permitted to stay in an JCS Sheep are used as a metaphor for mindlessness
area where they wanted to stay and made sure there and obedience. We talk about people being sheep if
was a stable job environment and credits to improve they do what they’re told, behave in crowds and don’t
their homes, this neighborhood would ‘un-slum’ itself. have any individuality. But anyone who has ever seen
Unfortunately, most communities don’t have the time a wild sheep in action knows they are unbelievably
for slow regeneration. individualistic by nature. We’ve been breeding sheep
No city planner has ever created a successful for 8000 years and selecting for docility. Now, having
neighborhood. Ever. The best a city planner can hope accomplished that, we have the nerve to insult sheep
for is to identify the workings of successful neighbor- for becoming what we turned them into! We get the
hoods and to preserve them, rather than destroy sheep we deserve!
them by getting in their way.
EG Your critique on the engineering of society has
been judged as a plea for the free market. Yet you 1 James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State. How Certain Schemes
are a self-acclaimed anarchist. Could you explain? to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. New Haven
JCS Some consider Seeing Like a State a right-wing (Yale University Press), 1998.
book because I had an occasional good word to
say about people like Friedrich Hayek and Michael
Oakeshott. My answer to that charge is that I’d like to
write a book about the ways in which large capitalist
firms rely on standardization in exactly the same way
as do nation states. Take a look at McDonalds and
their tools of management and control. The only dif-
ference with a nation state is that they have to make
the standardization pay in terms of profit.
On the other hand, there are people who would
like to pin me down on anarchism. I’m the kind of
anarchist who is very impressed with the anarchist
point about mutuality without hierarchy, about the
accomplishments of very complex collective coordi-
nation over time without any state involvement. Take
for example the creation of agricultural terraces all
around South-East Asia. Personally, I live by what I once
described to students as ‘Scott’s law of anarchist
callisthenics’. The idea is that at some point in your
life you’re going to be called upon to break a big
law and everything will depend on it. In order to be
ready for that moment, you have to stay in shape. So
I dedicate myself to breaking a law every day or two.
EG You are currently researching why the state
has always been hostile towards non-sedentary
people. To what extent can this be seen as a
new chapter in research into the limits of social
engineering?
JCS States seem to be completely unequipped to deal
with people who’ve chosen alternative lives. Whether
the people in question were Berbers, Bedouins,
gypsies or homeless, they interfered with the oldest
state project sedentarization.
I had a student not so long ago who had broken
his leg and decided he would use the time to live as
a homeless person in Albuquerque, New Mexico. For
two weeks he followed an elderly homeless person
who collected things from dumpsters. My student was
Volume 16

greatly impressed with life as an urban hunter-gatherer.


The homeless man was not just a sad alcoholic living
on the streets, but a man with unbelievable survival
skills from whom you can learn a tremendous amount
about the city. 12
Principles of Great Stories Create Momentum
Drive Out the Trash

Photo Desmond Kwame


Desmond Kwame

RIV
Operation Murambatsvina
(Drive Out the Trash) is a
large-scale Zimbabwean
government campaign
to forcibly clear slum
areas across the country.
The campaign started
in 2005 and according
to United Nations
estimates has effected
at least 2.4 million people.
Volume 16

14
RA
Photo Desmond Kwame
Photo Desmond Kwame
Photo Desmond Kwame
Engineering Trust
Jan Willem Duyvendak

EW
The Netherlands changed drastically in
the 1960s. Nowhere else in the western
world did so many people radically
change their lifestyles in such a short
period of time. Participation, control over
neighborhood and body were the words
and slogans with which cultural change
was pursued.1 At the beginning of the
21st century the Netherlands is once again
experiencing a citizen’s revolt, this time in
a new guise for it is fiercer, more divisive
and frustrated with those who are intol-
erant. What does this mean for the role of
government, politicians and bureaucrats,
institutions and professionals?
Duyvendak concludes that we stand now
at a crossroads. Either we encourage
citizens to vote with their feet or we
create conditions such that their voices
Volume 16

can be heard. 22
Retreat will constitute taking action, the Social Demo- stress and uncertainty. The experience above refers
cratic mayor of Amsterdam Job Cohen said in his 2002 to a large city, not a rural village however. To use a
New Year’s speech. The government is preparing to sharp metaphor, for many citizens it is a minefield
return after having been absent. through which it is hard to move. It often goes well,
Pim Fortuyn, who was murdered in May of 2002, but the chance of stepping on an unexpected and
radicalized that feeling by expressively describing the unpredictably laid mine is considerable. An individual
government’s shortcomings as a society which had needs to experience this in the flesh, otherwise they
been ‘abandoned’, a situation he insisted had been feel that it really could happen to them too.
made only worse by the ‘purple mess’ (in the 1990s Citizens live in a world of differences, of unfamiliar
purple was the color used to describe the ruling coa- ways of doing things and what they miss is something
lition of socialists (red) and liberals (blue) which was safe. For a number of reasons citizens have become
generally considered to lack a coherent ideology). Those unknown to each other and appear to have lost their
who were dissatisfied now had someone to blame. power to understand and appreciate each other within
Amsterdam Mayor Job Cohen confirmed this the public domain. That this should happen of its own

RU
himself in a few sentences: ‘Nobody wants to return
to the old illusions of feasibility/malleability, but an
active administration should demand a new form of
city engineering which we must construct together.
City hall must seek out new combinations and forms
of cooperation at the city and district level in educa-
tion, family care, youth assistance and with police
and the administration of justice.’
New combinations? Tougher? More effective?
Aimed more at safety? Another way to deal with
agencies and institutions? Another kind of policy?
City engineering? A different role for citizens? More
interactive? That’s a mouthful and when sprinkled
with words such as ‘new’ and ‘different’ it raises the
suggestion that a fresh wind is blowing.
But who are these citizens really? And do they all
want the same thing? And what is the role of institutions
and professionals? Will the administration be patron-
izing again or will it just rein things in, combat excesses
and do nothing otherwise? And will we continue to
primarily think in terms of marketization or are there
ways to escape that trap?
It is these questions which must be discussed.
The criticism is appreciable, but at the same time
administrators and politicians are clearly wrestling
with the conflicting demands made of them. For the
time being it seems we will have to deal with an admin-
accord is no longer true while the need to understand
one another – give differences in culture and lifestyle
– has in fact increased.
That explains the need for clarity in the form, for
example, of the call for the restoration of traditional
values. By itself this is an extremely vague clue, but
the need must chiefly be understood as a desire to
be protected from the experience of ‘the mine field’.
Politicians and administrators can and should
not ignore this – relatively collective – experience.
After all, their role is up for discussion. One does not
expect them to steer clear of developments and loose
themselves in the self-created world of paper policy.
No, we expect that their actions penetrate through
to everyday reality. They must make their presence felt
at that level as a kind of ‘bomb disposal squad’. It is
no accident that this is the new political magic spell:
safety, a topic that immediately appeals to the expe-
rienced uncertainty of modern society.

Contact with independent citizens


From time immemorial politics in the Netherlands has
been a form of mediation and pacification (e.g., the
renown Dutch talent for reclaiming land from the sea).
Until deep into the twentieth century the Netherlands
was a divided land, a land composed of social pillars
(socialists, liberals, Protestants and Catholics). It was
istration which wants to act harshly and severely. a land of differences and of potential conflicts between
Simultaneously in recent years opinion in city groups within its population. Politics functioned by
hall has done a complete turnabout in order to be giving representation to these different groups in order
more open to ‘the citizen’. This approach is also used to reach accommodation.
vis-à-vis budgeting power in the form of substantial Times have changed. This pillarized society is
district budgets or even transferring these budget now history; historical classes and social positions
responsibilities to citizens (okay). The question is which have become less identifiable. But on another level,
story the administration will proffer in order to play and in daily life, another comparable division has
their role in society. presented itself. We now have differences between
citizens, cultures and lifestyles. And in this sense the
Big city versus the village old problem of political articulation on one side and
In order to determine what role the administration pacification on the other are once again topical.
should be able and wants to play in various fields, What does this mean now for the subject of this
what ‘feasibility ambitions’ they might be entertaining, essay: what does this mean now for the relationship
we must get a better picture of the crisis described between politics and government on one hand and
above. The first thing that should be revised is the society and citizens on the other?
image of society projected by ‘old’ politics: society We must first establish that politics, and thus the
as a self-regulating machine which does the right government, is regaining importance and presence.
thing under its own power and does so with prudent, It is thus interesting to get a more exact picture of what
cautious policies. That kind of image of society is we might long for in a new government; is will not
Volume 16

rather rustic; it begins with rest. Here and there some be the same as the government of the old days, partic-
extra things must happen in order to avoid rot and ularly pre-1968. To be sure, politics then represented
to combat problems, but all in all it is unproblematic. the differences between the pillars and could pacify
That image no longer squares with everyday them, but any decision made was dictated to society:
23 experience which is increasingly characterized by ‘we’re going to do things this and no other way.’
Modern government does not have to begin also seen experimentation with this type of voice-
that way. The government cannot get around the related control instruments.
emancipated citizen’s independence. The subsequent The public debate must be about whether
question is how they can involve that citizen in the a strategy of ‘even more free market’ is indeed an
process of social design and the provision of public adequate answer to current cultural dissatisfaction.
services. The lesson from the previous decades is After all, exit is primarily a market mechanism and
there. Under the wings of Neoliberalism a new magic is thus dependent upon the availability of choices,
word was formulated: demand-driven government. the presence of competition and of well-functioning
The idea is to crown the citizen as customer, markets. It works if there is a well-functioning market
as consumer, as buyer of public services and, for with many suppliers. But as regards public services
example, fit him out with vouchers, individually tailored exit is often not an effective option simply because
supplementary services, psycho-social services credits there is no market and citizens have less need for
and all the new instruments devised in recent years. individual choice, but do value the idea that their voice
We are not dealing here so much with the will be heard.
question as to the degree these ideas are also used Rather than the further optimalization of exit
practically, but chiefly with the question of the kind options, there must be a new challenge for admin-
of image of citizens (and thus of society) all this gen- istrators in order to think about the modernization
erates. This was largely a radical individualized form of voice options. That challenge is not limited just
of independence. The idea was to give citizens a kind to politicians and bureaucrats, but also involves
of crowbar with which they would be able to use to institution managers, professionals and – no less –
help themselves obtain (bureaucratic) government citizens who want to shape aspects of public life such
services. The customer (i.e., citizen) is king and if one as safety, quality of life, education, health care and
service provider was unaccommodating then, purse environmental policy. A society in which consumers
in hand, he must be able to go to another. have the decisive voice is not the only political view,
That was the idea and over the years a great but it is the easiest and most short sighted.
deal of policy has been dedicated to developing
it in a number of social sectors. Yet, given the results Involvement
of the recent elections one must conclude that this A passing answer to the dissatisfaction culture which
policy perspective of ‘the citizen at the center’ was has manifest in recent years is organizing involvement.
not the answer for dissatisfied citizens. They wanted It is not so much about the gap between government
not only more freedom of choice for themselves, administration on one side and citizens on the other;
but express a collective sign of dissatisfaction with the gulf has grown up between (groups of) citizens:
a failing administration. rich and poor, competing lifestyles, natives and
immigrants. These differences appear to be enormous
Exit and Voice and increasing every day, including their consequent
With this observation the discussion about the feasi- annoyances.
bility of society through politics arrives as a cross- This kind of modern society does without the
roads. The first path is to proceed full speed ahead. power to establish connections and foster oppor-
Organize society like a market; create consumer tunities in which people can raise their voice. These
sovereignty for citizens at so many social levels and must therefore be designed, made, maintained,
given them – individual – the financial means to wrest renewed and replaced. And this must be done not
the best public services possible. The alternate path is merely in the form of a formal participation regulation,
less familiar: view society as full of contradictions and but with continuous care, a goal in and of itself that
conflicts and try to develop a culture in which citizens, flows from a vision of society. This, clearly, cannot be
professionals, institutions and the government can merely the government’s, administrators’ and politi-
hopefully come together to bridge evident differences. cians’ task. It is also the business of social institutions
In this connection, the differentiation made by and professionals. The organization of involvement
the American economist/philosopher Albert Hirschman is in that regard a shared responsibility.
between exit and voice is elucidating. With these Politics has the first and final voice in this process.
words he denotes to two principle different ways The problems and differences (the first voice) articulate
of dealing with citizens in the public sector: move themselves at the level of representative democracy –
on or raise one’s voice. local, but also higher levels. Ultimately that leads to
For example, with individual budgets, organi- decisions (the final voice), but between the two voices
zations are forced to attend to their clients’ wishes there is a period of time in which extra-political voices
for this offers greater opportunities to switch to a are given the chance to be heard. Here citizens, insti-
competitor (exit). This can work otherwise, however. tutions and professionals speak and they also accept
Organizations can let themselves be guided by giving responsibilities.
citizens a voice. This requires not only thinking about Over recent decades an abundance of attempts
things like client advice, but indeed about a broad have been made to fill in this space with methods
and dynamic arsenal of instruments which can vary taken from interactive policy formation, particularly
from gauging satisfaction, citizen visits, interactive at the local level. The idea behind this was to bridge
Volume 16

forms of decision making, supporter consultations, the gap between citizens and the administration.
citizen panels, forums for stake holders and creative In practice it became chiefly a podium where various
ways to be accountable to citizens. In recent years interests and differences between citizens clashed.
thought has not only gone into individual question- Sometimes that led consensus, sometimes it did not
naires; thankfully during this same period we have and then the politicians get the last word.2 24
It makes more sense not to present the further
developments of interactivity as a means to breach the
gap between citizens and the administration, but as
administrative method to construct a podium for citizen
involvement in a divided society (and with regard for
the political ultimate responsibility). It is a contemporary,
modernized form of pacification, a form of establishing
ties in which citizens at odds with one another can
relate and, hopefully, connect.
Between the first and the final political voice it is
the government’s responsibility to organize trust. That
means that institutions must have the space to handle
their own responsibilities. This must be the primary
mission of relations between the government and
subsidized institutions and between the administration
and social organizations. This is, thus, not a relation-
ship premised on the idea that one buys into another’s
achievement (that is the dominant frame of reference
market thinking has given us), but one in which each
gives the other space in order to facilitate dialogue
and contribute their own expertise to a social
accomplishment.
In order to organize a culture of involvement it
is crucial that in the institutional management of social
organizations another way of thinking dominates.
Instead of these institutions being responsible to the
government for their performance, we must turn this
180 degrees around and turn directly to citizens.
If institutions can focus on the people for whom
they work they will also get something in return, namely
loyalty from citizens. That is one of the most unspoken
phenomenons since market thinking took possession
of the public domain. People do not merely want to
choose or shop as autonomous individuals among
professionals; in principle they want rather to connect
with them. There is appreciable loyalty among profes-
sional, public sector service providers, even if they
do not entirely function as they should. Citizens over-
whelmingly tend to not engage in knee-jerk exit
behavior, but indeed want to stay, to discuss and
to make progress.

1 See E. Tonkens, Het zelfontplooiingsregime. De actualiteit van


Dennendal en de jaren zestig. Amsterdam, Bert Bakker, 1999.
2 See F. Hendriks & P. Tops (red.), Stad in spagaat. Institutionele
innovatie in het stadsbestuur. Assen, Van Gorcum, 2000.
Volume 16

25
The Space of Experience

Photo Bill Thompson


Bill Thompson
The terms public domain and
public space are dynamic
concepts, categories that are

PA
constantly constructed anew.
Bill Thompson proposes that
language is key to this. It is
in language that notions like
anarchism and control are
situated; it is with language that
the political notion of self (as a
responsible, acting individual)
starts. For an understanding
of what social engineering
is about one has to delve into
Volume 16

the domain of language. 26


XPE Outside London City Hall police prevent anti-fascist protesters
from blocking BNP’s recently elected Richard Barnbrook from
taking his seat in the London Assembly.

This photograph was taken outside City Hall in London feature of their lives that exists regardless of their
during the mayoral election in London on May 2nd 2008. differences and it is this that is rather difficult since it
Here it is used to represent the imposition of order is not true. The only thing capable of organizing their
over the freedom of individuals – in this case protesting lives is a radical democracy and failing that an oppres-
anarchists – to dissent from that order. It is also used sive order of one kind or another. The oppressive order
to prompt the reader to consider the concept of archi- carries with it the need for violence as does dissent
tecture as discursive rather than as part of a Zeitgeist against an oppressive order. It appears that the real
or Gestalt or culture or hegemony or Diaspora or solution to a lack of true democracy must commence
profession. with the rejection of violence as a means of control fol-
Politically the problem of order has become lowing which violence is rejected as a means of dissent.
extremely difficult. Most people can understand order,
the proposition that order is a possibility, something Radical Democracy
that can exist. However as democracy has evolved, Radical democracy allows individuals to form declar-
most people require the right to equivocation and ative and procedural relationships. In rejecting violence,
ambivalence when it comes to specific relationships. the ability to set up languages would enable individuals
They demand freedom, although not absolute freedom to perform communicative praxis, that is, to resolve
for that would be chaos, but freedom to relate to differences using declarative and procedural behaviors
Volume 16

things about which they themselves value and speak. taking cognizance of surroundings. We can see
They do this because individuals are unique. Each one examples of this all around us across the globe.
has specific needs and desires that differ to some It is necessary to remember that the language
degree from those of others. But they usually feel that used to perform communicative praxis has the effect
27 in spite of these differences there is some organizing of limiting what can be performed. For this reason
performances must include vicarious experiments in Between Order and Chaos
language so that language responds not only to use I suggest that as architects we use our capacity for
but also to experiment. In architectural terms we still listening and speaking to adopt an interpretive position
have too many architects suggesting that architecture between order and chaos, one in which what we inter-
is a language of its own rather than a language of the pret is the language for this or that particular project
people. At the same time we have too many architects unconstrained by blood or soil. With such an inter-
looking for a language of the people in the belief that pretation we may elaborate the concept and negotiate
there is one and only one such language. In fact, there the architectural part of ordering toward the coop-
are many and they all need vicarious experiments to erative performance as the transcendental recognition
keep them relevant to those who use them. of social comfort.
Architects are split into fragments that behave Outside the project it is frankly unlikely that its
as if there were only one specific language and all the sound will travel far. It is likely that speaking done
others are speaking nonsense. It would be better if during the project will be as unique as the individuals
architects believed that there were many languages involved. The linguistic exchange with surroundings,
and that there were many experiments in language. people and the accumulation of things will be limited
Architects could then learn languages and learn to and perhaps incoherent. If there are people involved
experiment in different languages. We could discuss then they may not participate. The value of dissention is
that and interpret architecture in terms of the language of course the ambivalence of the project and a commu-
used and the experiment carried out. It would be good nicative praxis could well result from such interaction.
if we could believe that each language were as good It would be like raindrops on a lake, the surface ripples
as any other at what it is meant to do, which is to allow rising and falling until the surface is smooth again.
individuals to communicate so they can cooperate
and explain and resolve differences that make coop- Not a Mirror
eration impossible or difficult. Any confusion about language and architecture seems
to result from the belief that language mirrors reality.
Truth That belief cannot last. Language is projected into
Truth is a problem if language is used to refer to things reality as an imaginary social experience and equivo-
that are missing from the immediate surroundings in a cated more or less with the images we get from it that
way that is deliberately untrue. Thus we need not only are then subjected to the conceptual and ordered
to eschew violence but also deceit. relationships we have experienced or imagine we have
The reader will now guess that we would have experienced or imagine we may experience.
to review every immoral act in order to arrive at a moral Architects are or should be particularly good
architecture. Even then we would be faced with an at imagining and conceptualizing relationships that
architecture that communicated in several languages become recognizably ordered in one way or another
and often carried out linguistic experiments. while retaining our ability to imagine alternatives both
The reader will also guess that because we are as concepts and as orders. We can or should be able
no longer capable of total conscious control over our to articulate an ordered relationship and elaborate
bodies – or rather we now know that we have never a conceptual relationship.
been in totally conscious control over our bodies – that We can or should be able to treat architecture
we need to be tolerant of eschewing immorality in as discourse rather than as image. Image is submitted
general and the difficulties of language in particular. to the individual for incorporation into all they have
experienced of a place and its social setting. What is
Enduring Truth missing from the image is the discourse that accom-
Ah yes, we must also consider those architects who panies it over time so that the reality producing the
believe that language will never provide a perfect fit image can be equivocated when referring to it. This
for our human needs and desires and that we should is a human problem impossible to avoid.
turn to mathematics. We can no more escape mathe- Good architecture exists between order and
matics than we can language. They both refer to the chaos as a range of relationships the most interesting
real world, but do not mirror the real world. It is as of which is possibly not the normal but the experi-
if there were a universal monetary system. We can mental, the negotiated, the discursive including anyone
measure value using money; that does not mirror what who can speak a language. Yet it appeals to those who
is valued, but the value related to an imagined and a speak the local dialect, which is neither geographic
real object. It is an ephemeral relationship that becomes nor genetic but communicative praxis, the practical
real in certain circumstances, especially unique ones. outcome of an attempt to cooperate adapts to the
The same differences that brought us to the point numbers of people involved.
of requiring a radical democracy will bring us back
to the resistance against an order imposed by force Language
against our dissenting voices whether imposed by Language is a commodity and commodities are
others of our kind or not our kind. languages. We use them to create and know, to com-
The real problem is: how long will it take people municate and to form relationships. Projects cannot be
to realize the importance of non-violence? How long done for people, projects are commodities acting as
Volume 16

will it take people to learn about languages in the language and it is the language that is liked or disliked.
plural? How long will it take people to resist the temp- Bigotry, racism, hubris and planning all speak through
tation provided by some perfect mathematical project their actions to deny language. The body is a field, the
or some massive sum of money? How long will it take world is speech, the accumulation is text, experience
for people to reject the notion of a perfect order? is chaos, action is plan; plan is heterogeneous. 28
The image above shows the commodification
of enforcement and of dissent in the distinct figures
of the police and anarchists. Yet for every anarchist
there are many dissenters living under the protection
of the police and for every police uniform there are
many citizens who desire a sense of total comfort that
no amount of enforcement can possibly supply.
It is ironic that within spitting distance of the place
in which the photo was taken lies ‘the scoop’, a place
of public entertainment. The land upon which it sits
is privately owned. Our only fantasy of public life in
which individuals speak to each other on an equal
basis is one in which speaking is performed by an elite
– whether in the past or in our debating chambers.
It seems that a true social space is unlikely at present
because we do not see ourselves as elite.
We find it necessary to value image rather than
social comfort. In other words we avoid places and
make places unwelcome not by building design but by
designing behavior that includes the design of buildings
as part of an organized complexity. By literally looking
for comfort in the form of a complete environment
we deny ourselves comfort in making surroundings as
we desire. We are not happy talking to each other, for
some demand a correct way of doing so and others
demand so much freedom there is only gibberish.
In the darkness of our own individual imaginations
we may have all sorts of actions and declarations
we wish to perform. In social space these must be
equivocated into a reality that presents the individual
with a reason for coming to or leaving that place. It
is a relationship that is learned from the cradle to the
grave. What each of us does relates us to our own
imagination and that of others but becomes real only
through speech and the accumulation of speech
in the form of language. The architect’s role in that
relationship is the part performed by surroundings,
particularly buildings.
When architects believe that image equates to
individual and social comfort, they deny the space
of experience that is the arrival of new individuals
and a changing understanding of society by society
for society. A guaranteed history of the self = sedi-
mentation = ontological security = value isomorphic
to image = no place for imagination. It disregards the
visceral that plans its explosions and exploits in its
secret place of well-being. It removes imagination
from the streets and begs for social conflict. Design
guides are blueprints for the mass destruction of the
public realm by creating a transcendental epistemic
relationship of individuals to objects. This is a cultural
hegemony of the single vision – the perspective from
the point of view of an authority whose policemen
will be for ever and unquestionably on the right side.
Volume 16

29
Epistemological Attack!
Eyal Weizman
With a little help from

PIS
our friends in the military
that helmet fits us all
architects might be able
to relate to reality in a
more productive way.
Lesson one: How to
use architectural theory
to the benefit of your
operations, or: strategies
and tactics to uncover
Volume 16

the unseen. 30
Shimon Naveh, former director of an Israeli military *

TTA
research institute, claimed that since very little ‘intel-
ligence’ can be produced about guerrilla and terror Although our ethical and political position is clearly
groups before military operations actually take place radically opposed to that of militaries, a methodolo-
(often its is hard if not impossible for the military to gical question could be posed: can contemporary
penetrate these organizations), one of the only ways architectural research learn anything from the military
to gain knowledge regarding its organizational logic is principle of ‘incitatory operations’? We share the
to attack it. The assumption is that attacking the enemy problem of how to analyse the ways by which action
in an unpredictable manner, randomly prodding it, in a situation of radical ambiguity produces knowledge.
induces it to surface, reveal itself and take shape; Could architecture as research provoke or induce new
when its shape becomes visible, it can then be further knowledge – the very subject of research and analysis
attacked with more precision. This mode of action is – to emerge and reveal itself? One may not get very far
what philosopher Brian Massumi recently defined as with research on a particular city or territory by simply
an incitatory operation: militaries consciously contrib- measuring, documenting and analysing it. Rather, pro-
uting to the actual emergence of the threat they are vocative intervention could cause systems to reveal
purportedly there to pre-empt. ‘Since the threat is some of their characteristics.
proliferating in any case, your best option is to help
make it proliferate more. The most effective way to
fight an unspecified threat is to actively contribute The above are excerpts from Eyal Weizman’s book:
to producing it... [causing] the enemy to emerge from Hollow Land, the Architecture of Israeli Occupation,
its state of potential and take actual shape...’1 London (Verso Press), 2007.
When I interviewed him, Naveh put it in these 1 Brian Massumi, Potential Politics and the Primacy
terms: ‘tactical activity provides tools of inquiry for of Preemption (forthcoming).
operational architects…’ Indeed, operating within an
urban environment and with their actions determined
by its transformation soldiers see themselves in terms
similar to those of architects. Yet these actions also
lead to an inversion of the traditional relation of ‘intel-
ligence’ to ‘operation’, or (in architectural terms)
‘research’ to ‘practice’. Naveh: ‘Raids are a tool of
research… they provoke the enemy to reveal its organi-
zation... most relevant intelligence is not gathered
as the basis upon which attacks are conducted, but
attacks become themselves modes of producing know-
ledge about the enemy’s system.’ Within this mode
of operation, practice supports research and not the
other way around. This may explain the fascination of
the military with the spatial and organizational models
and modes of operation advanced by theorists such
as Deleuze and Guattari. Indeed, as far as the military
is concerned, urban warfare is the ultimate postmodern
form of conflict. Belief in a logically structured and
single-track battle-plan is lost in the face of the com-
plexity and ambiguity of urban reality. Civilians become
combatants and combatants civilians. Identity can
be changed as quickly as gender feigned: the transfor-
mation of women into fighting men can occur at the
speed it takes an undercover ‘Arabized’ soldier or a
camouflaged resistance fighter to pull a machine gun
out from under a dress. Naveh: ‘Operative and tactical
commanders depend on one another and learn the
problems through constructing the battle narrative;
action becomes knowledge, and knowledge becomes
action. Without a decisive result possible, the main
benefit of military operation is the very improvement
of the [military] system as a system.’
This insight may tragically explain the seemingly
illogical nature of the ‘war on terror.’ Without clear
direction, clues or intelligence, western militaries
engage in world-wide, random destruction, that while
not actually reducing potential and real terror (actually
Volume 16

consciously increasing it) also contributes to the


rationalizing of otherwise ‘illogical’ resistance (in its
own eyes) and thus being ‘comprehensible.’

31
Amateur as Pioneer
Christian Bunyan
Recently, Erik Kessels of KesselsKramer design
studio created a workshop on amateurism.

OD
His goal was to help participants discover
their inner amateur. Over the course of a week,
professional amateurs from various fields
encouraged students to design, draw and
build products from scratch. The raw materials
for this exercise were drawn from everyday
objects found in the streets and flea markets
of Amsterdam. The result was an exhibition
of creations whose guiding principles were
improvisation and play. While a concern with
practicality was largely absent, some of
the products that emerged were strangely
utilitarian. A clock made out of a record player.
A plant pot built from an old shoe. Tubing
transformed into cutlery holders. These items
appeared fresh, something more than simply
clever art. Perhaps they reflected the amateur
desire to strike out and make something
altogether new, regardless of whether the
Volume 16

result was good or bad. This desire and its


consequences are worth exploring. 32
Even a cursory glance at our culture reveals a wealth nous of non-professionals, striving to preserve the inter-
of inventive design created by amateurs, items and net’s freedom by creating software that can be modi-
technologies that have defined their fields – and occa- fied by anybody with certain basic skills. Without the
sionally created new ones. In other words, amateurs talent and inventive energy of open source, the world-
are pioneers. By working outside a rigid formal develop- wide web could still become a business-led monolith
ment process, the amateur is free to create paradigm that requires your pin code before it’ll do anything.
shifts and new ways of thinking. Finally, the creativity of the amateur is present in
Famous instances of the amateur as pioneer the most famous frontier of all. Amateurism exists even
include the discovery of FM radio and the personal in space, among billion dollar shuttles and government-
computer. The computer spreadsheet was also an funded space programs. The X-Prizes attract million-
amateur creation – the product of two Harvard students aires and entrepreneurs dueling for supremacy in the
who failed to turn a profit because filing for software amateur space race. The original X-Prize was won back
patents wasn’t possible at the time. in 2004 with the creation of the first successfully re-
Perhaps one of the odder stories of pioneering usable amateur spaceship. Since then, it has spawned
amateurism is Day-Glo. Now found on cyclists and a number of related competitions, including a challenge
road workers planet-wide, Day-Glo was originally to land on the moon.
created by an American teenager recuperating from Clearly the X-Prizes blurs the boundary between
an accident. The boy in question, Bob Switzer, discov- amateur and professional. The people and organiza-
ered it while mixing fluorescent minerals and wood tions they attract form a group of super-amateurs –
varnish in his family’s bathtub. A keen magician, he professional in everything but name. It seems that in
incorporated Day-Glo into his illusions, wowing audi- space you can be the founder of a multi-million dollar
ences with its striking effect. Fluorescent paint soon company, but unless you’re affiliated with the govern-
came to the attention of the US army, who applied ment, you’re still technically an amateur.
it to the uniforms of soldiers in order to prevent them The amateur space race seems about as far as
becoming the victims of friendly fire. From there, Day- possible to get from a student turning a record-player
Glo took off, appearing seemingly everywhere. In an into a clock, but perhaps the basic spirit is the same – a
unfortunate twist, Day-Glo is now officially a victim of desire to do things differently, to put inventiveness first.
its own success – motorcycle deaths are increasing It’s this kind of pioneering, sod-it, let’s-try-it impulse that
because their riders’ fluorescent jackets have become can make amateurism so inspiring for professionals.
so widespread as to be rendered almost invisible.
Amateurism and the enforced idleness of illness
played a role in the creation of another, rather less be- The international workshop ‘Amateurism’ of Artist in
nign design icon: the AK47. Creator Mikhail Kalashnikov Residence Erik Kessels was held at the Academy of
was a Red Army tank commander before his name be- Architecture Amsterdam, January 2008.
came synonymous with killing fields the world over. He
submitted his first machinegun design while recovering
from a war wound in hospital and was later hired by the
government to develop his ideas into what would even-
tually become the world’s most popular assault rifle.
Kalashnikov still claims (somewhat bizarrely) that
his weapon was created out of a wish for peace, to
protect the Russian motherland. He blames its prolif-
eration and misuse on bloodthirsty politicians and de-
scribes the AK’s simplicity as ‘beautiful.’ Whatever the
truth, the AK47 could be viewed as an example of the
amateur’s desire to change things gone badly wrong.
T
As an icon of rebellion, the AK47 featured in
another field fuelled by the amateur ethic. Along with
the likes of Bad Brains, the band AK47 is credited with
being a vital, pioneering influence on early punk, per-
haps the ultimate modern incarnation of amateurism.
Punk is amateurism turned angry, viewing any
hint of professionalism as anathema. Its active defiance
of the polished made it a perfect spawning ground for
new bands, artists and designers, infusing their work
with incredible rawness. Punk’s love of the amateur can
be summed up in a quote from the fanzine Sideburns,
which published images of three chords alongside the
caption: ‘This is a chord, this is another, this is a third.
Now form a band.’
The DIY punk ethic persists in the creativity of
Volume 16

amateurs to this day. It can be felt strongly in the pro-


liferation of blogs and in legions of strange, fascinating
amateur websites. The pioneering technology that
makes all this possible is itself driven by talented ama-
33 teurs. Open source culture utilizes the programming
Disperse and Rule
Justus Uitermark
If we look at urban renewal in Amsterdam,

ISP
social engineering is experiencing something
of a revival. Authorities – housing associations
and administrators – are moving people around
as if they were pieces of a puzzle. The goal is
to ‘restructure’ the city so that it better meets
the demands of prospering middle classes and
footloose global elites.1 My interest here is not
with this engineering project itself but rather
with the resistance against it and alternatives
to it. My purpose is to see how attempts to
engineer can be resisted or co-opted by resi-
dents in the context of urban renewal: how do
urban renewal policies come to residents? How
can these policies be made to work for resi-
dents? And under what conditions would it be
possible to transform power relations in such
a way that policies would also be by residents?
Since this is not the first time engineers have
sought to restructure the city, I shall first explore
resident resistance in the past and then
Volume 16

indicate the possibilities and impossibilities


for resident engagement in the present. 34
ULE
Modernism’s Waterloo metro station. Pictures on the wall document the
As a result of a combination of social democratic rule confrontation between riot police and squatters. On
and grass roots radicalism, Amsterdam’s housing stock the concrete floor the government eternalized the
and spatial development have never been determined squatter’s slogan ‘wonen is geen gunst maar een
by market forces. Residents and authorities have recht’ (housing is not a favor but a right) and on the
worked hard to maintain control over the allocation wall there are remnants of those days of resistance,
of scarce urban space. This is not to say that they such as a graffiti: ‘wij blijven hier wonen’ (we will
have always worked together in harmony. In the 1970s continue living here).
and the 1980s the municipal government planned to I do not know how exceptional it is that the
demolish huge parts of the city in an attempt to adjust government memorialized its own defeat, but I do
urban space to the ‘demands of the time’. know that dictatorial regimes might want to take a
Through modernist lenses the city looked like lesson. The modernist planners’ blueprints had turned
a hopelessly dysfunctional, chaotic and ugly mess. everyone in the city into a potential radical, but the
Aging buildings as well as a helter-skelter street plan shift towards a less grandiose form of urban renewal
had to be replaced with straight roads, metro lines effectively turned residents into potential ‘partners’,
and high-rises to allow people, traffic and capital to to use contemporary parlance. For a couple of years
circulate with unprecedented speed. Yet at the same in the beginning of 1980s the slogan of urban renewal
time, a growing number of people identified strongly was to ‘build for the neighborhood’ and residents
with exactly those parts of the city that disgusted the indeed cooperated with the demolition and renewal
engineers. The flow of people moving into the suburbs operations that they had opposed so passionately
in search of a quiet family life did not dry up altogether earlier. By the early 1990s, urban development and
but it also became apparent that a growing number housing were not contentious issues anymore and
of residents wanted an urban life. And, equally impor- this is still the case today.
tant, those urban residents no longer perceived the
government’s wishes as divine law. Criticism and Squatting common sense
imagination democratized rapidly, so the engineers of This is actually quite surprising. The current municipal
the state were not the only ones to envisage an urban government plans to cut social housing by half in just
future; authorities that had earlier appeared as skillful fifteen years. The current general view is that there
executioners of the collective will were now reframed is ‘too much’ social housing, even though waiting lists
as modernist fanatics. have not gotten any shorter. Moreover, urban renewal
Authorities and residents clashed everywhere is once again designed to drive people out of the city
in the city but conflict reached its apotheosis in the center. Every neighborhood that now has a predom-
Nieuwmarkt neighborhood, an inner-city residential inance of social housing will be transformed to make
area that had to be razed to clear the way for a metro space for the middle class. Residents who are currently
line, a four-lane highway and (of course) banks and living in designated areas will largely have to move
offices. Demolition had started in the eastern part elsewhere. The more popular neighborhoods will
of the city, but as the bulldozers approached the heart become altogether inaccessible as the government
of the city resistance became stronger and more plans to create ‘top neighborhoods’ for the cultural
radical, not in the least because of the involvement and economic elites. Once again, social-spatial
of squatters. engineers are viewing the city and its housing stock
Squatting had always been the marginal urban as an anachronism, as something that does not meet
practice of people left without other options, but in the current demands and that needs to be restructured,
1970s squatters gained significance as a movement differentiated and transformed into something alto-
against the demolition of affordable housing and the gether different. Yet there is no sign that these
imposition of modernist fantasies on urban space. ambitions will meet resistance. How is this possible?
Squatters turned empty houses into bastions and were Let us look into the process through one excep-
involved in the creation of a counter-space: a neigh- tion that confirms the rules: the resistance of the
borhood that was hopelessly dysfunctional according resident group Slim Blijven (Stay Smart) against the
to authorities was re-appropriated and reframed as demolition of 93 social housing units in an Amsterdam
our place. It is in the very nature of squatting to achieve neighborhood called Oosterparkbuurt. This case is
revolutionary change through conservation; to prevent by no means representative, but I choose it because
space from being redesigned to maximize profit and of my own involvement and because it involves all the
order. The movement then and now not only fights the major players active in the Nieuwmarkt: the municipality,
occasional police eviction, but also especially resists housing associations, resident groups, squatters,
development and business plans. Squatters have experts and political parties. Yet the balance of power
always been disliked by large parts of the population between these different actors had changed and it
but at this time they became the natural ally of residents is this difference that explains why the Nieuwmarkt
as they responded to the call to ‘save your city, start resistance forced the authorities to reconsider their
with the Nieuwmarkt’. course while the Oosterparkbuurt resistance merely
Today one can see where modernism was halted: constituted another obstacle.
at border of the Nieuwmarkt neighborhood, at Water- The Oosterparkbuurt is located just outside of the
Volume 16

looplein, where the four-lane high way ends. Where city center. Significant concentrations of unemployment
hotels and banks were planned, now there is social and poverty that were evident in the 1990s had largely
housing. The metro line was finished but as an olive disappeared by 2000. The result is that the area is
branch the government celebrated the popular central, pleasant and affordable. Yet the housing asso-
35 resistance against its own plans in the Nieuwmarkt ciation and the neighborhood council saw problems:
‘the Oosterparkbuurt is not a problem neighborhood parties, experts and activists arguing in favor of an
but it is a neighborhood that has problems’. As every- alternative plan designed such that people could stay,
one familiar with policy lingo knows, such a statement one that would accommodate civil society associations
has the character of a magic spell: it basically means and include more affordable housing.
that the entire neighborhood must be reconfigured so After several debates and many lobbying efforts,
that these ‘problems’ can be tackled. Of course the the neighborhood council accepted a motion that
biggest problem from the perspective of the housing demanded that Ymere negotiate with residents about
associations is that the area contains many houses the content of their plan. Ymere refused. At present it
that ‘do not meet the demands of our time’ – another is still unclear whether Ymere will yield to pressure to
magic spell. To complete the magic formula the look into the residents’ alternative plan and investigate
authorities say that ‘doing nothing is not an option’. whether it is feasible. The alderman has indicated to
Thus the residents had to move. When the formal the council that it is impossible to change Ymere’s plan,
decision for demolition had been taken, many tenants but a majority of the council seems to feel that Ymere
in fact had already left the complex and been replaced must consider alternatives.
by temporary tenants and so-called anti-squatters.2 It is important to point out that none of the things
But after 70 per cent of the regular tenants had Ymere did are exceptional. Housing associations
departed, one veteran activist wrote a note to the control most of the planning process and enjoy the
residents stating what nobody had said before, namely full support of government, so residents always have
that demolition was a political decision. A number to fight against a coalition that has a virtual monopoly
of residents suddenly woke up. They had not involved over information. What is exceptional is that this
themselves with the planning process but they now information became available. In other Amsterdam
questioned whether demolition was inevitable. For many areas slated for renewal such as Nieuw West, Noord
of these residents this process of politicization was or the Bijlmermeer, residents are much less likely to
a trip down memory lane – like many Amsterdammers, probe so deeply into the decision-making processes.
including large numbers of politicians, they had a And why would they? The whole process is designed
background as activists or squatters. Some tenants to achieve maximum individual benefit rather than
had been legalized in their current home.3 Once the collective engagement.5 It is precisely the individual-
action gathered steam, political parties, especially the ization of the policy process that allows the authorities
Socialist Party, also took an interest. The residents – housing associations and governments – to inde-
also invited squatters to occupy the apartments that pendently redesign the neighborhood. Apart from
had not (yet) been filled with temporary residents. division of residents into various legal categories, the
The squatters, tenants and some temporary goal of dispersal encourages residents to detach
residents turned one apartment into a little neighbor- themselves from their living environments. In that sense,
hood center that served as a home base of many ‘t Blijvertje is the exception of collective resistance
activities. The center – ‘t Blijvertje (the little stayer) – that confirms the rule of silent departure. This excep-
came to symbolize what was threatened: an environ- tional case also serves to highlight some other
ment that is affordable and diverse with respect to differences between urban renewal then and now.
age, ethnicity and, to some extent, income. A space,
moreover, that is designed with the express purpose A differentiated and differentiating mass operation
to conserve a sometimes disturbing but more often The first and most obvious difference is the scale. Then
stimulating confusion.4 Such preservation efforts are as now, the government and its associates planned
simultaneously moments of creation. Practices of to transform the entire city to maximally exploit its
unsolicited appropriation cultivate intense attachments potential. Now, however, its instruments are subtle
to a place; the space is made ‘ours’ through interaction and differentiated enough to convince, compensate
rituals that may be positive or negative but always or confront possible opponents one by one. The
heighten the emotional engagement with the place Slim Blijven project is part of a plan to renew 373 out
and its people. of Ymere’s 876 housing units in this neighborhood
The process of politicization opened up the black between 2005 and 2010.6 This is a typical plan in that
box of decision-making that usually remains closed. it divides a neighborhood into different projects and
Residents discovered that the municipality had con- deals with them one by one rather than in one massive
ducted a survey to assess whether there was support sweep. Since people usually protest only when their
for the demolition plan although residents had not houses are at stake, this means that resistance against
been aware that this survey was for this purpose. this massive transformation agenda is small-scale
After all, the interviewer had presented them with only and disparate.
one option (demolition) and just asked them what Another difference is that the individualizing
type of housing they would like if they had to relocate. strategy ensures that conflicts of interest between dif-
So the residents felt they had been tricked. As some ferent groups of residents become more pronounced
residents looked closer into the planning process and reinforce cleavages that have been widened by
leading up to the decision to demolish they found all what Wacquant refers to as the decomposition of
sorts of flaws: some (critical) residents had not been working class areas.7 For some residents a relocation
included in the survey; residents who questioned the fee of 5,000 euros and urgency housing reassignment
Volume 16

forced relocation were categorized as having agreed status is sufficiently convincing. They get bigger
with the plan, and so on. It later became apparent that housing at a better location and they can afford the
the physical condition of the buildings was not as bad higher rent. Other groups, as Van der Zwaard shows,
as housing corporation Ymere had reported. These particularly migrant families and (predominantly Dutch)
findings served as political ammunition for political elderly, achieve little in terms of housing quality, often 36
pay more rent and suffer from the disruption of their Expertise: knowledge of the law, policy measures
social ties.7 However these groups are disinclined and architectural design often prove indispensable
to assertive action to wrest concessions. The general for authoritatively making a point and constructive
pattern that Van der Zwaard observed was also evident comments. Architects, lawyers and other professionals
in the Oosterparkbuurt. Some of the people most tend to support their financers and this means that
opposed to the plans complied because they felt they residents are left with little else other than moral out-
could not do anything. Then there is a group of rage when they seek to influence the planning process.
precarious residents who really have no legal rights: Under such conditions it is not surprising that engaged
they have been given this housing because they can residents get a reputation for gratuitous criticism
be moved at will (anti-squatters). rather than constructive engagement.
A third difference is that even well-organized resi- This proposal is, of course, just one little part
dents have less chance to wrest concessions. Housing of a much larger strategy to promote resident engage-
has suffered major budget cuts and privatization. ment. It is addressed to the government, perhaps
Administrators who question the general strategy as a result of a habit in my line of research to always
of using renewal to make way for the middle classes address the state even when one writes about civic
have considerable difficulty working with housing asso- engagement. The proposal is also meant for profes-
ciations. This is what happened in Amsterdam-Oost sionals, residents and academics involved in socio-
when its sub-council alderman Jelle Prins demanded spatial processes; there are good reasons to support
concessions from housing associations to the point residents, especially when you are not paid to do so.
where the latter threatened to cease cooperation with If there is one lesson to be learned from research into
neighborhood council policies. In the past – when social capital and civil society, it is that the authorities
Ymere was still a public association9 – this would have need citizens to prevent them from making plans that
had undermined the housing association’s position only work in their own imagination.11
but now things were reversed; without the housing
associations, Prins could not successfully pursue
urban renewal. His successor, Germaine Princen, 1 Merijn Oudenampsen, ‘Amsterdam – TM’, in: BAVO (ed.)
made improvement of the city’s relationship with the Urban Politics Now. Re-imagining Democracy in the
housing associations the cornerstone of her policy, Neoliberal City. Rotterdam (NAI Publishers), 2007.
which perhaps explains why residents have had 2 The difference between these two groups is that the former
such a difficult time convincing her to look at their pay rent and the latter do not, but they share in common
alternative plan. that they do not enjoy the considerable tenant protection
provided by Dutch law.
Conclusion 3 Legalization was common in the 1980s but not anymore.
Urban renewal is of course a necessity, but it should It basically means that squatters start paying rent and thus
be appropriated to improve residents’ position and become tenants. There are certainly hundreds but probably
to counter rather than exploit social decomposition. thousands legalized squats in Amsterdam.
This would mean that residents gain from investments 4 Edward Soja, ‘The stimulus of a little confusion. A contem-
that are being made in their neighborhoods; these porary comparison of Amsterdam and Los Angeles’, in: M.P.
investments now too often seem more like a threat Smith (ed.) After Modernism. Global Restructuring and the
than a blessing. Changing Boundaries of City Life (Comparative Urban and
Let me make a modest but practical proposal: Community Research, volume 4), 1992.
make social engineering a joint process. I hope it will 5 Joke van der Zwaard, ‘Zwaksten het slechtste af. Herstructu-
resonate with moderate as well as radical supporters rering als survival of the fittest’, TSS. Tijdschrift voor Sociale
of resident engagement. I count governments among Vraagstukken no. 5, 2008, pp. 22-25.
those supporters since they never fail to express 6 The 373 social housing units subject to renewal would be
their commitment to promote civic engagement. The renovated, demolished and/or merged. Some of these would
proposal is to create an institution to support residents be reserved for the elderly, but the large majority would be
who face an urban renewal operation. There are allocated to middle class households who can afford to pay
already institutions charged with this task, but they rent in excess of the limit for social housing (circa 650 euros
are increasingly financed by the very parties that have per month). Of the houses not renewed, 25 per cent would
every interest in promoting the transformation, namely be sold in this five-year period.
housing associations. An independent institution 7 Loïc J. Wacquant, Urban outcasts. A comparative sociology
financed by the central government or the European of advanced marginality. Cambridge (Polity Press) 2007.
Union would be able to partly redress the power 8 See note 4.
imbalances between residents and authorities with 9 All (state funded) housing corporations in the Netherlands
respect to organization and expertise. were privatized in the early 1990s.
Organization: in practice resident groups often 10 See: Justus Uitermark, ‘Temper de transformatiedrift met
include a small selection of the residents. It is not bewonersparticipatie’, Stadscahiers no.1, 2007, pp. 36-42.
a problem that 90 per cent of the residents are not 11 Scott lists the absence of a strong civil society as a contrib-
actively involved in an urban renewal operation, but uting factor to ultimately disastrous policies: James C. Scott,
it is important that the 10 percent who are be respon- Seeing Like a State. How Certain Schemes to Improve the
Volume 16

sive to the diverse interests of others. There is plenty Human Condition Have Failed. New Haven (Yale University
of research to suggest that a joint focus on the living Press), 1998; Putnam shows that disparate citizens are unable
environment can act as a counterweight to such to enforce effective government: Robert D. Putnam, Making
sociological phantoms as multicultural dramas, individ- Democracy Work. Civic traditions in modern Italy. Princeton
37 ualization or privatization.10 NJ (Princeton University Press), 1993.
The Mighty Model:

OC
Mock-Ups in Close-Up
Gabu Heindl, Drehli Robnik
If social engineering is associated
with control, the model is its ultimate
embodiment. The model itself is
subject to control and expression
of the desire to exercise control
in the real world. That is why some
architects do not want to produce
finished models. They view the
model as a testing ground, a catalyst
in the design process; they do not
want it understood or seen as
miniature reality.
With their project ‘Mock-ups in Close-
up’ Gabu Heindl and Drehli Robnik
move in another direction, presenting
the miniature mock-up in movies as
Volume 16

power critique in disguise. 38


Model Collection complex physical models – which seems obsessive
‘Mock-ups in Close-up’ is an ongoing research and and redundant in times of fast digital modeling. This
video project which collects architectural models quasi-power economy of the model is quite nicely
in movies the result being an ever-growing video. addressed in the 2001 Hollywood ‘problem picture’
Running in chronological order from Fritz Lang´s 1927 Life As A House, in which a model builder in a big archi-
‘Metropolis’ through to ‘I Now Pronounce You Chuck tectural office (Kevin Kline) is accused by a younger,
and Larry’ (the last of the films released in 2007), the more flexible co-worker of taking too much time to
currently 103-minute long video shows feature film place grass on a model.
scenes (shots or whole sequences rather than scenes
in the narrower sense) which include architectural Model Extraction

LO
models. Over a period of several years we found
architectural models in 97 different films. We are still
counting and still gladly accepting tips.
[As an aside, we are quite aware of the degree
to which our video can be approached through the
perspective of a critique of the ‘ethical turn’ (Rancière)
in art and politics. In one of our talks given at Store-
front for Art and Architecture after the premiere
screenings of ‘Mock-ups in Close-up’ we suggested
comprehending our video along a critical path leading
toward the irreducibility of history to cozy phenomenol-
ogy, toward a remainder of history. Ethical here refers
to localization and habit, to the parading of cinephile
memorabilia that would testify to a sense of a shared
world in the form of a homely biotope of images;
history is understood here as that which thwarts such
an understanding by disallowing it to totalize itself.]
Our project involves a method of self-restriction
– especially in making the video: ‘Mock-ups in Close-
up’ is a compilation that does not deal with architec-
ture or architects in film, but strictly with analog archi-
tectural models in film. This is one aspect of what we
would call ‘playing dumb’, i.e., our stubborn procedure
of collecting every movie scene with a model in it we
could find and then presenting them chronologically.
We quite consciously refrained from producing some
kind of ‘video essay’ which would offer comments
on the relationship between cinema and architecture.
Also, we did not group the models in any ‘meaningful’
way, not even according to similarities.
What we refrained from was ordering knowledge
Our video extracts models from their place or non-
place (their chance appearance at the edge of the
frame or caught during a camera pan) within the narra-
tives of individual movies. We displaced the filmed
models. Yet models are always themselves already dis-
placements. Any architectural model is a displacement
in space, time and scale; its cinematic imaging is an
intensified display of this displacement and its displace-
ment into our video adds another layer to this process.
Models are displaced from the sites of the
buildings they represent. Thus regardless of how much
of the environment a model may include, it is still the
product of purification, an emptying of context.
Models – in film as in life – are found in architecture
studios or in investment firm offices, in presentation
halls or storage facilities. Our video seeks this displace-
ment-out-of-context by isolating the random moment
of the model’s appearance from its cinematic environ-
ment. But of course our quest to extract the model
from everything around it produces the inverse effect.
Context re-enters through the back door. (Maybe
this is what history is about.) Film as an automated
recording cannot but register what is around the
model – with hierarchies of importance frequently being
undone by our editing (in the extracts it is no longer
possible to tell whether what you see and hear in con-
nection to the model was significant within the structure
of the movie or just audiovisual ‘noise’ necessary to
balance the story and enhance its realism).
So the model finds a new context through
extraction and similarities between extracts. A model
such that the perceptible and the ‘sayable’ would be hardly ever comes all by itself; we do not get to see
integrated meaningfully as to allow the video to ‘say the ‘naked model’ in the video. Many movie models
something about’ models or have its audience ‘see come with their architects or commissioners attached
something’ concerning models. And by subjecting to them in scenes which almost ritually start with a
ourselves to this compiling with as little epistemology door being opened and a model entering the room, as
as possible, we tried to avoid the traps of certain it were, accompanied by its human servo-mechanism,
subjectivities, especially the subjectivity of the expert, the dynamic architect.
the knowing artist, etc. Very often in movies an architectural model
Let us move from knowledge to power. Speaking is used in preparation for a mission of some kind:
of power in the Foucaultian sense of the term (or a military commando raid or a criminal scheme. This
rather, in the sense of Deleuze’s reconfiguration of the connection of model and mission highlights the quality
Foucaultian tripartition of the orders of knowledge, of the model as a display of architecture displaced
power, and subjectivization), one could say that by in time. We know from architectural practice and
playing dumb and compiling architectural models in teaching that models can serve either a prospective
movies chronologically, we remained stubbornly within or retrospective function, can be a tool for the design
the order of power, submitting to an implied force that process to continue or a representation of the result.
propelled us from one year and model to the next. In our movie clips the retrospective function of models
Remaining with Foucault for a moment, if we turn is often linked to investigations, such as clarifying the
from power as a relation of forces subjecting other collapse of a bridge, or, more famously, reconstructing
forces to a neighboring set of practices, namely to the the circumstances of JFK´s assassination. In these
Volume 16

capacity for goal-oriented action upon things, then it cases the model’s role within a power relation seems
can be amusing to see how our ‘power game’ of self- to feed directly into the register of knowledge: it serves
submission resembled physical model building itself. to control a past situation by rendering it visible and
Obsessively collecting every model from every sort subjecting this perceptibility to the possibility of
39 of film can be compared to the building of detailed, making statements.
Hands Over the City
(Le mani sulla città, 1963),
director Francesco Rosi
Volume 16

40
More prominent in architecture as in the movies similar vein, Idi Ami’s grinning, oversized face pops up
is, of course, the prospective temporality of models. next to what at first appeared as a part of a city (and is
This is about having an overview and control over retrospectively recognized as the image of a high-rise
something that will be: a building yet to be built or a model) in The Last King of Scotland, the mise-en-scène
mission yet to be accomplished. This goes for all the arguably toys with associations of King Kong’s mug
Goldfinger-type scenes of someone using a stick next to a modern skyscraper; thus, it is only within
to point out what will happen at what time at a certain the framework of a neo-colonial, racist imaginary that
location displayed in the model. From the 1960s to the film achieves its exposure of ‘rogue state dictators’
the 1980s there were a whole class of stick-users vis- as paradigmatic incarnations of ‘terrorism’ and, at
à-vis the model of a bank to be robbed or a castle to the same time, of the danger of recognizing them too
be raided, of talkative planners who wield their pointing late for what they are within the discourse of post-
tool like a scepter representing their power over what political consensus.
is to happen in a space displayed in front of them.
If the temporal displacement of the model always Model Destruction
involves power – not just a capacity to do something If models are so deeply involved in power relations
to objects, but a relation between forces and agents then, some of our movie extracts insinuate, destroying
in a social field, then this is very clearly highlighted by the model is sometimes the only way to change the
the model’s displacement in scale and by the way the set-up of control. While this is a rather blunt reaction
film images interact with this displacement. To take to the power inherent to the model, we find a more
the scene from the beginning of the 1962 Italian film subtle (once we might have said: subversive) approach
Le mani sulla cittá – Hands Over the City, even if we in two clips from films with and by Jacques Tati: In
do not use the DVD’s subtitle function to translate Playtime Tati shows us that everything might be a mini-
the oligarchic Neapolitan city father for a non-Italian ature model, with a radio in the foreground resembling
speaking audience, the imagery and scale of the the modern architecture in the background; in Play-
scene make evident what the film’s title suggests: the time’s short-feature spin-off Cours du soir (Evening
all-male group of politicians, city planners and investors Classes), the very same towers in the background are
really have a grip upon the city whose miniature they revealed to be actual miniatures in the self-revealing
surround. The model of Naples´ city expansion which final shot of the film.
they want to relocate for reasons of profit is a white Finally, such playing with scale amounts to an
and purified abstraction from the contingencies, outright playing dumb with even more comical effect
unpredictabilities and dirt of everyday urban life. The when the abstraction of the model is refused to be
scene reveals a power relations in an almost sovereign understood. The prospective power of the model is
structure of god-like magnitude, overview and unlimited undermined when Fred Flintstone, in the 1994 big-
freedom to act vis-à-vis the miniaturized city. The screen version of the stone-age family sitcom, suggests
investors are ‘before’ the city in every sense of the to his new boss at the building company that the
word: not immersed in it spatially, not co-present with house he holds in his hands might be too small for
it, but ahead of it with their plans. future inhabitants. Even more of a refusal to under-
Big Men before small houses: men here really stand is the way in which a scene in Zoolander extends
means male protagonists – with one of the few female the taking for 1:1 of a school model into a seemingly
architects in our video compilation, Michelle Pfeiffer in never-ending, awkward dialogue (instead of using
One Fine Day, being shown as an overworked single it as the concluding gag of a comical scene as in the
mother who drops and ruins her model. The Big-Men- Flintstones example). In the process of unfolding a
Small-Houses-structure figures cinematically as evi- ‘taking literal’ of the model which completely ignores
dence of the degree to which power is seen as mon- its abstraction in scale, the commissioner character
strous, unbearable, obscene: Peter Ustinov’s Nero played by Ben Stiller even comes up with a solution:
wallowing in (rather than in front of) his huge panoramic what he sees as ‘a building for ants’ must, he suggests,
model of a new Rome to be built on the ashes of an old ‘be at least three times bigger than this!’.
one, or the Hitler figurations in recent German cinema This might bring us back, although not neatly, to
and TV gazing out of the whiteness of Albert Speer’s an idea which we brought up at the start of this article:
Berlin/Germania model are strong examples here. This the potential usefulness of playing dumb when it comes
structure, however, very quickly reaches the limits of its to questioning or undoing the control aspects of know-
productivity as a critique of (social, economic, political) ledge, power and subjectivization. Along these lines,
power as soon as it crosses the line along which Hands ‘Mock-ups in Close-up’ tries to avoid some of the traps
Over the City had kept suspended with its sober inherent in a hermeneutics of wanting to show and
imaging. Its impetus makes excessive capital power know what is behind the image of the model, as well as
visible and knowable. The extension of the scale into in an ethos of cinephilia that would want to find familiar-
an attempted ‘naming of the culprit’ produces rather ity and self-awareness in a parade of great film scenes.
nasty effects of surplus knowledge in the form of Stubbornly showing every movie scene which includes
resentment. In this manner Gladiator’s liberal critique a model we could find in an order no more refined
of populist entertainment culture taking over power than mere chronology, we at least try to keep intact
from republican politics shows us the huge hand and the hope of forcing history and the critique of power
Volume 16

face of another Roman emperor placing toy gladiators back into the picture, through the model’s back-door.
in the arena of a physical coliseum model; the scene
not only relies on an ‘imperial’ scale, but is part of a
‘self-critical’ condemnation of glamorous, unmanly and Mock-ups in Close-Up was shown publicly for the first time in March
41 visibly gay aspects of entertainment culture. When, in a and April 2008 at Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York.
One Fine Day (1996),
director Michael Hoffman
Volume 16

42
Zoolander (2001),
director Ben Stiller

The Downfall
(Der Untergang, 2004),
director Oliver Hirschbiegel
Volume 16

43
After Post, Ex, Neo, End and Re
Manifesto

AN
Christian Ernsten and Joost Janmaat

Just before the turn of the century, the end of history than the ponderous combination of dream + power +
and the fall of the centralized city were proclaimed. absence of resistance. Although national players are
Instantly, we were all inhabitants of a generic city in usually the ones claiming responsibility for progress
a one-dimensional society – beyond ideology, beyond in society, and propagate most emphatically ideologies
identity, and beyond morality. Liberated from that about their dreams for better societies, other social
emotional clouding of our society, all we needed to do engineers have always been with us. In commerce, in
was focus on the sustainable and effective organization architecture, in the sciences, in the media, the churches
of economy and space in our global suburb. At last and advertising. Those groups, too, have guided
we could steadily achieve world-wide prosperity, changes, with their specific tools. But they claimed less
assisted by managers, experts and their consultants. responsibility, or else did not act on behalf of all society.
How humiliating was the actual turn of events! One of the foremost contemporary theaters for
At the start of the new century, we saw the emer- the makeability show, where the titans meet in a liber-
gence of new ideologies, great and small. Ideologies ation war with a clearly commercial/political ideology, is
aimed against Islam, terror, migrants, the West or probably Iraq. With strong political will, an intimidating
decadence, or, on contrary, ideologies advocating amount of money and power, plus a long troika of
freedom, justice and independence. Great and small sub-contractors, attempts are being made to pound a
contrasts between groups and ‘the powers that be’ new society out of the ground. That is the extrapolation
created new interdependencies and new, all-round of old-style makeability, making society from above.
identities. The great quantitative programs intended However, an entirely different kind of makeability
to produce order and development, like the Structural is coming about in entirely different theaters. The very
Adjustment Programs of the International Monetary lack of political clout and financial resources obliges
Fund and the World Bank, are highly criticized, the state or city to join forces with other makers: branding
World Trade organizations and international develop- agencies, spin doctors, housing associations, inves-
ment organizations are being ridiculed for being tors, but land owners, press officers and interest
neo-imperialist. Suspicion and deprivation are in fact groups as well. In a combination of public, semi-public,
growing on a universal scale. The world has become private and semi-private projects, working together
a village of cosmic proportions. And the awareness or against one another, they shape socio-economic
of this tremendous scale in our society in relation and spatial development.
to the complex global connection between local com- It is not particularly difficult to make a stand
munities is leading to a greater feeling of impotence. against the old power-makeability and the newer
The managers of prosperity have proved to be crisis diffuse makeability projects. In both cases the projects
managers without success formulas. can be described as having an a- or even anti-social
There is an immediate need for reactivation of character. They are still authoritarian, hierarchical
the utopian mentality: a vision-based, quest for inter- and control- and will-driven. Accordingly, the attempt
ventions generating local improvement. Thinking great to generate successfully an equal amount of dream
is not the problem, large-scale social experimentation power and decisiveness is far more interesting; that
the more so. So: a plea for a new style of social makes use of applied experience, and local knowledge
engineering – behavior-steering inspired by local and skill. The aim is to create an operating perspec-
wisdom, with a braver society as its universal goal. tive, after all the great ideas have seemingly lost their
legitimacy.
*
*
Social engineering is a controversial term harking
back to the politics of apartheid and the ‘white man’s How? To start with, because these days every individual
burden’, but also post-colonial projects in Africa, and or group can acquire the tools of advertising, politics,
Stalin’s experiments in the Soviet Union. Moreover, the design, media and commerce. Many of the power,
Volume 16

term crops up in the context of utopian and modernist media and technology barriers have disappeared, and
architecture, as found in the garden cities all over the thus the road leading to a change in mentality is now
world. In spite of its tainted past, the word deserves clear. There is room to move away from the arrogance
a new interpretation. After all, Social Engineering, and dominance of experts – away with conceit based
the practice of changing society intentionally, is more on status and jargon. On the contrary, bring in respect 44
for experience and commitment, both inside and out- down – the bigger the market, the more fragmented
side institutions. Expertise is based far more on trial the identity. That need not be a problem; it can also
and error than on charisma and rhetoric. force us to take a new focus. If we are to shape our

EST
An important paradigm for the new-style social society further we must look beyond the masses.
engineer is the disbelief in utopia, a disbelief in the And modern technology enables us to do just that;
creation of a society that is excessively superior to the individuals can publish, mobilize and create. A focus
one we are living in. It means ideological rhetoric loses on the personal aspect is a way to give individuals
its purpose and the tools necessary for positive social a role in the transformation of their own world.
change occupy central stage. Just think of a cocktail Consequently, our focus is on maintenance
of the DIY-culture and a quest for talent and quality work and inspiration for positive renewal. Although
as found in the ideas of the Enlightenment. A renewed change happens automatically, improvement does not.
interest and a desire to take your own makeability and It requires continuous commitment. And for drastic
your personal living environment as the starting points interventions in society it is essential to have a seeker’s
for a makeable society. mentality in order to keep design dynamic. We do
Let us reveal more of our credentials: we are not aim at participative projects as such, but projects
interested in the way IKEA popularized interior design in which maintenance of society is combined with
and H&M democratized fashion, but we also have a change in mentality in all participants: bureaucrats,
questions about sustainability and originality. We strive entrepreneurs, professionals, scientists and citizens.
to include participants in society in the transformation In that way positive change occurs ‘from inside’
process without losing steering power. So social and ‘from outside’, without global scaling up leading
engineering is commitment and active participation. to mental scaling down.
After all, society is a social undertaking, an assembly
of convenient coalitions between individuals in which *
discussions on justice and equality vis-à-vis power
and design determine degree and pace. In this under- Ultimately, we believe social engineering is equivalent
taking, the debate on the application and influence to taking responsibility for change in everyone’s
of knowledge is very important, both materially and immediate surroundings. It also stands for applying
psychologically. It is a debate about the organization the human scale as your benchmark. The human scale
and transformation of the built and the cultural can maintain equilibrium in relationships within society.
environment. Some very important questions are involved: how do
* people relate to their surroundings and what deter-
mines who they are or who they think they are and
Apart from entailing a different mentality, new-style where they want to belong, or who they would – or
social engineering also constitutes a specific approach would not – like to be? The personal aspect is the
to society. You often hear about the distinction between safeguard against the totalitarian aspect.
planners and seekers, in the framework of a developing For the social engineer, idealist dreams exist
economy. Planners are in the business of realizing to live for, yet an ultimate society does not exist. That
a development agenda based on lucid data, a clear realization demands humility and self-relativity when
strategy, a belief in progress and the support of a state our environment is engineered. Social engineering
On the other hand, there is the practice-based covers a challenging combination of responsibility and
seeker. A seeker proceeds from an awareness of desire, of modest ambitions and great dreams, of
society’s complexity, thus on an aversion to simplifi- question and answer. It is, therefore, a praxis that
cations of reality, seeking to tie in with local, existing demands acceptance of moral contradictions and
practices for change. These are initiatives that have openness towards unknown knowledge. A praxis that
proved themselves by trial and error. Seekers are more is on the move, because action is analysis, or leap
like facilitators of solutions that had already been before you look; only with an unremitting realization
found locally. They do not necessarily find answers, of freedom and an unremitting application of change
but only more questions sometimes. The seeking will new wisdom and new worlds be born.
approach is the more appealing to us. Seeking makes
social engineering a research praxis: you can better
understand society by way of interventions and the
reactions they produce. A radical break from the old
school, in which social engineering primarily presumed
a social approach following a set pattern.
In any case, questions are necessary because
society as a social organism changes – something
that requires repeated redefinition of the relationship
between identity and space. Every change is a rear-
rangement of the puzzle. And so the fixation on end
products or the focus on meeting planning agendas
is pointless. In the short term, end products rule out
Volume 16

certain changes and the concomitant responses, but


in the long term they do not provide a lasting improve-
ment. There are, moreover, unpleasant side effects
to development control. Added to which, political and
45 economic scaling up always results in mental scaling
EDI
Media Labs and Open Societies
Andrew Bullen
Media are powerful. Digital media
represent a uniquely powerful and
pervasive tool, capable of exerting a
profound effect on all aspects of
human progress through the crea-
tion, application and distribution of
new social or cultural value and
identity. Digital media can promote
democratization, empowerment,
cross-disciplinary collaboration and
can redefine the meaning of com-
munity. These media will also radi-
cally influence such critical areas as
health care, education, social
services and government in the com-
ing years. In other words, media play
a critical role in creating social and
Volume 16

cultural value and identity. 46


ABS
Those professionally engaged in media research and tornado in Texas?’, no longer seems as provocative
development often describe their places of work as or far-fetched in these days of environmental and sus-
media ‘labs’. The use of the word ‘lab’ is significant: tainability awareness as it may have in 1972. Equally,
a place where media are subjected to scientific exper- the understanding of social and cultural diversity and
imentation and exploration with the rigorous application the positive potential force of this identity is a critical
of methods similar to engineering techniques. At the factor in the further progress, indeed the survival of
centre of this ‘scientific’ experimentation is the cultural mankind. A biotope needs to maintain an equilibrium of
impact of media, the dialogue between man and tech- biodiversity if it is to survive. In the same way, society
nology. The ultimate target of such experimentation needs to understand, promote and integrate diversity
is the progress of mankind. if it is to flourish. As theorist Milka Aaltonen from the
In this article I will address an approach to Millennium Project Planning Committee says: ‘One of
‘engineering society’ from the perspective of a media the reasons many real-world problems appear difficult
professional in line with an admirable definition of to resolve is that single causes are sought even though
‘social engineering’ provided by digital media in the such problems arise from the interaction of multiple,
form of YourDictionary.com after a cursory scan of underlying and inter-related causes. Rarely is it possible
Google search engine results: to perceive and define a problem, then design an ap-
‘…the application of methods regarded as similar propriate intervention and finally elect a single course
to engineering techniques in their emphasis on prac- of action. More often the biggest challenge is making
ticality, efficiency, and moral neutrality in an effort sense of what is really happening and identifying those
to solve a social problem or improve the condition factors which success or failure consists of.’4
of society.’ If our values around diversity are shared, as was
In line with the noble aspirations of the Founding clear from my meeting with the two groups mentioned
Media Lab Fathers at MIT’s School of Architecture and above, the question then remains of how most effec-
Planning back in 1980, we will examine the potential tively to achieve the vision. If we are to embrace
of media methods, technologies and applications to diversity we also need to develop participatory and
‘invent a better future’ with and for humanity. open systems. Open, collaborative systems are
positive and productive in many ways; they allow for a
A Collaborative Vision far greater scale and frequency of innovation through
In the autumn of 2007 I was fortunate enough to sit the sharing of content and information; they transcend
together at PICNIC1 Amsterdam with some twenty and transform fixed and outmoded patterns and
media specialists from leading international media labs structures through ‘disruptive’ creative thinking, and
to discuss values, conditions and methods critical they move the product closer to the end-user by inte-
to shaping or ‘engineering’ the future. For a diverse grating him as co-creator.
crowd of individuals from around the world, the
participants were in remarkable agreement, even in Open Systems Thinking
their choice of language: the vision and design of the So how can open and collaborative systems be used
future should be people-shaped, open, fluid and inter- to engineer and design our future, particularly our
disciplinary, a creative community or interactive agora future urban spaces?
which enables dialogue between all parties, articulates On one level the need to adopt open and dis-
real human needs and provides a common culture ruptive, connective ‘brainstorming’ and conceptualizing
to design and problem solve together. techniques seemed to be shared by the media
In early May 2008 I was inspired to broach the specialists at PICNIC, the speakers of the Masters of
very same subject again with the organizers of Creative Intervention series and the planners and creatives at
Construct2 in Ottawa. The setting was less formal – a Creative Construct. At PICNIC we used philosopher
long, relaxed and decidedly convivial post-conference Humberto Schwab’s5 value ladders, appreciative
dinner – and the group was more diverse – city hall enquiries, participatory Socratic Discourse and future
planners and fixers, arts and conference organizers, narratives. Michael Shamiyeh, my debating partner
creatives from the arts and theatre – but the vision at the Masters of Intervention6, argued for the archi-
and language were remarkably similar: people focused, tect’s ‘synthetic’ thinking as opposed to inappropriate
collaborative, interactive, engaged, relational, out- linear modes of thought. The ensuing discussion also
reach, partnerships, connections.3 focused on the advantages of building future scenarios
One principle was overwhelming: a task as around probable and improbable trends in order to
existential as designing the future should be left neither develop plausible alternatives for an uncertain future
to brilliant individualists, however creative, nor political around a shared vision. Sir Ken Robinson, brilliant
lobbyists, however powerful. Engineering society for a educationalist and thinker and a fellow speaker at
complex world must be a participatory affair, drawing Creative Construct in Ottawa, emphasized the need
in all pertinent disciplines and social layers. for children to be allowed to develop creativity in
a naturally interdisciplinary way, seeing the world as
Diversity in a Complex World a myriad of diverse possibilities with visual, sound
The need for multiple, diverse participation in the drive and movement connections.7 It was frightening to see
to understand and find solutions for the needs of a Sir Ken’s examples of how this creative, ‘diverse’
Volume 16

highly complex modern world seems to be gaining mode of thinking is ‘educated’ out of children at a
general acceptance. We live in an increasingly multi- young age.
layered, multi-cultural society. The question Edward
Lorenz posed as a basis for his Chaos Theory,
47 ‘does the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil set off a
Offline Community versus Online Isolation? urban design. I recently saw an excellent 3D tool
On the level of open thinking and brainstorming we developed to model whole new areas of Barcelona for
seem to be in agreement. There seems, however, to be presentation to the citizens. In addition to the brilliant
less agreement on the use of media and particularly quality of the representation, what amazed me was
interactive, digital media as a valuable tool within the that the graphic models were shown only to concerned
process of engagement and participation. citizens after completion. How much more effective
The main objection, particularly from the corner would such models be were they to represent an on-
of the traditional community and arts planners at going and dynamic image of the needs and aspirations
Creative Construct in Ottawa, was the perception of the whole community?
that online activity alienates the user from ‘real’ parti- Developers and planners can actually learn from
cipation in the physical community. The very thought user data for it can sometimes provide unexpected
of online presence seems to conjure up the image outcomes and unique insights into behavioral patterns.
of a pale, slouching youth sitting in a darkened room Online modeling systems can use dynamic, digital
indifferent to the needs and aspirations of their physical user input to tag the city and map the culture and
neighborhood and interested merely in violent com- emotions of its citizens in order to create a multi-
puter games or trivial online gossip. I was indeed rep- layered, multi-dimensional model in which physical
rimanded at a ‘Neighborhoods as Sites of Community planning data is connected and mapped to emotional
and Cultural Development’ session for daring to data: the fears, hopes and identity of the community.
suggest that a significant contribution to the cultural Such pioneering development work is being carried
development of the physical community might be out by Sandbox9 in Preston in Northwest England as
missed if potential online contributions were ignored. part of the process of integrating grass-roots local
We should, I was told, be rediscovering and recreating culture and identity into ambitious urban development
spaces, culture and community where we can create plans. In this way it is possible to explore and integrate
common narrative and tell our stories to our neighbors issues, views, expectations, social networks, rituals,
on the street corner. And yet, what makes an online habits, artifacts, landmarks, pathways and narratives
narrative less valuable than a chat in the shared into the physical landscape. As early as 2002 the
neighborhood garden? Waag Society developed the Amsterdam Real-Time
application which dynamically traced the routes taken
Interactive Media as a Participative Public Space by Amsterdam’s inhabitants through their city. Their
The online world is a rapidly growing, public space means of transport, the location of their home and
with an unprecedented level of communication and work, and other travel, together with each person’s
information flow where users take a significant interest ‘mental map’, determine the trace which he or she
in their digital and physical surroundings and express leaves behind producing a dynamic, up-to-date and
their feelings and ideas with creativity and engagement. very subjective map of Amsterdam.10
It would be negligent and counter-productive
to omit the potential of interactive digital participation Sharing globally, building locally
from the social and cultural planning and design Indeed, digital interactive media can have an even
process, particularly with regard to urban spaces. We more direct, physical effect as a means of community
are living in a time when citizens increasingly participate planning production in the form of open fabrication
in creative processes. New software and online games labs, community centers of local fabrication, using a
are increasingly being produced and distributed by standardized set of flexible, digitally driven production
end users themselves. Social networks are recognized tools such laser cutters, milling machines and 3D
as a critical marketing factor and new forms of peer- printers. This model, inspired by the Fablabs developed
to-peer networking and communication are giving rise by Neil Gerschenfeld at the MIT Media Labs Center
to a new paradigm for learning. Smart mobs, as docu- for Bits and Atoms, has tremendous potential to pro-
mented by Howard Rheingold, can be a powerful, mote a more equally balanced, innovative and mutually
immediate and effective means of social intervention.8 beneficial form of economic, social and cultural
Bloggers can spark the rise or fall of major politicians. development. Such organizations, whether in Africa,
Wikipedia-type information sources are challenging Western Europe or the USA, share best practice,
the hegemony of closed and proprietary systems. Even experience, knowledge and networks to enable low-
eminent, traditional broadcasters such as the BBC volume production of customized physical goods
now openly distribute their precious video content to by the local community for the local community and
be further co-developed by their enthusiastic end beyond. This form of ‘open’ innovation in a local
users. Indeed, Creative Digital Industries could not culture – a regional focus within a mutually supportive
exist without cohorts of ‘creating’ end users. These national/international network – can radically stimulate
users make up an increasingly significant part of a development in developing countries in addition to
new, diverse and innovative supply chain comprising enhancing economic sustainability and community
not only creative professionals but also traditional identity in deprived areas within developed countries.
consumers, clients and communities. This is the dawn At the heart of the Fabrication Labs concept is the
of the user as co-creator and that process is made use of easily accessible technology and standardized
more effective by digital interactive channels. hardware tools which are simple to learn and use.
Volume 16

The interactive and distributed sharing of knowledge


Integrating the cultural design and processing among network participants can be
Interactive, grass-roots interactive participation can equally useful for a township in South Africa or Kenya
make an invaluable contribution to the future modeling as for a Bronx neighborhood in New York or indeed
of the community particularly at the level of specific the incubator in Nairobi or Amsterdam. 48
49
Volume 16

3D mapping of Barcelona
from Barcelona Media

3D mapping of Barcelona
from Barcelona Media
In such Labs pre-fabricated houses are produced networks. To offer these individuals an integrated role
in South Africa, wireless antennae to provide internet within the process of cultural and social planning and
access are produced from copper and a vinyl cutter in design is to integrate large groups from social layers
Kenya, cheap and efficient tools to measure the quality or generations which would otherwise be inaccessible.
of milk or rice are made in Indian villages, jewelry and In the same way, interactive modeling tools offer
artistic laser etchings are designed, produced and sold immediate and effective feedback from all layers of
in the South Bronx, New York. These are all instances the community. And last but not least, global digital
where the global digital network has helped to stimulate interactive networks and applications allow us to
local empowerment, collaboration, design and pro- share our visions, best practices, methodologies and
duction with diverse physical communities worldwide. information worldwide so we can apply this know-
We at the Media Guild have also experienced a re- ledge for optimum design and the realization of our
markable transition in ‘problem’ teenage school pupils future physical communities at the local level.
who discover their creative and productive social
capacity within open Fabrication Labs.
And this final point: the use of knowledge shared 1 www.picnicnetwork.org
though a global and interactive network but applied 2 www.symposium2008.ca
to great effect at the local community level is possibly 3 Many thanks to the organizers of the Creative Construct
one of the most critical components of the argument Symposium, particularly Debbie, Eileen, Nancy, Tessa, Sandy,
for the inclusion of interactive media tools in designing Julie, Caroline and Kelsey. We developed a new form of
and engineering the future, whether in a densely pop- simultaneous ‘slam prose’: a group of diverse people sit down
ulated urban neighborhood or an isolated community. at the same table to write the same article in the same, limited
time. A coherent, finished article is not written, but it is an
Empower to Engineer the Future inspirational form of intense, interdisciplinary work. I can
We all aspire to a people-centered, strong local culture recommend the process.
and community which is engaged, creative and in 4 The Third Lens: Multi-Ontology Sense-Making and
control of its own future planning and design. It would Strategic Decision-Making by Mika Aaltonen, Ashgate
be foolish to claim that digital media offer a universal Publishing Ltd, 2007
solution to these aspirations. Physical communities 5 www.humbertoschwab.net
need strong and creative leaders who inspire local 6 www.partizanpublik.nl/index.php?page_id=3&product_id=
engagement and can engender political and business 0&project_id=47
support. Communities also need inspiring and creative 7 For a more detailed and entertaining explanation see
physical meeting places. Sir Ken Robinson’s highly acclaimed TED presentation:
Yet it would be equally foolish to ignore the www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/66
potential of interactive media tools and networks. 8 Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution by Howard Rheingold,
Many of our fellow citizens are highly experienced Perseus Publishing, September 2002
and creative in expressing their feelings, needs and 9 http://sandbox.uclan.ac.uk
aspirations through digital applications and social 10 http://realtime.waag.org
Cultural Mapping for City Development
at Sandbox UCLAN, UK

Volume 16

50
Principles of Great Stories Keep It Simple
Designing Society

EER
Peer 2 Peer
Michel Bauwens
The creator of the Foundation
for P2P Alternatives, Michel
Bauwens, advocates that
the ‘peer to peer concept’ is
not simply a technology but
a revolutionary new way of
democratic living: a radical
new concept for production,
governance and property.
It’s not for nothing that
Bauwens has been called the
Volume 16

Karl Marx of the 21st century.


52
The idea that the internet can nurture the spread of Another way to explain peer-production is the circu-
democracy is not technological determinism but a lation of the common to show how prevalent it is in

EER
huge potential, an opportunity to do things differently. the world.1 Working together through self-aggregation
Whether we do so or not depends on many other requires open and free input as well as open and
factors such as power struggles and social tensions. free raw materials. We see open and free movements
The invention of the printing press is a valuable pre- emerging in every domain of social life which are
cedent. It liberated knowledge from the monopoly of attempting to free the raw materials, the open text-
ecclesiastical and feudal powers. It caused civil wars books, open access publishing, open yoga, and open
and assisted absolutist regimes, but in the end it ayurveda. They are creating the possibility of this
disseminated information, at least in what are today input to allow cooperation.
the western, democratic countries. This is a similar The second process is participation. Peer-pro-
situation, we have an opportunity. Not everything is duction is based on a design of inclusion. Most of our
going to go well, but for people who want to change other methods are based on a design of exclusion.
the world, who want more freedom and equality, If some people think peer-production is utopian, they
it would be a mistake to leave these tools unused. should realize that it is not based on altruism, but on
I therefore focus on how P2P network tools can be the convergence of individual and collective interests.
used to create this better world. Thus anyone who wants to design a piece of software
I shall first define P2P. You may be familiar with for Linux for his own benefit integrates his own project
P2P-filesharing. P2P activates the human dynamic. within a greater whole ensuring everyone profits from
It’s the relational dynamic in distributed networks. It’s his contribution and that everyone, contributors or not,
important that we differentiate decentralized networks has access to the whole: ‘Give a brick, get a house’.
(like traveling by airplane) from distributed networks We have open and free input, participatory
(like traveling by car). In a distributive network indi- processes, design and commons-oriented output.
viduals have the freedom to take action and build We are going to use those peer-property formats
relationships without permission. P2P is also a permis- to ensure that what we produce we can also re-use
sion-less system. The dramatic drop in coordination, for the same kind of social process. This circulatory
transaction and communication costs amounts to a mechanism is how peer-production emerges, repro-
revolution in the ability to self-aggregate resources duces and expands in the real world. What I want to
on a global scale. This aggregation is not a command stress in terms of the potential of peer-production is
and control system which tells people what to do. It’s that it is not limited to business or production. We
an enormous collection of small groups which are gov- can peer-produce anything. You can exchange, co-
erned by small group-dynamics, but are able to scale create knowledge and experience any practice. Peer-
up to a global level. So today this massive collection of production is something we can use in everyday
small groups involving tens or hundreds of thousands social life.
of people is able to create very complex social arti- For the moment there are three basic business
facts. It is creating three new social processes: models emerging around peer-production.

1. Peer-production 1. Sharing paradigm


The ability to create value in common. Companies such as Youtube, Google and Flickr
no longer create value. They enable and empower
2. Peer-governance the sharing of creative expression. Aggregating
The ability to manage those projects. This is very intention, the platform sells that intention to advertisers.
important. Democracy and hierarchy are means People share use value rather than create exchange
to allocate scarce resources via pricing, decision- value. They’re operating according to a post-capitalist
making and/or negotiation. But if we are in a field or non-capitalist logic and do so within a context of
of knowledge, culture or content in which people can proprietary platforms which work in a capitalist society.
self-aggregate their resources we are no longer
talking about allocating scarce resources. Peer- 2. Commons-oriented model
governance is not democracy. It’s the process of In the first model we are individuals expressing
self-aggregation and mutual accommodation that ourselves; we have weak ties with each other and
happens in peer-production. It is different because are therefore not seemingly able to sustain our own
if you’re not paying me to do something, as happens platforms. That’s why we need third parties. In the
with Linux and Wikipedia, then you have no decision- commons paradigm, like Linux and Wikipedia, you
making power. We therefore have to find another have to work together with other people. You can’t
process to coordinate our actions. This is what peer- change a page in Wikipedia, if somebody else changes
governance is about. again, without enacting a strong relationship; whether
you like it or not, you have to work together. The
3. Peer-property commons paradigm is a triarchy rather than a dual
The ability to protect the common value from private system. The previous system consisted of a sharing
appropriation. When Richard Stallman created the community and a propriety platform. In the commons
general public license template for the free-software paradigm however we have a community which
Volume 16

movement, it was because somebody had taken produces through self-governance/ aggregation
his work and privatized it and he had lost access to and we have for-profit institutions which manage
his own software. Peer-property is a mechanism the project’s scarce resources, i.e. the infrastructure
whereby peer-production can socially reproduce a community needs to survive. And then we have
53 itself. the ecology of businesses which adds value to the
commons. Peer-production is like a permanent The law of asymmetrical competition I propose
meditation on abundance or scarcity. If there is an states that if a for-profit company using closed pro-
abundance, you can’t have a market. If there’s no ten- prietary modes and no participation is competing with
sion between supply and demand, there is no market a for-benefit institution with a community, striving for
mechanism. You can’t sell Linux software; you can just absolute quality, the former will eventually lose. If two
download it or copy it. But what you can do is consult for-profit companies compete against each other
it and train for it. You can also create secondary the company that opens up to participation, that can
pieces of software. generate community support, will be more competitive
than that which does not. Thus we have a mechanism
3. Distributive model/crowd sourcing model for social change whereby even the people in power
This is the most capitalistic of the three models are integrating peer-production into their strategies.
presented here. The crowd sourcing model is merely This is very similar to the Roman Empire in the 2nd
the self-aggregation of labor producing exchange century AD when slaves became too expensive. The
value. The first two models use value and this one ‘enlightened’ slave-owners freed their slaves and had
uses exchange value. People mainly produce things them become serfs.
on their own. They are self-aggregating – that’s a Something similar is happening today as more
P2P-aspect – but they are doing it for the market, for and more knowledge workers move to peer-production.
the platform. We see a capitalist class moving towards a netarchical
capitalism2, enabling and empowering participation
You might think that peer-production is limited to as their business model.
immaterial production. To reproduce material, we need The first of two political conclusions from this
to mobilize physical resources, but the design phase is are that we think nature is infinite, we have a false
an immaterial process. We can open source many phy- notion of abundance in the physical world and we
sical things in the design phase, although we actually combine it with the notion that we need to have scarcity
need physical resources to produce them. One of the in the immaterial world. In other words, we got it wrong
things you can see in my Wiki (www.p2pfoundation.net) in both cases. We are inventing mechanisms that
is the emergence of open design communities. People inhibit social cooperation and have a mechanism that
are actually getting together to design physical things. destroys a biosphere. If that can be turned around and
Why is peer-production so important? Peer- peer-production based on free sharing in an immaterial
production is in many cases the most productive way world can be implemented we could create a mecha-
to make things. Paid products using closed proprietary nism that respects the world’s finitude. We won’t have
software is the most endangered business-model a perfect world, but it will be sustainable.
because you either have competitors who will supply The second political conclusion is that our system
the immaterial and sometimes the material product is facing the problem of extensive development.
for free and that proprietary intellectual property is This is a physical problem. If India and China want to
increasingly difficult to protect. The legal and techno- achieve the material wealth of the West, they would
logical systems used to protect proprietary code are have to have the resources of five planets at their
coming under increasing pressure. That makes room disposal. It is simply impossible to sustain this kind of
for the three other business models to emerge. growth for the next 20 or 30 years. We are seeking high
Let’s look at forms of motivation and incorpora- energy prices, high transport costs and commodity
tion. Feudal and slave systems are based on coercion prices, but together with lower capital requirements
and extrinsically negative motivation. They are very in order to relocalize physical production in open
costly systems to maintain. People do not work unless design communities.
they are coerced. The genius of capitalism is that it If this happens P2P will become the core logic
replaces negative extrinsic motivation with positive of our society, both in the immaterial and the material
extrinsic motivation, that is, with self-interest. The world. I’m not a technological determinist, but we
point is to exchange mutual value. This is a much more should use the potential at hand and move in that
powerful system in terms of productivity, but there are direction.
inherent problems because production in that mode
is motivated by self-interest. Second, one must look
at all the externalities. The big weakness of capitalism 1 The circulation of the common, in analogy with the circulation
is that it fails to take negative externalities (e.g., environ- of capital, is the way peer production reproduces itself
mental destruction) or positive externalities (e.g., social through open and free raw material as input, participation
benefits) into account. and inclusionary design as process, and commons oriented
Peer-production has neither negative extrinsic licenses as output, and such licenses recreate open and
motivation nor positive extrinsic motivation because free material for a new cycle of input.
you’re not paid. It does have positive intrinsic motiva- 2 Netarchical capitalism is that branch of capital and investment
tion. The only motivation left is passion. Peer projects which no longer relies on intellectual property to make profit
are collectively sustainable, but not individually. How but directly enables and monetizes participation.
can I make a living from a voluntary peer-production if
I don’t get paid? There is a mode of production because
Volume 16

people are passionate about it. They are striving for


absolute quality. A company is only going to work
for relative quality, because it makes something better
than the competition. If there is no competition there
is no improvement. 54
Principles of Great Stories Be the Story
20th century’s
Utopian Architecture
Amir Djajali

TO
The following pages contain
sketches of a visual history
of utopian architecture over the
last 150 years. These include
international examples of purely
theoretical visions as well as
realized utopias, original draw-
ings or recent images.
Progressive or reactionary 20th-
century ideologies gave birth to
these projects, promoted either
by centralized state authorities
or visions of dissident avant-
Volume 16

gardes and sub-cultures. 56


IST
1859
Familistaire. Guise, France
Jean Baptiste Godin
Photo wikimedia commons

1870
Letchworth Garden City, UK
Ebenezer Howard

1910
Britz Siedlung, Berlin, Germany
Bruno Taut
Photo http://flickr.com/photos/schockwellenreiter/2287687575

57
1920 1920
Karl Marx Hof, Wien, Austria Siemensstadt, Berlin, Germany
Karl Ehn Walter Gropius
Photo http://flickr.com/photos/schoenswetter/2266740417

1928
Domkommuna N
Moisei Ginzburg

1930 1930 1931


Nazi Housing Prototypes, Germany Project for Magnitogorsk, Russia House on Embankment, Moscow, Russia
Ivan Leonidov Boris Iofan
Photo wikimedia commons

58
1921 1925
Nahalal Kibbutz, Israel Plan Voisin, Paris, France
Richard Kaufman Le Corbusier
Photo Fondation Le Corbusier

Narkomfin, Moscow, Russia


g

1934
Dymaxion House
Richard Buckminster Fuller

59
1945
New Gourma, Egypt
Hassan Fathi

1950 1952
Project for Amsterdam, The Netherlands Golden Lane Estate, London, UK
Hendrik Wijdeveld Allison and Peter Smithon

1956 1956
Forte Quezzi, Genova, Italy Cumbernauld, UK
Luigi Carlo Daneri Geoffry Copcutt
Photo http://flickr.com/photos/25958100@N05/2454172995

60
1946 1947 1950
Rovaniemi, Finland Unite d’Habitation, Marseille Chandigarh, Punjab, India
Alvar Aalto Le Corbusier Le Corbusier
Photo wikimedia commons

1953
Vallingby, Sweden
Sven Markelius

1957
Brasilia, Brazil
Lucio Costa and Oscar Niemeyer

61
1957
Brasilia, Brazil Photo http://flickr.co
Lucio Costa and Oscar Niemeyer
Photo http://flickr.com/photos/agentlebossanova/188407433/

1960 1960
Rome, Italy Plan for the Tokyo Bay, Japan
Studio Asse Kenzo Tange

1962 1963 1964


Clusters in the Air Tel Aviv, Israel Walking City
Arata Isozaki Van de Broek & Bakema Archigram

62
1958
om/photos/deia/2322489797 Spatial City
Yona Friedmann

1962 1962
Ocean city Helix City
Kiyonori Kikutake Kisho Kurokawa

1964
Plug in City
Archigram

63
1964
Plug in City
Archigram

1965 1967
Megastructure on the River IJ, Amsterdam, The Netherlands habitat, Montreal, Canada
Van de Broek & Bakema Moshe Safdie
Photo http://flickr.com/photos/mikol/13

1967 1967
Monte Amiata Complex, Gallaratese, Milan Monte Amiata Complex, Gallaratese, Milan
Carlo Aymonino Aldo Rossi
Photo Arjen Oosterman Photo Arjen Oosterman

64
1965
Scampia, Naples, Italy
Franz di Salvo
Photo Arjen Oosterman

Photo http://flickr.com/photos/mishiko/2234694039

38877514

1969 1969
Journey from A to B Comprehensive City, US
Superstudio Mike Mitchell and Alan Botwell

65
1970
ZEN, Palermo, Italy
Vittorio Gregotti

1971 1971
New Babylon Continuous Momument
Constant Superstudio

1973 1972
New Babylon, Amsterdam, The Netherlands Student Buildings, Louvaine la Neuve, Belgium
Constant Lucien Kroll

66
1970 1970
ZEN, Palermo, Italy Milton Keynes, UK
Vittorio Gregotti
Photo http//flickr.com/photos/khairul/222284168666

1972 1972
Arcology Corviale, Rome, Italy
Paolo Soleri Mario Fiorentino
Photo http://flickr.com/photos/ende/10009808

1973 1973
Study for a Large Dispenser of Waltzes, Study for a Study for a Large Dispenser of
Tangos, Rock, and Cha-Cha Incense, LSD, Marijuana, Opium, Laughing Gas
Ettore Sottsass Ettore Sottsass

67
Up-Tempo Urbanism
Interview with Reinier de Graaf by
Christian Ernsten and Arjen Oosterman
The empty desert of the Emirates is
presently international architecture’s
playground and OMA is one of the
star players. Opportunities for sub-
stantial turnover and quick results

P-
abound, no doubt, but what about
old European worries like public
interest and cultural values? What
does an architectural firm wants to
create? Reinier de Graaf introduces
their new creative yearning: achiev-
ing utopian radicality and cultural
sustainability in city design. Are
the RAK Gateway and the Dubai
Waterfront City potential incubators
Volume 16

of cultural resistance in the region? 68


Christian Ernsten This issue’s theme is engineering the reduction in scale has led to a withering of vision.
society. Within that framework we’re interested What is seductive about the Middle East is that – the
in the two urban projects you’re currently working less savory aspects aside – the speed of construction
on: the Gateway Project in Ras Al Khaimah and has also put us in a position to realize very good
the Waterfront City in Dubai. Could you say a few projects without compromise.
words about the kinds of cities you’re building? If you calculate gross-net, there are buildings
Reinier de Graaf These two projects are designed to being built there – take Burj Dubai – with less than 50%
break with the dominant form of urban development useable floor space. Those kinds of megaprojects,
in the Gulf. They start from a similar premise as the almost civil works, always lose money. That will never
Renaissance building we did earlier: to produce an anti- happen here. Here every building is appraised based

EM
icon. These projects are a kind of antithesis against
the prevailing mode of development. Normally in Dubai
one sees low density and a great deal of irrigated
green spaces. In contrast to that we’re developing
compact cities with a limited amount of natural green
in which the external appearance of individual buildings
doesn’t determine what it’s all about. The current
urban development generates an enormous waste
of energy and water. In this sense these projects are
an attempt to create an ethical and aesthetic break.
The time seems ripe.
The Waterfront City in Dubai is a central business
district inside a much larger masterplan made by
someone else. It will be a city of a million and a half in
the last undeveloped stretch of coastal land in Dubai
at the border with Abu Dhabi. The Ras Al Khaimah
project is a completely new city in another emirate that
is still largely made up of desert land.
CE To what extent are these two projects a reaction
to the Disney fatwa you described in Al Manakh?
RdG The Disney fatwa was in reaction to the pro-
nouncements of Western critics regarding Singapore
and Dubai. The Disney metaphor has been cynically
used as a critique of developments in other cultures.
But in fact Disney is a Western product, making the
fatwa actually a fatwa against ourselves. In Al Manakh
we tried to write seriously about the Gulf without
negating the problematic aspects of what’s going on
there. The two cities are concrete ideas of how we
think we operate in this context. They are not critical
of Dubai per se; we would offer this same criticism
upon its own financial feasibility. There the logic is that
if one builds the biggest building in the world, then
more people will flock to Dubai, fly Emirates airline,
hotels will be fuller and more people will spend money
here. Thus the macro-economic effects of a loss-
making building are such that on balance it makes
money. That kind of thing can go on because the
government itself, in this case the royal family, actively
participates in project development.
Sometimes that leads to a kind of crazy race for
height of buildings designed in a macho way to break
all kinds of records, but ironically it simultaneously
opens the door for a number of radical utopias which
we haven’t seen since the start of the twentieth century.
That perspective makes it a seductive place to work.
And for the time being it is appearing to work. I don’t
know when or if the RAK Gateway City project will
be carried out, but the other project will begin soon.
Often those kinds of projects begin, as a kind of
Spielerei… But there is little choice: One must make
it a kind of Spielerei because otherwise the scale is
so intimidating that you’d be overwhelmed.
AO As regards thinking and operating, do you
place yourself within the tradition of the utopians
of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s?
RdG It’s difficult to say because things are so different
now. One of the things we tried in Al Manakh was to
initiate a certain rehabilitation of the period. We tried
at the very least to bring that early modern tradition
from the seventies, which is also present in the Arab
world back to the surface. We showed that period too
of this kind of urban development if it were to have can be an authentic source of pride in the Arab world,
been done elsewhere. and that one does not by definition have to be led
Arjen Oosterman Your Al Manakh (Volume 12) back to a kind of Arab vernacular.
diaries contain a certain irony. CE To what extent do you experiment in the design
RdG Yes, but if you place all thirteen pieces side by of these urban projects with other social programs?
side, there is as much irony for Western consultants RdG We principally experiment with ourselves. I don’t
as for Arab sheiks. It is more a critique of the current know if you can also call that a social program… In
state of things in general than of Dubai specifically. recent years we have investigated the effect of an
Actually, by virtue of its massive immigration Dubai increased tempo on the creative process and whether
functions as a kind of magnifying glass for the con- one can institutionalize that within one’s firm. At this
temporary world as a whole. Everything develops moment we have a 365-page book that describes the
there quickly and that tempo creates a kind of insanity. production of landmarks of a single year. We show
That’s what I’ve tried to capture. that by speeding up the tempo we can eliminate
CE How do you relate your projects to the speed doubts and bring back a certain degree of spontaneity
of developments in this region and the hypnotic in design. Dubai was the perfect occasion for this.
effect that produces? Sometimes it’s successful and sometimes not.
RdG We try to use the speed to achieve a certain In addition – and we also introduced this concept
radicality in the design. The longer a project lasts – at the Venice Biennial – we are busy with ‘generics’. By
one sees this in the Netherlands, for instance – the manipulating standard typologies we eventually develop
more there is a chance that the initial enthusiasm a special buildings. Take a look, for example, at Dubai’s
Volume 16

design generates tapers off. The client awakes from many towers: they all look different, but share the same
his hypnotic trance, as it were. plan. A very strange kind of contractor’s optimalization
On account of the speed of things in the Gulf took place there. By partially surrendering to that logic
we can do more with less compromise and chiefly on we tried to produce yet another kind of building. We
69 a scale which we see nowhere else. Since the eighties no longer try to endlessly reinvent the wheel.
The Palm Cove Canal Site

Model of Dubai Waterfront City

Photo Frans Parthesius

Volume 16

70
Image © Nakheel

CE In the new way of working you are proposing of seeming complicit in endorsing many of its bad
the main emphasis seems to be put on the design habits. That is unfortunate.
and production process rather than the end result. CE What could social sustainability in Dubai mean?
RdG If it is a matter of an end result, then the time RdG 85% of Dubai’s inhabitants are not locals. That’s
to enjoy it is very short since it is characteristic of the impressive. The integration system is naturally quite
region that you are very quickly confronted with the different. While we eventually confer voting rights and
need to produce the next end result. If you were to permit people to pay taxes in order to integrate, their
build a single building per year you would have various system is a kind of well-intentioned apartheid. Tax
options from which you would have to painfully choose exemptions are given to western firms and expats and
just one and toss the rest away. We are now in an as long as one is enjoying substantial tax exemptions
experimental process in which you continuously only the desire for a political voice remains small. Another
get one chance to hit the mark,. It is a kind of new story are those who work in construction for wages
economy of creativity. marginally higher than what they would earn in their
AO Is this different for urban development than home country. This is the story of people who the
for the design of buildings? longer they work in Dubai the less important it becomes
RdG Perhaps. With both the RAK Gateway and the that they earn anything more than they would in their
Waterfront city we designed two squares and thus we native country. Eventually they too will start measuring
very consciously created a kind of controllable form, their circumstances to Dubai’s indigenous wealth.
so we would completely be the masters of our own There have been protests, but these have been met
context. In this way we reduced the necessity for com- with silence. For the time being the subject is difficult
promise with the environment as well as the risk that to breach, but pressure will increase by this group for
we adopted the environment’s bad habits. In Waterfront the right to be a respectable member of this society.
you’ve got a floating island in the city; it is part of the At this time actual political rights are restricted to just
city, but also emphatically separate from it. In RAK we a small group of Emirate nationals.
just gave form to a free, new development. And that As an architect you naturally do not have a great
is more or less what one wants. If you realize a free, deal of influence, but you can try to work on a spatial
new development then you’re able to jump into the plan with a certain level of emancipation as a goal.
21st century without being held back by compromises CE How do your designs, for RAK for example, take
with the past, certainly in a place such as Ras Al into consideration the potential residents’ expe-
Khaimah. rience of the symbolic environment of the city?
AO With the Seattle library OMA attempted to RdG This city was in any event for people who didn’t
design public space for the 21st century. The yet live there. There is no demographic pressure. That
design itself is an attempt to raise the question is the biggest difference with, for example, building
as to the role of public space in society. How a city in China or in India. In India one must deal with
do you create publicness in RAK, a place which an increasing population, in China with the influx of
is to develop so quickly? people from the countryside to the cities. Then you’re
RdG Ultimately we design public space by creating building for an exigency. What you’re doing here is
dimensions (width, length) and street patterns for building a city to attract people. It’s a peculiar reversal
pedestrians. Via interventions (programs for everyone) of the customary process. This is one of the things we
and the augmentation of public space we ensure that had to get used to: the client said, ‘no, no, no, this city
people will actually walk around. is not for the people who live here now.’ It must be
This is how we create an urban life in which a destination city for people coming from far away.
coincidence and accidental meetings can once again The city becomes a means to attract a certain kind of
occur in public spaces. Dubai is now in a certain way people. The RAK project developer travelled with the
an enormous amusement park; visiting a place there government through the Ukraine, Georgia and China
is always a form of consumption. This paves the way in order to create ties and also to recruit investors
for an incredible segmentation. Those who work in for the Emirate. Dubai has a very strong Anglo-Saxon
construction, that is people from India, Pakistan and orientation, but RAK is really designed for the ‘new silk
Africa and increasingly from China as well, are placed road’, the up and coming part of the world. Its target
in labor camps. These people remain in these camps group is thus not Westerners.
sometimes for as long as eighteen years. In a way CE What tools do you use in the development of
they are no longer guest workers who return to their both cities in order to create a decidedly better
places of origin; these people stay. The big question urban society?
for Dubai’s future has to do with sustainability in the RdG We chiefly create conditions. Kenneth Frampton
human sense, that is: will there be a permanent part of once used the word resistance as a cultural term and
the city built for these people? These are topics which I really think that if you plan cities on that scale you
can keep us busy for some time. have a duty to combat the natural excesses of the
Last summer we actively pitched for the Dubai market as much as you can. You can create conditions
Development Framework, a national spatial strategy that eventually produce something other than what
for Dubai which must provide a solid structure for would naturally have occurred. That means that in
these kinds of topics. That would have been a fantastic each city you try to buck the trends. That isn’t easy,
Volume 16

assignment because now we’re increasingly building since everyone wants facilities of all kinds to be
parts of the city whose program is partially determined located within walking distance, yet at the same time
beforehand; that would have been a fantastic oppor- nobody wants to get out of their car. Everyone wants
tunity to really intervene at a structural level and do an urban atmosphere, but simultaneously everyone
71 something good. By working in Dubai you run the risk wants a villa. In this sense people have become a kind
Image courtesy Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA)
of safari park visitors of their own urban creations. So that the absolute sovereign in the Gulf is a different
if you in particular want to save energy but also want type of person from the project developer here in the
to generate a form of social integration, this then Netherlands. The absolute sovereign is often so rich
demands you become a real participant in this kind that earning short-term money is no longer the first
of urbanism instead of merely an observer. Suburbani- priority. This group, they exist in the West too, shifts
zation has resulted everywhere in a kind of comfort his interests to culture or charity, for example.
zone, where ‘the city’ has become a condition one We encounter the most resistance to our ideas
only visits now and then. It’s still consumed, but it’s no in the lower echelons of the project developer. At
longer a fully fledged environment. This is why in the critical moments we are often supported from above.
RAK we make comparisons with old cities in Yemen. In principle it is a kind of feudal system, a system
The streets in the RAK project are deliberately small. which I think will disappear over time. Ultimately these
Surrounding the city are a number of big urban pro- lands will also democratize in one way or another, but
grams which normally do not go well with the urban it appears that as long as democracy is incomplete
environment. A large conference center, a shopping we will chiefly find support from the type of dominion
mall and a sports complex each require an enormous which we naturally too think we must distance our-
amount of parking. By setting these outside the city selves in the future. And that is a peculiar paradox.
this minimizes the need for parking within the city. One has support from an absolute ruler who ensures
A streetcar system connects the parking lots with you are able to do good things.
the inner city. In this way the city can accommodate CE Can you make proposals for social housing?
a high density. It is almost an attempt to construct RdG Right now we’re working on a request for forms
an historical environment via a number of artificial of permanent housing to replace the labor camps.
interventions.
CE Could you explain once again how you intend
to buck the trends? Could you be more concrete?
RdG The enormous speed permits one to realize
something that, in a manner of speaking, slips under
the radar. In this way you can organize trend-breaking
architecture by building something confrontational
before anyone realizes it. What’s most interesting is

RAK Gateway City

Image courtesy Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA)

Volume 16

72
RAK Gateway City

Comparison of the AMO, RAK Gateway City and


Fosters’ plan for Masdar Devolpment in Abu Dhabi
Image courtesy Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA)
Volume 16

73
Packaging Utopian
Sustainability
Matt Lewis

TO
Are carbon neutral cities,
Eco-cities and sustainable
cities discursive covers up
for synthetic design in the
desert of Abu Dhabi or
something stemming from
an honest utopian desire?
Questioning Foster’s
scheme for Masdar, Matt
Lewis reaches revealing
conclusions on the market-
Volume 16

ing of design in the Gulf. 74


In a world in which human egos dominate, where more to develop the goals for environmental sustainability.
is better, bigger and taller are the only aspirations. This group should be able to address all three conditions
Places like Dubai are an architect’s playground. Here with a strong level of responsibility and accountability.
we see one ego trip followed by another through an Environmentally Masdar is a highly calculated
architecture of excess. system designed to achieve carbon neutrality. This will
In a parallel world, however, the Mies van der be pursued through the following methods: zero waste,
Rohe’s words ring true again, though in a different sustainable transport, local and sustainable materials,
context. ‘Less is more’ now applies to our carbon local and sustainable food, and sustainable water.
footprint and an architecture of performance. Yet Most of these are not new sustainable practices,
as these two worlds begin to intersect a new compe- nor are the specific systems applied, they are just
tition is born – the race to become the world’s first happening on an unprecedented scale. Most impor-
sustainable city. tantly of all these is the area in which Foster + Partners

US Abu Dhabi, an early front-runner in this race,


has already developed some promising strategies for
addressing the problem of polluting cultures. Global
alliances have been created as part of the Masdar
Initiative, a long-term plan for the sustainable future of
Abu Dhabi. This program will help Abu Dhabi position
itself as global leader in renewable energy and sus-
tainable technologies. The flagship of the program
will be the Masdar development, a carbon neutral city
master planned by Foster + Partners. Given the desert
environment, the Initiative’s commitment, and the
financial backing of the Abu Dhabi Future Energy
Company, Foster appears to be living a planner’s
fantasy – building a city from scratch.
In the process, however, Foster + Partners are
ignoring current discourse to create their own sus-
tainable utopia. One discourse is the conceptualization
of modern – or global – cities, the other, a means of
achieving sustainable environments. Both notions are
upended by a machine mentality and the creation of
a closed system. This negates any notion of the open,
continuous landscape that currently defines the next
generation of city models, and natural, sustainable
systems that are defined as a fluid area constantly
shifting between change and equilibrium.
Foster + Partners deliver a socially engineered
cocktail to the marketing team at the Abu Dhabi
Future Energy Company – a synthetic culture for their
synthetic city.
appear to hold the most conviction – mobility.
First and foremost, fossil fuels are not permitted
within Masdar. This naturally means no automobiles.
Residents and commuters will rely on a three-tiered
transportation network. The first mode is Abu Dhabi’s
light-rail which cuts through the heart of Masdar
creating a spine for spatial organization. The second
mode is a personal rapid transit system, or PRTs,
which will provide the principle means of travel above
the third mode, which encompasses foot traffic.
This third mode, effecting people most directly,
also has the largest impact on the urban form. Based on
studies from European urban development agencies,
a maximum walking distance has been set at 200m.
The plan is compact, producing narrow pedestrian
streets which further mitigates the climate.
Having solidified a maximum distance, Foster +
Partners can now calculate an appropriate design
density: roughly 400 people/hectare. They can thus
calculate a population range within which Masdar can
maintain its performance.
What is curious, however, is the reliance on an
outside workforce to make this plan viable. Only 30%
of the development is envisaged for a resident work-
force. Does this mean Masdar is only 30% efficient?

Economically the Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company


is in a position to invest $4 billion of its own capital to
initiate the project, but will have to leverage its assets
Located adjacent to the Abu Dhabi International to borrow the rest. To help the project pay for itself
Airport, nearly 20 miles outside the center of Abu Dhabi, they have raised funds on in an unprecedented manner
Foster + Partners employ the traditional planning and on an unprecedented scale. Since Masdar will
techniques used to build ancient Arab cities. The city perform better than any pollution regulations require,
is populated with dense, low-rise buildings to create they are selling carbon emission offsets to companies
a compact community with narrow streets for climate that do not meet local standards. This should provide
mitigation. All this is contained within a city wall which an immediate return on investment, in addition to the
defines the 6 square kilometer development. Con- annual savings of a carbon neutral system.
struction has already begun on this ambitious project, With a built-in method to reduce the time frame
with completion of the first phase expected in 2010. of recouping initial costs, Masdar has the opportunity
Subsequent phases will span 8-10 years before Masdar to address even longer term issues of economic sus-
reaches its target resident workforce of 47,500. tainability. Therefore the real question becomes: how
Measuring the success of a project like this can does this city create a built-in system for sustainable
be difficult, but there does exist a generally accepted economic growth?
definition of sustainable development. The criteria are To this end, the infrastructure is being developed
simple, suggesting that three conditions – around the research and development of sustainable
environmental, economic, and social sustainability – technologies anchored by the Masdar Institute of
must be met but execution proves extremely difficult. Science and Technology. The aim is to foster innovation
To face this challenge, a ‘dream team’ of sorts and funding to attract current global leaders to
has been assembled to support proper development. relocate their operations to Masdar which will permit
Volume 16

Foster + Partners are providing the planning and the them to build a financial foundation through the
Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company will provide the cultivation of products and expertise.
financial support to cover the projected $22 billion Reaping the economic windfall of this emerging
price tag. The World Wildlife Fund is the last member market, Masdar can leverage its early entry to become
75 of this team and has been brought in as a resource the authority of the sustainable movement.
Images courtesy Foster + Partners
Aerial and street rendering of Masdar Development

Images courtesy Foster + Partners

76
Volume 16
Socially this project becomes more controversial crisis. We don’t have to look as far as China to under-
purely from the large pendulum swing required to stand Masdar as a contextual response to the Persian
move Abu Dhabi from one side of the sustainable Gulf, however. Additionally in the UAE, Ras al Khaimah
spectrum to the other. Lifestyles must change, or and Dubai join the ranks of Abu Dhabi, where
so the thinking goes among Foster + Partners. In their Rem Koolhaas has planned Gateway Eco City and
proposal they have rewritten the script of daily life Waterfront City.
within the walls of Masdar. Strikingly similar.
Starting with a blank slate – alas, tabula rasa is This leads me to ask: is an architecture of control
back – they are able to eliminate contradictory precon- the only means to create sustainable development?
ceived lifestyles. With a fresh palette Foster + Partners Perhaps, but perhaps this isn’t the right question.
plan to create new standards of consumption and Koolhaas would posit this clear definition of the urban
waste through a process of redefining norms. This edge is a means of trapping urban energy rather than
new, sustainable lifestyle is contextualized against keeping it out. This sounds viable, but what we’re
the maximum capacity of Masdar, a limit visualized seeing can be attributed to creating a product.
by the wall zone. Masdar, for instance, appears to leave very little
This perimeter wall serves as a gate, filter and room for error, almost as if it has been conceived
container of purity. Within these walls the air is cleaner, as a packaged product. After all, each party of the
the people are smarter and all systems are in harmony. partnership is out there marketing Masdar’s carbon
Perfection, right? neutrality and they need a way to measure it, achieve
Visitors and residents will have to get used to it and defend it. So, perhaps we’re over-analyzing
checking their liberties, like a ‘potentially dangerous’ here and it is purely about selling utopian sustainability
bag at a museum of antiquity, at the City Gate. to the investors.
Residents’ cars will be confined to parking garages Excuse me, my PRT is here...
within the wall, and not permitted within their own city.
Commuters who do not rely on public transport will
also be stripped of their cars at the perimeter. Thus
Foster + Partners have replaced the car culture with
a ‘personal rapid transport’ culture, leaving the
machine analogy not far off.
Of course this does not solve all the problems.
There is still water use, energy consumption and
waste to optimize. Foster + Partners are not blind
to these challenges.
‘Individual behavior can have a significant effect
on energy consumption, and thus [greenhouse gas]
emissions. Individuals accustomed to a certain mode
of living to could find it hard to instantly change their
behavior once working/living at Masdar.’

Foster + Partners
They have developed a few tactics to negotiate deeply
ingrained individual habits. The first of these they
borrowed from the public health profession: education.
Promoting awareness is not just for condoms anymore.
The second strategy is much more of what we’d
expect from an architect. Their mission is to make
‘energy- and water-efficient living as ‘easy’ as possible.’
Apparently all you need is an intelligent energy manage-
ment system, a little calibration, and the residents of
Masdar are capable of new lifestyles.
This path is likely chosen because incentives
do not yet exist to encourage people to make the
necessary, radical changes required of a carbon neutral
environment. Thus, Foster + Partners must rely on
these ancient Arab methods of city planning to control
Masdar’s environment. Control applies to both the
residents and the climate.
So, is Masdar purely about social engineering
or is there some broader context at work?
On one hand, traditional planning methods help
mitigate the climate, but they also serve a not-so-
Volume 16

hidden agenda. On the other, we are seeing similar


eco-cities across the East for China is joining the
Middle East in the development of sustainable cities.
In this way Foster + Partners’ model may appear to be
77 a popular trend to address the looming environmental
HIN
Chinese Dreams
Society Under Construction
Neville Mars
Chinese cities are mush-
rooming and the Chinese
Communist Party’s creation
of an urban, middle-class
society seems extremely
successful. Yet urban growth
engenders great contra-
dictions, which puts pressure
on the Chinese dream.
Neville Mars shows how fear
is dominant in planning and
how China is becoming a
Volume 16

globally connected fortress. 78


Rise and shine Scattered dreams
With Deng Xiaoping’s accession to power China Witnessing China’s miracle on a daily basis, the con-
launched its last and boldest dream: individual pros- trast between contemporary hazards and China’s
perity. In order to realize this dream it opened its eyes high hopes for 2020 and beyond is not quite so stark.
to an alternative reality, its doors to the global economy Responding to crisis has been key to China’s success.
and conformed to market pragmatism. Since then, From the inception of reform, every successive wave
a massive wave of progress has engulfed the nation. of change has had its origin in a disaster. Without a
The success has amazed friend and foe. Today blueprint for a socialist market economy, transition
‘getting rich is glorious’ may have lost its appeal as has been a bumpy ride; urban development has been
a party slogan, but it has expanded to become the the pragmatic and often relentless tool. As such it has
intrinsic motivation of much of China’s population. become increasingly streamlined. The socialist market
Spreading fast beyond the initial testing grounds of hybrid can expedite any procedure, switching freely
the special economic zones, this growing prosperity between public and private operations. The Maoist
has nurtured a solid and considerable middle-class and dream of collective ownership is auctioned off in bits

RE
spurred the construction of industry and cities across
the country. These cities are modern China’s trade-
marks and the objective of the Chinese dream: a soci-
ety of middle-class consumers settled in modern cities.
The aspirations of individuals shaping contem-
porary urbanization resembles the American dream of
the fifties, and with rural populations in the developing
world flocking together in megaslums, this must be
the core component of the global dream. But what is
the modern city’s form? How can it be realized? And
what kind of society does it beget?

Fearful symmetry
The precise translation of the Beijing 2008 Olympic
slogan is ‘one world, one dream’. To Chinese people
its interpretation is obvious: ‘the Beijing Olympics will
show the world that we can obtain the same living
standard as the West’. For those living the dream, the
TV commercials of cars gliding past a backdrop of
shiny new towers is proof that (this time) it is real. Con-
fronted with so much progress, questioning the quality
of the future seems senseless. Mesmerized by new-
found consumerism, the young middle-class looks
ahead and marches on.
The central government is increasingly aware
that this passionate adoption of Western-style progress
can no longer suffice, however. There are imminent
to a mass of companies and individuals wrestling for
supremacy or survival. The state launches its mega-
projects, while solo developers sear holes into the
once communal carpet to create pristine patches for
hassle-free privatization. According to the one-step-
up model, bottom-level migrant workers send wages
back home to their villages, while urbanites buy their
first apartment in the city. Plot by plot urbanization
facilitates a controlled unraveling of capitalism with
Chinese characteristics.

‘By 2020, China will complete the building of a


comfortable society…cities will lead the way.’
Premier Wen Jiabao

Leapfrog
The world observes the Chinese dream with anxiety
and anticipation. Set against a backdrop of diminishing
resources, a leapfrog development, so often vaunted
yet seldom observed, is today demanded from China
in order to align progress with global sustainability
goals. Radical solutions are required to move beyond
such fuel-dependent landscapes as those produced
by the western model of modernization. Indeed, to
leapfrog effectively this knowledge must be found
and implemented nation-wide and now. In 2001 just
such a plan for leapfrog urbanization came from within
dangers: it will exclude the bulk of China’s citizens China. The then state minister of civil affairs, Doje
from much of the progress being made and present Cering, proposed the construction of 400 new cities
the poorest with the bill for its rampant environmental by the year 2020, or 20 new cities per year of about
degradation. Yet the ongoing economic boom has 1 million residents each. This grand scheme sought to
instilled its leaders with a towering confidence to accommodate the projected flood of rural migrants
respond. They have acquired the latest architectural and springboard China to the level of a model,
and biotechnological techniques from the West. In industrialized nation.
reality the unique conditions contemporary China faces The obscene amount of new construction
demand new paradigms. There has been no oppor- became the starting point for the Dynamic City
tunity to assess the products of a socialist market Foundation’s (DCF) research and publication.1 The
economy, simply no time to reflect on its outcome. desire to conceive a complete urban system is highly
The Chinese dream is not being updated. seductive. In theory, a city built all at once could be
Instead every new problem – many of which free from all the accumulated problems and clutter,
present themselves on a scale previously unseen – is and outsmart the predicaments with which ageing
simply countered with a plan for its removal by the cities struggle. We soon discovered that reality is all
year 2020, 2030 or 2050. In perfect symmetry all too often more extreme than China’s big ambitions.
contemporary shortcomings are directly mirrored to During the period 1978–1998 China built more than
become outstanding objectives for the future. China 400 cities.
now boasts radical schemes for (almost) every aspect Then, while urbanization continued to accelerate,
of society, from welfare to technological innovation, suddenly no new cities were recorded. The birth of a
Volume 16

environmental sustainability and moon landings. If Chinese city is a matter of policy. Detailed criteria are
achieved, China will become not just a superpower, formulated to prescribe the ratio of urban to rural
but the world’s most advanced nation. The West inhabitants in an area, and its rural to urban economic
must hold its breath and believe, if only for a lack output. This is clear-cut, but it often describes environ-
79 of alternatives. ments at odds with our understanding of a city.
Photos and images: Neville Mars / DCF
Moreover, the regulations are easily altered. The current urban growth. Within the time span of a single gener-
political climate in China is geared toward the con- ation it nurtures consecutive ideologies of planning.
struction of new cities but preferably without granting Observing M.U.D. formations fractures the persistent
expensive city benefits or loosing central control. beliefs in both the grassroots city and the orchestrated
environment. At the street level, China’s new urban
Slick and split cities realms look perfectly micro planned while the same
Unofficial records indicate that some one hundred polished island developments on the urban scale
new towns of substantial size have mushroomed merge together to reveal macro-organic systems. The
across China in the last decade in the form of mining building blocks of China’s cities are designed in days;
towns, tourist resorts, suburban enclaves, factory the ensuing M.U.D. configurations are then fixed for
villages, etc. These have taken different forms, but are decades.
always clearly delineated from the preexisting. They
are slick cities – clean residential strongholds fortified Midway
against their MUDdled surroundings. Compared to Neither leapfrog ambitions nor big schemes and out-
their predecessors, slick cities look and feel smooth, standing objectives acknowledge the reality that China
but there is a price to pay. Slick cities are by nature is now halfway done. 2008 marks the 30th anniversary
static. Their walled off space is unyielding to change. of China’s open door policy and subsequent economic
The public domain is reduced to the voids in between rise. If current growth rates continue, in a further
buildings. Having exploded in size, their architecture 30 years China’s GDP will exceed that of the USA’s.
negates the necessity for planning beyond technocratic Other significant markers are coming up including the
transit space. Urban life as we knew it, so dependent shift in employment from primary to tertiary industry
on human interaction, is dissolved. Now fear has and the move from predominantly rural to predomi-
entered the planning procedures. The congested nantly urban settlements. But urban speed, bigness,
points are crowd managed with the insertion of ever and copy and paste practices are only the most visible
larger plazas and walkways. Planning has become aspects of flash organics. Rural China is also half
the practice of moving people out and voids in. The way done. Here too fear dominates planning. Though
expansion and fragmentation of the city accelerates. urban development is encouraged, the millions of
China’s slick cities are loathed but also loved, urban migrants from the countryside are barred from
both at home and abroad. European architects con- settling there and are soon deflected back home.
demn their soulless spaces, while Africa, the Middle Distrust of slums or potentially unstable concentrations
East and India herald their scale, speed and rationality. of ex-farmer communities has kept China’s citizen
The Indian Prime Minister hopes to make Mumbai registration system in place. It enforces a black and
(currently 60% slums) into a city just like Shanghai by white division between people with urban or rural
2010. But there is little room for nostalgia, nor reason status. Yet this division is increasingly outdated by the
to glorify Chinese modernity. For millennia the Chinese blurred spatial conditions it produces. City edges
have used cities as a means to safeguard the vast melt with floating workers congregating in the villages
expanse of its rule. As perfect beacons of power they just outside the city proper, while remittances sent
express(ed) the distant control of a harmonious back home spur village growth. A fine haze of nearly
society. These were the first fast cities, the first slick a million villages covers the landscape and accom-
cities. Today successful growth continues to be a modates almost a billion people. Planning policies
precarious balancing act between tight control and intended to stimulate modern centers are effectively
hectic release. Exclusive compounds temporarily urbanizing China outside of the cities. Though mutually
push informal growth aside, while in reality the walled interdependent, the two component parts of this
enclaves are engulfed by the villages of the con- urbanizing landscape betray deep schisms. Drawing
struction workers who built them. in unwarranted financial and natural resources from
Slick cities naturally generate schizophrenic urban across the country, its conspicuous economic engines
growth. Across the river or train track on an empty are kept strong. Big solutions such as the south to
plot of land the town is reinvented from scratch. north water transportation project pumps water across
Implementation of self-contained designs ignore all the country to the arid north and artificially maintains
previous incarnations. A split city is born: the new lush and cool cities. But the villages in between have
center rapidly turns its back on the old core. In this no taps on these pipelines.
context even existing cities should be regarded as
tabula rasae waiting only to be cleared. Creeping Xiao Kang
Although propagating massive schemes and extreme
City organics projects on the periphery, the Chinese Communist
The goal to build 400 new cities in 20 years is not quite Party (CCP) centers its trust for the future on the
as absurd as the aspiration to attempt their design. growing middle class – a trust in well-contained self-
Any traditional notion of planning will be inadequate organization that for the moment seems to be paying
when urbanization occurs faster than planners can map off. The ‘harmonious society’ projected onto the
and it is driven by constructions at the two ends of the future is steadily carved out today with every single
spectrum: the macro-planned and the micro-organic. producer turned consumer. Confronted with a sizzling
Volume 16

While the planners plan and deliberate, aggregated hot economy and surrounded by dizzying construction,
projects feed the urban landscape in the form of more the average individual is seen by the party as the
Market-driven Unintentional Development, or M.U.D.. source of stable progress. The benefits should slowly
This is the force of China’s hyper-speed, a chang- creep outward from the center to the periphery to
ing landscape that can be viewed as a laboratory for eventually reach the countryside. 80
81
Volume 16

Eurostyle in Chongqing
Window with opaque glass because most
of the view is too close by. This would defy
the villa marketing
Yet while societal shifts first seem to run ahead
of spatial organization, urban patterns soon reveal
their domination over how society evolves. As China’s
economic reforms unfold, the tendency to produce
M.U.D. formations accelerates. The grip the urban
configuration has on Chinese society tightens; the
dream to design a city or society slips away.

Parallel worlds
The Chinese dream is at odds with the CCP’s grip on
power. Widespread urbanization taxes centralized
control. Exclusivity clashes with a harmonious society.
Ultimately a designed society contradicts the empower-
ment of the individual. Behind the scenes the Chinese
dream is shifting.
Building cities will shape society, but a modern
society cannot be shaped by urban construction. The
rigid structure of the self-contained city as a tool of
control is challenged by two distinctly dynamic forces:
the market and the masses. Unaddressed, urbanization
will continue to generate conflicting realities – discord
at the heart of the socialist market hybrid that resonates
through China’s bid for progress. Its leaders are
increasingly demanding on the global political stage,
yet internal decisions remain obscured. China is the
basin of global production and trade, yet its economy
is opaque. It is opening up to international corpora-
tions, yet its citizens remain barred from global infor-
mation flows. China is dreaming up parallel worlds;
building a globally connected fortress.
China will undoubtedly evolve and mature. It has
successfully navigated many obstacles to achieve the
last three decades of continuous growth. A business-
as-usual scenario is not improbable. A good part of
China will live the Chinese dream, accommodated
in bigger and brighter cities than those that exist any-
where else. However, a strong urban middle class
as envisioned for 2020 could bespeak a new society.
In 2007 individuals in China were awarded genuine
property rights (perhaps the most profound legal
change since the birth of the republic). With the con-
sumer-homeowner placed at the heart of urban desire
mechanisms, future development will succeed or fail
in relation to people as opposed to state objectives.
Unwittingly, the middle class may unlock the fortress.

Beyond dreaming
To move beyond the world’s factory floor and toward
an economy of ideas China will have to harness the
expanding needs of its individuals. If China is truly to
throw off its Communist past, it will need to have many
dreams for its cities and allow competition among
them. The DCF research forms an investigation into
what, in theory, China could attain. Uncompromising
and often self-critical alternatives aim to inspire a new
course of urbanization. As such it has become an
investigation into architecture’s own long-standing
dream: the design of the city. While aroused by a love
for everything new, the inabilities of planning and
DIY box of the Beijing Boom Tower – a vertical neighborhood
design have not been of great concern in contemporary for a segregated society. This manual explains how you can
China. The new Chinese city represents another make your own ideal city block. A design that adheres to
Volume 16

utopian concept: a society under construction. China’s harsh market logic and aspirations of its upwardly
mobile citizens, but is gates and guards free. A careful
gradient of privacy and prosperity

1 www.burb.tv
82
Photos and images: Neville Mars / DCF

‘We’ll see a forest of chimneys from here’,

From rubble to riches


(in a split Shanghai)
Mao Zedong on Tiananmen Square, 1949.
Mao’s vision of Beijing stated at the birth
of the republic was a forest of chimneys.
This panned out, just not with factories but
in residential tower blocks

Hong Kong homeowners


happy in Guangzhou
Volume 16

83
Manifesto or City
Interview with Pier Vittorio Aureli

EW
by Christian Ernsten
Architect Pier Vittorio Aureli of
Dogma billed their design for
a whole new Administration
Capital in South Korea as
a manifesto against modern-
day facade cities, in his words
‘wallscapes’. They proposed a
new strategy for engineering
urban consciousness by de-
signing a grid made up of …
walls. The question remains as
to whether the South Koreans
Volume 16

will embrace this endeavor. 84


Christian Ernsten What ambitions did you have for means, could suggest an idea of the city, an idea that
the design of the new South Korean administrative – as I have said – goes far beyond architecture but that
city? nevertheless can be staged with architecture. When
Pier Vittorio Aureli Our ambition was to free architec- working on the administrative city project we were very
ture from an obligation toward extravagance, from interested in the early minimalist work of Aldo Rossi,
the useless and humiliating invention of new forms. In in the work of OMA from the late 80s and early 90s, in
other words, we were aiming for an architecture free city projects by Ludwig Hilberseimer, but also in Pierre

ITY
from its current self-celebration as ‘design’ and that Patte’s Partie du plan general de Paris – a bizarre but
would, instead, participate in the form of the city. extraordinary project, inspired by Place Vendôme – in
This was an ambition that we as Dogma – Martino which the French eighteenth-century theorist proposed
Tattara and myself – shared with Kersten Geers and a city made by a constellation of ‘urban rooms’.
David van Severen from Office and this why we asked CE How does the wall-based grid proposed in
them to join us and enter the competition as a single your manifesto relate to your analysis of political
team. The project was deliberately developed as a and cultural habits and tradition in South Korea?
thesis about the relationship between architecture and PVA We executed the competition project with little
the city rather than as design solution to a competition knowledge of the cultural and political context. This
brief. This is why the project was done very intuitively. is the position we took. Designers trying to simulate
It was executed by means of a manifesto and very a kind of sensitivity to a context they have only known
few drawings and images. No statistics, no diagrams, through Google images and Wikipedia is one of archi-
no ‘research’. tecture’s major problems today. In order to avoid this
CE By using the competition to draw attention embarrassing situation we decided to be as abstract
to the relationship between architecture and the and conventional as possible. So the entire grammar
city did you make the outcome of the design a of the project was reduced to the square and the grid
disciplinary experiment? because these forms have no specific regional identity.
PVA Unlike architecture, the city cannot be reduced The issue of the wall can be related to something
to any single disciplinary issue. It is simply impossible. fundamentally Asian. For example, in ancient Chinese
This is obvious and this why you always have to ad- city planning cities were designed as a set of walls.
dress the idea of the city from a strategic and specific Unlike Western cities where monumental structures
starting point. Our starting point was architectural played a crucial role in expressing ‘cityness,’ in Chinese
form, which is one of the most crucial manifestations and also in Korean cities the wall is the dominant datum.
of the city and which fundamentally raises many issues, From the external walls, to the ruler’s palace, to the
arguments and subjects. This is why I don’t see the domestic residence everything is enclosed by walls.
problem of architectural form as the conclusion of the Although this was the ancient form of cities, the anthro-
city project but on the contrary as one of its possible pological inheritances from this kind of space remains
starting points, as a conjecture about something that visible today. For example, it indicates the collective
naturally goes far beyond architecture. and holistic nature of Asian societies in which the
CE What instruments were you using to realize notion of public space does not exist.
your ambitions? CE To which urgencies were you responding in
PVA I would say that there is only one instrument: South Korean society? Or what – to use your own
architecture. By architecture I mean a formal language words – will be this city’s ‘political foundations’?
that establishes boundaries, rather than just producing PVA The political foundation of any city – ‘good’ or
images. The project of a city is more about an archi- ‘bad’ – involves the determination of a collective
tecture which forms boundaries, an architecture that subject to inhabit a determined place.
acts as a limit, rather than one concerned with the As I said, when we entered the competition we
design of shapes. Boundaries are the very grammar of had almost no clue about South Korea or the site of
the city, not only in physical terms, but also in social, the competition. We were interested in the brief itself,
cultural and above all political terms. which called for a new city project. We thought such
CE You were designing against ‘wallscapes’. a brief was the ideal opportunity for us to design some-
What is your own desired idea or image of a city? thing other than another landmark and iconic building,
PVA It was a city made by the most abstract and con- which seems to be the only way to practice architec-
ventional architecture possible: a composition of ture today. Given our ignorance of the site and of the
inhabitable cruciform slabs in the form of walls whose particular society that would inhabit that place, we
outline we simply designed. At the same time, we abstracted the topic by critically speculating on the
wanted to render this abstract and conventional basis of what the brief presented us in the form of
architecture as monumental as possible. We wanted expectations for the city. Of course, competition briefs
architecture to be less self-important and more con- are simply rhetorical devices, but by reading them,
cerned with what it is meant to support: the life of the by reading in between the lines, one finds critical clues
city. This is why we choose to use the cruciform slab upon which to act.
for walls and the courtyard as the basic forms of the The brief asked for a new city almost two hundred
city: we saw the city as a framed stage in which archi- kilometers from Seoul in which all South Korean gov-
tecture is important, but only as a background. ernment functions would be relocated. This relocation
Volume 16

CE Have you looked at other administrative cities is a very dramatic choice with strong political con-
in the world and how these were designed? notations having to do with security and the tendency
PVA No, we were more interested in city projects made of many Asian states to function like corporations.
by architects. We were specifically interested in how Indeed the brief clearly asked for a sort of State version
85 architects, drawing on the very limited scope of their of ‘Silicon Valley’, but unlike many of the new cities
The city as composition of ‘urban rooms’: Pierre Patte,
‘Partie du plan general de Paris’, 1765.

Typical Seoul housing slabs called ‘Apathè’


along the Hang River.

Volume 16

86
emerging from zero, this one was envisioned by the buildings maintains a certain principle at the level of
State as a quasi-capital city. For us this was a very the spatial composition of the city. This spatial compo-
interesting and controversial issue to stress in the sition is seen not as a conclusion, but as the beginning
project. And I think that this controversy – a State of a dialectical process of confrontation between
acting as an extra-state entity – is its true political what is fixed and what changes. This dialectical quality
foundation. We decided to make the tension between is missing from the schemes you mention because in
the necessary rigidity of the public ‘background’ and spite of the grid system and the square form, those
the overwhelming ‘foreground’ of private interest projects are very generic in terms of their spatial com-
(the extra-state) explicit. The project was a grammar position. Both are either too overdetermined in terms
based on a set of very rigid principles established to of design or too generic in terms of urban principle.
act dialectically and critically in relationship with the CE How were you engineering community life?
very speed of development of its content. PVA To be honest I’m rather skeptical, if not openly
When I later visited and studied South Korea critical, of both ‘engineering’ and ‘community’. As you
I realized that its extreme economic development, know, engineering is not simply a practice but, philo-
framed by the cold war with North Korea on one hand sophically speaking, a paradigm. Engineering was
and economic competition with China and Japan on not only the art of solving purely technical problems,
the other, made South Korean society very anxious and but by virtue of its scientific status and presumed
uncertain about its social, cultural and political future. scientific neutrality it became the most efficient way
For example, buildings and places are very short-lived to ‘territorialize’ the management of cities. Society as
in Seoul. A building is considered ‘old’ after twenty an aggregate of depoliticized individuals is the product
years. Almost every Korean has had to relocate, some of economic engineering. And the very concept of
unwillingly. This process has made Korean society, urbanization itself is a product of this ‘political’ instru-
especially the middle class, both extremely confident mentalization of engineering. In a certain sense our
about economic development and extremely confused project questions the very paradigmatic nature of
about where this economic development will lead. engineering: its fundamentally non-political status
If I can argue the project retrospectively, I would which evades political conflict for the sake of statis-
say that instead of camouflaging this difficult con- tical consensus.
dition with good intentions, taking the image of ‘sus- My skepticism regarding the concept of ‘com-
tainable’ or ‘friendly’ design, we have made the tension munity’ necessarily follows this line of thought. Today’s
explicit. I strongly believe that consciousness is the communities are in one way or another the product
very premise of any political action. This political action of increasingly sophisticated forms of economic
should not necessarily be ‘designed’ by the architect, capitalistic engineering which no longer operates
but the architect can strategically address the issue, according to the old model of ‘civil society’, but rather
in other words, make it evident on its own terms. fragments society into communities. If these com-
CE How do you see this role for the architect munities are made up of those who are ‘included’ or
materialized in an actual design intervention conversely by those who are ‘excluded’, the very
for this city? nature of their formation still reflects the way capitalism
PVA The architect’s contribution is the establishment of patterns its population.
a grammar for the city. In our project the grammar con- CE In your manifesto you proclaim that your
sists of defining simple principles such as how buildings design wants to kick-start a discussion regarding
are composed and how they establish boundaries. a new idea of civic communality? Can you explain
I don’t see this grammar as something in itself, but as this and, in relation to this, how do you think your
something that eventually supports (or contradicts) city will be used?
other factors which are out of the architect’s control, PVA We used a cruciform slab to compose a court-
factors which the architect inevitably must confront. yard, a Hof, as the very basic urban component. This
CE How does your attempt to emphasize the typology of urban space has a very interesting history,
flexibility of the city differ from Foster’s Masdar appearing in many different civilizations and cultures.
project or OMA’s RAK Gateway project in which In our case, it became the very logic of the project
both attempt to create a certain urban density? by radically substituting the traditional grid of streets
PVA I don’t know these two projects very well, since with repetitions of Hof. In so doing we wanted to
we did our project in 2005, before both Foster’s Masdar emphasize on one hand that to live in a city is first of
and OMA’S RAK Gateway were developed. all to co-exist, to cooperate, to share space whether
From what I can see and understand from pub- you like it or not. On the other hand, we wanted to
lications, and apart from the mantra of sustainability achieve this sense of the communal with the most
(the politically correct claim these projects make), it generic and abstract form so that the idea of civic
seems these two projects are quite obvious schemes communality would transcend the problem of identity.
based on the traditional, liberal principle of a grid of CE How does the idea of the Hof relate to cultural
streets to be filled in as densely as possible. Precisely practices in South Korea? And to what extent is
in order to criticize this principle, we inverted this rule the introduction of this typology thought through
in our project. The grid became a sequence of cruci- as a social engineering strategy?
form buildings that would contain and thus limit the PVA The monumental Hof was designed to host public
Volume 16

70% of the ‘expected program’ (mostly housing and facilities such as libraries, schools and so on and also
office), while the courtyard would be fully filled by contributes a sense of monumentality to a typology.
the ‘extra’ or ‘unpredictable’ program the growth of Until that point the social housing slab was conceived
which would inevitably clash with the frame made by only through technocratic policies of hygiene and
87 the cruciform buildings. The typology of the cruciform political control.
When I went to Seoul for the first time I was
impressed, as is everyone who visits this city, by how
it is entire built according to one housing typology:
the vertical slab of apartments, what the Koreans call
Apathè. This typology, built in order to urbanize Seoul
as quickly as possible, resembles a realization of
Hilberseimer’s famous representation of the Hochstadt,
the endless sequence of concrete slabs. Today
everybody seems to hate this typology, but I’m very
sympathetic to it precisely because of its unmasked
brutality, its genuinely generic appearance and the fact
that in spite of its exterior monotony, inside it allows
great comfort and flexibility. In Seoul rich and poor
share this same housing type. Lately, however, a new
generation of young architects encouraged by local
developers, are proposing to counter this typology
with tower complexes taking the very form of capita-
lism. These new hyper-designed towers such as Mass
Studies’ residential project, emblematically called
‘Seoul Commune’ are in fact clusters of luxurious and
iconic apartments designed to isolate and distinguish
the rich from the rest of the city’s inhabitants. As we
developed our project we wanted to counter this
tendency by ‘critically’ going back to the Apathè type.
However instead of replicating this type as it already
exists, we proposed a cruciform composition so that
the type would establish a specific spatial situation
on the ground. In this way, I realized later, we devel-
oped a project with a relationship to one of the most
impressive architectural complexes built in South
Korea between 1405 and 1485, the Changdeokung,
an imperial palace built as a city and composed only
of a labyrinthine system of enclosing walls. This is very
ironic vis-à-vis our project. The Changdeokung was
built as the Ruler’s residence who sought to detach
himself from the city which was seen as insecure.
This concern with insecurity is the very reason behind
Capitalist Realism: Mass Studies,
the South Korean’s interest in developing this project ‘Seoul Commune’, 2006.
Multifunctional City.
Our project wanted to offer workers a place
to make them conscious of their identity as a class,
rather than as just a specific community within this city.
This is why we referred to the generic and monumental
type of the Hof as well as to the generic type of the
Apathè. Our project emphasizes the contradiction
between the ‘facts’ of this city – the need for security
– and the possibility for a ‘class consciousness’, two
things that are, in fact, opposed.
‘A Grammar for the City’,
South Korea, 2005

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88
‘A Grammar for the City’
Competition for the new Administrative Multi-func-
tional city, South Korea, 2005 (first prize ex-aequo)

Location Chungcheongnam Province


(120 km from Seoul)
Architects DOGMA (Pier Vittorio Aureli,
Martino Tattara) & OfficeKGDVS (Kersten Geers,
David Van Severen)

Project Context In May 2005 a specially-appointed


Presidential Committee announced the opening up of
the process to construct a new multi-functional admin-
istrative city in South Korea. Concern for the uneven
development of the rest of the country in comparison
to Seoul’s metropolitan area as a result of the quick

figurative language of the city. Model for a


settlement of 500.000 inhabitants, 2007-08.
economic growth experienced by northeast Asia over

Dogma, ‘Stop City’: typothesis for a non-


the last decades finally motivated radical decentral-
ization strategies which included the relocation of the
main political-administrative institutions to a new city.
In addition to housing 12 ministries, the new city,
which was originally proposed for 500,000 inhabitants
within 73 km2 (28 square miles), had to take into
account other activities typically found in any multi-
functional city with special emphasis on industrial,
educational and cultural aspects. The location chosen
was the basin of the Geum River in the province of
Chungcheongnam, 120 km (75 miles) south of Seoul.
The first phase of this process consisted of organ-
izing an international competition whose winning pro-
ject would be defined as the basis for the development
of the city’s Master Plan. Construction was planned
to start in July 2007 to be definitely finished by 2030.
Although the jury (which included David Harvey,
Winy Maas, and Arata Isozaki) awarded our project
first prize, the Presidential Committee for the new
Multifunctional Administrative City found it too icono-
clast and brutal and in conflict with the Committee’s
desire for an iconic and complex city form. They ulti-
mately selected the other first prize scheme presented
by the Spanish architect Andres Perea Ortega as the
basis for the new city.

‘A Grammar for the City’,


South Korea, 2005
Volume 16

89
Free Urbanism

ENI
Jeroen Heester
According to urbanist Jeroen Heester,
the urban planning profession is still
in love with its outdated tools and
planning ideals. Since inhabitants
know what they want, where they want
it and how they want it, imposed
planning and design have become
partly redundant, he argues.
Because social and economic
functions are shifting from the physical
domain towards the digital domain,
mobile and programmatic behavior
changes as well.
Both changes alter urban life in such
way that it requires adjustments in
urban planning principles. As a result,
a planning attitude that facilitates and
plans the free will of individuals can
Volume 16

be considered. 90
High urban density generates subcultures. It stands While in fact, all brands were more or less platform
for a concentration of diverse programs and results variations from the same Ford Motor Company.
in a safe and lively street scene, 24 hours a day. The In other words, in a society where most of the
confrontation of subcultures is supposed to generate choices seem to be cosmetic, equally cosmetically
mutual exchange, to facilitate debate and to stimulate oriented architects and urban planners emerge. They
an independent state of mind. It represents modernism are not bad by definition, but merely the manifestation
as a makeable ideal for the city, and for oneself. of a new reality. Many cities today compete with one
The intended cultural exchange should take place another in order to attract to the same high income
primarily in public spaces. Urban planners therefore groups. As a result many cities today exhibit increas-

LO
manipulate build program and routes in order to pro- ingly similar characteristics and look ambitiously for
duce street scenes with idealistic atmospheres. This their own distinguishing image. Since cosmetic inter-
has led to an animated urban scenery that imposes our ventions are much cheaper and easier to realize than
most wishful self-image and represses all undesired physical ones, most cities choose for branding and
appearances of city life. It eliminates and represses slogans. City branding most cheaply defuses political
conditions for spatial and programmatic free will, unwillingness everywhere.
mirroring its perfectly composed appearance. From another angle, influences of residents
Only successfully proven urban typologies are penetrate into planning via local politics and under-
realized. Pedestrian shopping boulevards with their mine the planning process imposed ‘from above’. This
predictable apartment blocks are deliberately desired does not mean that the influence of residents and
and planned everywhere. At the same time requested politics is bad – on the contrary, it demonstrates the
gated communities, malls along highways and unre- dated character of the current urban planning approach
gulated industrial sites are simply not permitted. It is and strongly questions design as a planning tool.
precisely this self-censorship that confirms the impo- Politically instigated cost optimization also
tence of present-day urban planning. changes conditions for what happens on the urban
As a result, the current urban scenery displays planning scene: a welfare state has to pay many
aspects of schizophrenia everywhere. Between workers. If the public accepts and takes its own res-
‘successful’ shopping streets and squares that are ponsibilities its involvement will grow and many work-
successfully filled with daily life, fragments of irre- ers, civil servants and carers can be released from
pressible urbanity emerge. Streets in residential areas, their jobs. The side effect however is a population that
that were initially designed as lively spaces, look more applies lessons of self-responsibility in other areas too,
and more like functional parking spaces. Picturesque meaning that the authorities lose control and (as a
little shops in the Netherlands are given unfair pref- result) part of their power. This can be seen as an age-
erential treatment by forbidding their much more old dilemma, and might explain why reduced govern-
successful large-scale competitors along the highways. ment regulation is accompanied by mixed feelings.
The idealistically imposed, ghetto-free neighborhoods Finally, the growing influence of process manage-
and carefully composed building envelopes have ment in urban planning matters reduces aspects of
become the standard repertoire of urban planners. quality to its politically relevant elements. Politically
The social housing percentage applied in expensive unprioritized aspects of quality are interpreted as
areas (Amsterdam South and Center) stresses the needless stress for the process and therefore for the
intended residential mobility. Expensive apartments in project finance. It becomes increasingly difficult for
low income districts (Rotterdam South, Amsterdam- urban planners to explain that those monotonous new-
West) have sometimes been empty for years. In fact, build neighborhoods and dull building blocks result
imposed social housing in expensive new-build neigh- from a complex pro-market political process-manage-
borhoods is nowadays transferred to cheaper loca- ment, because urban planning seems to be the obvious
tions in order to safeguard project financing in the cause. However, when designers and planners come
expensive areas. At the same time businesses and up with incredibly inventive design solutions in the tight
companies are looking in irritation for locations that framework of cost management, its outcome immedi-
do not have to be so drastically cosmetic. ately produces a precedent for all future projects.
Are we still capable of accepting our reality In other words, urban planning appears increasingly
or is our need for makeability the negative, as well as focused to short-term temptations. The definition of
dramatically affirmative answer? urban planning implies long-term interventions, yet its
very existence requires it to serve its users and princi-
Reality pals. That is the predicament of planning. It explains
The examples described seem to underline the why the 4-year political term undermines the advisory
changing socio-cultural conditions in which the urban role of urban planning and reduces it chiefly to a tool
planning discipline is practiced. for implementing political promises. Realization of
The solid coalition between capitalism and de- these promises implies negotiating with market players,
mocracy has far-reaching influence, socially, because who serve opposite goals. Overhead costs of a wel-
both strive for the largest possible target group in order fare state are high and you cannot butter your bread
to survive. The fewer production runs, the higher the with idealism. Yet, it becomes clear that the outcome
relative profit, the stronger the (international) business of competing market players contradicts the concept
Volume 16

position, the fewer the redundancies and the more of idealistically planned street sceneries.
satisfied voters. Therefore the ‘frame’ of a certain brand
or type of appliance, is the benchmark for other brands. Technical changes and their social applications
Film shots of the casino parking lot in the James Bond are radically altering conditions for every day city life.
91 movie Casino Royale show eight different car brands. It can be seen as an extra argument that labels current
Modernist response; images of
‘beautiful people’ and ‘happy life’, 24/7.

Programmatic need as a rare private


development: a (possibly unique)
‘gated community’ in Amsterdam.

Forced nature of relating unrelated ingredients; Photos Jeroen Heester/STEARC


pedestrian area versus street level functions
(Jan van Duivevoordestraat in Amsterdam-Geuzenveld
and Oeverpad in Amsterdam-Osdorp).

92
Volume 16
planning principles as old fashioned and redundant. ween areas or neighborhoods. Vinex (Dutch govern-
Increased mobility and network coverage are ment-designated) sites and urban areas have long
‘partners in evolution’: their interactions increase the been displaying tabula rasa aspects and present
sense of detachment from a specific place. Vacation themselves as cosmetic ‘free-states’. Sunny vacation
flights are booked on the internet while instant MSN destinations have being doing that for years; replicas
messages tell how wonderful and what time it is over of the same Peruvian mountain villages are found world
there. Optical fiber cables and satellite links enhance wide. Thanks to globalization, specific urban conditions
the traditional physical place with wormhole-like aspects. are becoming the same everywhere. ‘Genius loci’
All this has made the city concept airborne and root- goes global, thereby sabotaging its own existence.
less, into a global awareness of urbanity. It has shifted
the physical aspects of urbanity to an awareness of Denial
cohesion: the knowledge that (digitally) you are and Recent projects demonstrate at street level the
can be everywhere. It leads to a new awareness of forced nature of the modernist denial of the Genius
physical place and the relationship with one’s own global: obligatory shops and services at street level
physical surroundings. The concept of place and its stay empty because fewer customers enter from the
use frees urbanity from its three-dimensional restraints. sidewalk. Consequently, building parts at street level
Residents’ (physical) mobility has burgeoned, are filled with parking garages or housing, sometimes
by highway, plane and optical fiber cable. For the first devaluing the traditional street into curtain showrooms
time the entire planet is within reach, so directly for so and blank garage walls. Community centers, as places
many people. Relations with the daily living or working to unite the neighborhood, are displaying more and
environment are partially being replaced by relations more ghetto-like features and quiet local parks are
with far-away places: ‘Oh, you know that coffee place illegally used as car parks at night. What were intended
on that big square?… you should take a look in the to be idyllic green landscaped courts in recent new-
side street behind – right at the beginning on your left build districts have partly been changed by developers
there’s a very special glassware shop, great stuff, into parking spaces for more cars. The functional
friendly man by the way.’ Meanwhile, at home on evolution of spatial necessities produces a new street
Google Earth a couple is experiencing their mountain scene far away from its modernist ideals. The relevant
hike for the third time. disciplines should not reject this change on account
At a local level, patterns of movement and related of nostalgia and value judgment, but should analyze
activities are also changing. The traditional combination its usefulness, necessity and appearance.
of daily travel destinations, resulting in route-linked That does not mean that public space and built
functions and behaviour is already changing though program lose their ties everywhere, but that changes
the internet has barely existed 15 years. Web shops should take place when the inadequacies of present-
operated by supermarkets, gift stores, travel agents day spatial problems are camouflaged by regulations
etc. combine mass media via the computer with daily for idealistic street scenes. Urban planning aspects
shopping…and they deliver to your door! This enables change since, of late, many of its users know what they
slow traffic flows to become faster and more efficient want, where they want it and how they want it. It is
because their functional tie with the build functions up to urban planning to facilitate this evolutionary path,
is gradually being replaced by competing functions as the continuous quest for the most current balance
elsewhere, on the internet. in spatial planning.
Shopping that still requires the shopper’s physical The forced representation of the present is
presence has become a concentrated collective that currently leading to an anonymous and unsafe frame-
takes over city centers. Stores that used to sell books, work (in social and physical terms) that points public
electronics and even tools have made way for image- life towards a second ‘ground plane’. Infrastructural
oriented shops that sell clothes, shoes, cosmetics, transit spaces, such as subway stations, airports and
cell phones and jewelry. The customary fast-food parking garages, serve as modern meeting places and
chains at the beginning or end of today’s shopping physically connect individuals with the global network.
street emphasize physical dependence. The way back to one’s own front door is long and
Essentially it comes down to this: if the use of lonely, however good the MP3 players may sound.
streets changes, the behavior and needs of its adjacent It is important to awaken to these changed
program (programmatic needs) changes as well. Seen conditions. Sticking to outdated design behavior
from that angle, it is not necessary to impose services strangles the individual’s development and freezes
and shops on the street level, to harmonize neighbor- society’s development. It undermines free will and the
hoods and to continue linearity of street façades present right of a discipline to exist. It slows down
everywhere. Globalization seems to generate urbanity social evolution and the feeling of happiness, using
as the large-scale sum of small-scale custom-made dated arguments at the cost of spatial planning’s
developments that exist independent of each other at credibility. It is the existential goal of urban planning
a local level, and interrelate again at a global level. to serve its target group and therefore keep itself
Nowadays you are more likely to speak anonymously up to date, rather than the reverse. Of course, not
on internet with other neighborhood residents than you everything should be released to the individual; some
are to meet them in your street. The fact that physical ‘steering’ still seems necessary in order to merge
Volume 16

aspects of city life (like objects or atmospheres that all the conflicting demands and wishes to guarantee
help identification with a specific place) are partially community. However, the fact that there is a know-
replaced by an awareness of its global setting, means ledge vacuum regarding the way the renewed
there is less a need for physical awareness of areas. conditions and wishes merge, compels the urban
93 This implies less need for the design of cohesion bet- design discipline to examine these issues.
If spatial developments are focused on the for possible uncontrolled growth of ‘little Warsaw’s,
desires and skills of individuals themselves, it might Chinatowns and illegally built pavilions and market
be possible for the Genius global to evolve. A new stalls. A policy of tolerance towards illegal inclinations
spatial and social equilibrium may be reached without facilitates amenities within everyone’s reach. Densities,
present-day suppressive legislation. The ability and shapes and measurements of plots are subject to
the will to accept this new reality is the prerequisite the battle for individual gain, with the losers obliged
for free urban planning. It reverses spatial legislation to creatively accept second choice.
and accepts that perhaps the only option is to permit An endless supply of available ‘apartment rights’
programmatic needs. makes densities possible where they are apparently
Design as a spatial planning tool is only useful desirable. In unpopular areas farmers might even buy
for planning ‘top-down’. As soon as spatial planning out residents. Functions compete with one another,
proceeds from the resident and user level, the design parasitize and collaborate in order to survive – a spin-
tool – at that level – is unnecessary, and architects off of an assumed need. (Re)location of functions is
can once more become design coaches, helping users as unpredictable as the variations in urbanity as a
build their dream houses. It invalidates market policy whole. Cohesion and clarity disappear, make way
influences in the design process and shifts aspects for a discovery of the ever-changing neighborhood.
of process management to the level and wishes of Where’s the hairdresser? On which floor? Beside
the user. which printshop? In this exercise, self-generated
A theoretical experiment justifies combining densities and programmatic zoning do not result from
the urban design repertoire into one single neutrally planning or imposed assumptions of what is traditional,
reactive ‘fabric’. A fabric that reacts and decides but from the survival instinct and dreams of the users
independently. It focuses on the urban dweller and his themselves. Pure will.
or her wishes, not on planners, politics or prevailing
fantasies. From that perspective, the designer’s task Planning in the Dutch welfare state, in which
is to guide the educational development of that fabric. amenities remain in neighborhoods and not, as in
To teach the fabric how to react to site- and user- London, requiring you to travel 30 minutes in the
specific conditions. It is conceivable that chaos will subway with your shopping, is all very well – and well-
be created as an evolutionary phase of urban planning. intentioned. However, it immobilizes initiative and it
It means that urban planning will be down-scaled neglects people’s inventive capacity to find solutions.
to ‘plot level’, applied regionally in a global setting. It eliminates the need for collective behavior, for
It makes the pursuit of a design attitude, in which the communication and joint inventiveness and therefore
program itself determines where it would like to be of the possibility of culture… however good the
established and which inclinations affect its behavior, intentions. Students and people with invalid carriages
extremely topical and worth while. Telework combined supplementing their income as ‘taxi-drivers’, or tuk-
with delivery services and other digital possibilities tuks and shopping couriers, only get a chance if its
facilitates free location for a growing number of necessity dictates. The introduction of chaos binds
dwelling units. It reduces the programmatic advantage and generates cultures, compels contact, assistance
of physical concentration and thereby questions the and practical ingenuity. It encourages people to show
concept of the traditional city. solidarity. It produces social cohesion as a neighbor-
hood feeling, in short, everything present-day photo-
Planning the will shopped reference images try to promise. Urbanity
It is the very essence of global urban design and exists by the grace of its conflicting programmatic
spatial planning: the world’s surface equally divided needs and the human ability to deal with it. To facilitate
up by all the world’s addresses. That is the way new this is to redefine the concept of current planning and
urban developments could start: as a launching pad accepts urbanity as it is.
for the experimental influencing of its own users’
inclinations. If spatial conflicts and aspects of chaos
are introduced as a post-educational stage, the References
program can again become reacquainted with itself. 1 Boomkens, R., De Nieuwe Wanorde. Amsterdam
The fewer imposed rules there are, the more authentic (Van Gennep) 2006.
and independent the ultimate behavior of the program. 2 Chuihua, J, C. and others (eds), A Great Leap Forward.
In this case, freedom enforces the showcasing of Cambridge MA (Taschen) 2001.
authenticity and enables the urban image to be born. 3 Ford Motor Company, http://www.ford.com/about-ford/
An unambiguous land value exposes the urban company-information/ford-brands/ford-motor-company-
domain to the market and facilitates reservations for vehicle-brands; accessed 22/04/2008.
unplanned, unregulated growth. Indifferently planned 4 Jacobs, J., The Death and Life of Great American Cities.
infrastructure emphasizes what is unpretentious. Middlesex (Penguin) 1962.
Claims on light and space for neighborhood lots can 5 Møystad, O., ‘Urban by Implication’ (2004):
be ‘bought off’, buildings can be connected to one http://www.ab.ntnu.no/byggekunst/ansatte/ansattesider/
another and alternative ground planes can arise locally. moystad/Urban%20by%20Implication; accessed 22/04/2008.
Paradoxically enough, randomly dispersed lots will 6 Quinton, J., ‘Scape’ (2007): www.worldpress.com,
Volume 16

remain government property in order to guarantee the http://jpquinton.wordpress.com/2007/02/06/scape-part-1/


necessary openness for public functions like market (part 1, 2 and 3); accessed 22/04/2008.
squares, municipal offices, libraries, museums, criminal 7 Sloterdijk, P., Sferen. Amsterdam (Boom) 2003.
detention hospitals and police stations. Large numbers 8 Wikipedia, Globish, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Globish;
of streets and road shoulders provide sufficient space accessed 22/04/2008. 94
Principles of Great Stories Stick to It
Coping with Slums and Slabs
Steven Wassenaar
A couple of decades ago French
urban policy was all-inclusive,
meaning that the state felt

LU
responsible for providing good
living conditions for all who
lived within its boundaries. The
extensive new town program
of the 1960s that regulated and
organized Paris’ rapid growth
is an expression of that ambition.
Today’s policy is exclusive: being
and living there is not enough
to be cared for or even accepted.
The eradication of ideals of
the 1960s, both political and
Volume 16

urbanistic, is in full swing. 96


LAB
Recent bidonvilles (slums) and decaying dalles (large in the vicinity of slums.5 Elsewhere camps were de-
urban centers built on slabs), two extreme urban forms stroyed by bulldozers so quickly that the residents lost
in Greater Paris – harsh reality and a bygone utopia – their documents and possessions and all the adults
are both regularly the theatre of police violence. It is were arrested, as happened in Bonneuil on 24 January
a situation full of contradictions: the dalle as an archi- 2006, when young children only 3 to 6 years old were
tectural expression of the ultimate capacity to design left behind with no one to take care of them.6 Still,
a lifestyle, the total city for model families; the slum as no matter how often they are driven away, the same
a fortuitous miscellany with which the poor demand a slums and Roma pop up somewhere else. They have no
place, make their existence visible, and evade official choice. Misa Bota: ‘We left Romania in 2001 because
architecture. my 6-year-old daughter was excluded from the school
All the same, their histories intertwine, for it was in Timi oara because she is a Rom’. Misa was expelled
in the 1960s that immigrants living in shantytowns from France but has kept on coming back. After seven
built the new towns and the slabs for the middle class, years in a slum the family now lives in a house, but
with flats whose keys would pass into the hands of Misa’s greatest success is that his daughter has now
the slum residents themselves a decade later.1 What been going to school for seven years.7
do local authorities and other official bodies in France
do when they are confronted with slums and slabs? Discouragement strategy
How do they deal with the residents? The 10-year-old Hanoul encampment is situated
beneath a motorway viaduct three kilometers north of
I: Slums: Working With Precariousness Paris; the Communist-run local authority Saint Denis
Slum neighborhoods are emerging in France again, has installed a water supply and four toilets for the
inhabited by Roma from countries as Romania, Bulgaria 150 residents. The Human Rights Commissioner Alvaro
and Kosovo, who have fled from discrimination and Gil-Robles visited the camp in 2005 and wrote: ‘It has
unemployment. These slums are located on former not been possible to conceal the deplorable conditions
industrial sites that are often polluted. For instance, in which people have to live. I was horrified by what I
there is an encampment with 800 residents in the saw. Never before in the daytime have I seen so many
Parisian suburb of Saint-Ouen beneath the smoke of rats in such a small area; they were running around
an incinerator. The huts erected on railway tracks lean everywhere alongside the children.’8 Nothing has
against one another, children play in the dirt. The local changed in this camp, where it is no coincidence that
authority, which initially excluded these children from open tuberculosis has been found, since 2005. In fact,
the schools, does not provide water or sanitation and the conditions described by Alvaro Gil-Robles have
the refuse piles up.2 The shantytown can compete even deteriorated: the doors and windows of caravans
with Third World slums, with the difference that there in the camp, where children live, were smashed during
they are stable and most countries provide some various police raids in 2006. Fifty police entered the
services. The poorest are not driven from site to site area on 5 January 2007: adults and children between
as they are in France. Everything in the twenty slum the ages of 3 and 9 were dragged out of the caravans
neighborhoods with 4,000 residents around Paris and had to spend an hour and a half lying on the
is made from waste material: huts, stoves, furniture. ground while their possessions were thrown out of
The Roma find one-day jobs in the building industry, the caravans and coffee was thrown over the beds.9
or sell metal that they recycle from appliances. Their This strategy of discouragement and harassment
standard of living on the fringe in France is higher than is combined with collective deportation to Romania,
in their native country. It is noteworthy that there were in contravention of the European Convention on
slums on the same sites until 1974, in which a total Human Rights, or, more recently, with blackmail: if the
of 75,000 persons lived according to official statistics Roma do not accept the financial incentive to repa-
from 1965, although their number was probably twice triate, their homes are destroyed and they are left with
as high. Already at that time the slum residents had nothing.10 The advantage of this is that the expelled
a long wait before they were issued with council hous- Roma can be included in the target figure of expelling
ing, because there were doubts as to whether the 25,000 illegal immigrants every year, 30% of whom
immigrants would be able to adapt to the French way are Roma.
of life. History is repeating itself: identical arguments are Malik Salemkour of the Human Rights League:
now being used against the Roma, who are assumed ‘The official policy discriminates because it is intended
to be incapable of integrating. to block access to work, education and medical care
How do French cities, regions and the state deal for one ethnic group: racism against Roma is toler-
with these shantytowns? The state policy of expulsion, ated.’11 The response that Nicolas Sarkozy gave to
harassment and financial incentives to leave imple- a question in parliament is proof of the prejudices that
mented by the prefects and police can be summed are held in the highest circles: ‘It appears that these
up in the words ‘clear out’. This policy, which was persons [...] do not have a means of subsistence, as
designed between 2002 and 2007 by the Home Sec- can be seen from the conditions in which they live and
retary at the time, Nicolas Sarkozy, is inefficient and their begging. Their behavior is incompatible with
bears witness to a level of inhumanity that is not public order: prostitution, incitement to vice, theft [...]
often encountered in Western Europe.3 Damage is and aggressive begging. These persons must be
Volume 16

deliberately caused during police raids against removed from the territory [...].’12
peaceful Rom families by heavily armed riot troops, According to Médecins du Monde, the violent
confirming the reputation for brutality of the French clearance of slums causes serious traumas and all
police.4 They are eager to arrest Roma if they are accomplished integration is nullified. This policy, which
97 caught ‘stealing water’ from fire hydrants or begging was designed to deal with the few thousand Roma in
special laws between 2002 and 2007, is thus based conditions under a motorway for eight years, by
on criminalizing the representation of poverty, the Alvaro Gil-Robles in 2005 and again by Miloon Kothari
slum, and making the lives of its residents impossible. of the UN Commission on Human Rights in 2007. The
dreadful conditions in which these children born on
Successful integration French territory have been growing up for years are a
A comparison between the situation in the shantytowns cause for indignation, but Europe is also responsible
in 1974 and those in 2008 shows that in the 1970s for this continual inhuman treatment of the Roma
local authorities offered the immigrants free education, because it has compiled inventories of the unaccept-
transport and holiday camps, while the state forced able situations but does not sanction failure of the
housing associations to accommodate slum residents French to make improvements. Moreover, the inte-
and built temporary flats. Certainly, today non-govern- gration projects that are already under way in France,
mental organisations such as Romeurope provide offering housing, work, and social counseling, can
assistance and some local authorities only clear up be better funded and encouraged by Europe.
slums after consultations have taken place. A slum
mushroomed in Bobigny between September 2006
and January 2007 and was only destroyed after the 1 Migrant workers recruited to solve the housing shortage
250 residents had agreed to accept temporary housing ended up in slums.
in reception centers. This more humane strategy of 2 Press release, Médecins du Monde, January 2007.
consultation is the softest of the measures for clearing 3 ‘[Roma...] live in deplorable conditions in makeshift camps
up bidonvilles, but it does not seem to work: the social and are continuously forcibly evicted, either through police
upgrade from slum to apartment requires counseling raids, often particularly violent, or through a pattern of
to make it work, and many return to the slums after constant threats, searches, destruction of property and other
a few weeks. How is the problem to be tackled? In forms of harassment’. Always Somewhere Else, Anti-Gypsyism
Aubervilliers, where 30% of the 72,000 residents are in France, European Roma Rights Centre, Nov. 2005, p. 12.
foreigners, there were slums with 600 residents. A 4 […] I learned about several cases of violence and rape
neighborhood of prefab homes, mirroring the social involving police officers from the Saint Denis police station‘
structure of the slum, was created in 2006 for sixty in ‘On the effective respect for human rights in France’
persons. According to Marie-Louise Mouket of Pact Report by Mr Alvaro Gil-Robles, Commissioner for Human
Arim 93, better living conditions should be the basis Rights, 2006, Point 175-177, Full report on www.coe.int.
of the search for further solutions.13 The Roma receive 5 ‘When [Roma] exercise various activities in order to survive [...],
counseling via evaluation and work placement to they face constant harassment by police’. Op. cit., note 3,
achieve a job and permanent accommodation within pp. 20 & 269. Full report: www.errc.org
three years. The families sign a contract obliging them 6 ‘During one eviction in July 2005 in Vitry-sur-Seine, children
to learn French and to have their children educated. were left alone on the site without assistance or protection.’
As the prefect was in favor of the project, a multi- Op. cit., note 4, point 350.
disciplinary procedure14 could be signed, by which 7 Interview with Misa Bota on 23-04-2008. According to UNICEF,
the state funded 50% of the project while the region 30% of Rom children do not have access to schools in
and the town paid the other half of the € 1 million Romania.
building expenses. Eleven of the eighteen heads of 8 Op. cit., note 4, Point 93.
families have a permanent job and will exchange the 9 Complaint by French member of parliament Patrick Braouzec,
project for a flat. After this success, a similar initiative 11-01-2005, to the National Security Ethics Commission
has been begun in Saint Denis for twenty-two Rom (CNDS).
families on a site with caravans and good sanitary 10 National Agency for the Reception of Foreigners and
facilities. These projects show that Rom families can Migration (ANAEM). The financial incentive to leave is € 300
integrate with few resources: slums are not inevitable. per adult and € 100 per child.
11 Interview on 25-04-2008 with Malik Salemkour, League for
Role for Europe Human Rights.
Since 2007 Romania and Bulgaria have become 12 Response to parliamentary question n° 17477, 5-05-2003.
members of the European Union and their citizens can 13 Pact Arim helps the 100,000 French homeless and those who
circulate freely in the EU. Although the ten million live in unacceptable conditions – slums. www.pact-arim.org.
Roma are the largest minority in Europe, people seem 14 The procedure in which multidisciplinary teams work together
to know nothing about their centuries of persecution is known as ‘maîtrise d’œuvre urbaine et sociale’ (MOUS).
and are indifferent to their situation, which has grown 15 Employers have to pay the ANAEM (cf. note 7) € 900 to
worse in many countries since 1990. The French employ a Rom.
integration policy for slum residents in the 1970s – 16 Government reports therefore call for immigration: report
direct access to the employment market and soon of the ‘Commission pour la libération de la croissance‘,
afterwards to the housing market – shows that at that Jacques Attali, 2008, p. 172.
time the country was a smoothly running integration
machine, while in 2008 it has closed the employment
market to Roma for discriminatory and electoral
reasons15, at a time when there are 500,000 vacancies
Volume 16

that cannot be filled, the economy is paying a high


price for jobs that are not taken, and the loss of
revenue for the pension funds is running into billions16.
Attention was drawn to the Hanoul camp in Saint Denis,
where children have been growing up in appalling 98
Slum housing Roma from Romania
and Bulgaria in Bobigny.
Slum housing Roma from Romania
and Bulgaria in Bobigny and in the
background dalle Karl Marx, Bobigny.
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99
Integration project for Roma in Aubervilliers,
prefab housing.

Integration project for Roma in St Denis, caravans.

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100
II: Slabs: Working With Utopia to demolish the slab and to restore the district on
Districts of Greater Paris have to deal with the dalles the natural level of the ground. Lacking the financial
that were built in the 1960s and 1970s and have now resources to clean up the slab and the centre on its
fallen into disrepair. These slabs were built between own – at a cost of € 132 million – the town was able
the grands ensembles (big ensembles) and were to fall back on the Borloo Law, whose purpose is to
intended for middle-class residents who could step improve the conditions in suburbs.
out of their flat onto a traffic-free esplanade to stroll, Since 2007 residents can follow the plans on
shop and socialize. Slab urbanism creates a mineral, scale models in an information point: the range of
utopian urban space in which such functions as driving, housing is becoming more diverse, lower flats and
parking and housing are stacked vertically, but it owner occupied homes are being built beside the
turned out to generate problems and its viability is up slab, with a total of 770 new homes. The 244 families
for discussion. Demolish or renovate? from the flats that are due for demolition are being
The new town of Bobigny is opting for demolition housed elsewhere: an agency carries out a social
of the Karl Marx slab. In the 1960s this village was diagnosis for that purpose and provides counseling
suddenly designated as the capital of the new Seine for the eighteen-month change of address within the
Saint Denis administrative district by the Law for the framework of a multidisciplinary team procedure.5
Reorganization of the Paris Region (SDAURP)1, and A home ownership scheme6 enables families with
in 1965 the urban development master plan for Paris modest incomes to purchase their rented accommo-
stated that Bobigny was to become a structuring pole dation below the market value.6 The demolition of two
in Greater Paris.2 This SDAURP master plan defined apartment blocks will open up the district and once
the gigantic, multi-centered project of the new towns the slab has been removed, daylight will be restored
around Paris, linked by a network of regional trains to the streets below that are felt to be dark and un-
and motorways. So slab urbanism is an intrinsic part safe. A new street grid is being laid out across the
of the history that was still waiting to be written. A district, dividing it into four classic blocks to make the
priority urban zone procedure3 was outlined for the difference between public and private domains clear.
centre of Bobigny in 1967 consisting of thirty-five Bobigny will probably develop other scenarios
18-floor apartment blocks placed around six raised slab for the remaining slabs. Will it create private gardens
platforms with shops. The car parks and roads are or facilities on them, or, after the potential success of
situated below the level of the platforms, while the the Karl Marx operation, will it make the whole town
districts are surrounded by greenery and open space: slab-free?
the ideal town, at least on paper.
But Bobigny never acquired the economic Wasp-waisted tower blocks
importance mentioned in the SDAURP master plan, There are two slabs in the inner city of Paris that are
and the platform system was sabotaged when state being renovated instead of demolished. The first, the
institutions refused to connect to them. The economic Font de Seine, which served as décor in Wim Wenders’
crisis did the rest and the project was halted, which film The American Friend, is private property that is
was to have consequences for the Karl Marx district, open to the public. Designated as a sector due for
which was never linked with the other platforms. This renovation in the Paris urban master plan7 in 1959, the
led to two rival structures, the upper town and the district was built between 1962 and 1976 and marked
lower town. Residents were forced to adopt zigzag a break with the local housing and factories. This one-
routes, made worse by the unclear status of the kilometer long, six-hectare slab is flanked by twenty
spaces: were they private or public? The district was tower blocks with 10,000 residents and 5,000 office
left to its own devices. employees. It includes schools, a library and two
Forty years on, the decay is visible and many swimming baths; here the slab is the infrastructure
shops on the slab are empty. Poverty descended on that links these elements. Many of the tower blocks
the town after the exodus of the middle class, and have a wasp waist just before they reach the slab to
in 1995 it was classified as a Zone Urbain Sensible create more light and space. There are many positive
(problematic urban zone). 4 Annick and Luc Jaume aspects: a central location in the city, and a functional
moved to the Karl Marx district in 1972, at a time when combination of work, housing and recreation.
their apartment was de luxe. They have seen the In 1998 the concrete structure showed signs of
glorious era and the decline. Annick Jaune: ‘In the leaking, leading to the closure of the underground car
1970s the dalle was full of life: there were lots of shops parks. All the other classic problems of slab urbanism
and pedestrians’. All the same, they have refused emerged too. The routes are labyrinthine, views are
to leave their district and regard it as positive that obstructed, and the paving is too homogeneous, which
it is now inhabited by immigrants from Brittany, North is not conducive to orientation. There is access to the
Africa or China totaling more than sixty different slab by escalator, ramp and lift, but these are difficult
nationalities. to locate. The spatial rifts between slab and street,
Since 1998 Bobigny has been working on the slab and river respectively, lead to dysfunctionalism
renovation of the 40-year-young centre. Residents and isolate the slab. It is noteworthy that the residents
were asked for their views on their Communist- have returned spontaneously to the ground level
administered, multicultural town, followed by further because they use the subterranean entrance, and not
Volume 16

consultations in 2005 and 2006 in the Karl Marx district the luxurious halls one floor higher. In this case too
in the form of urbanism workshops. Questionnaires the residents were consulted, and they wanted to keep
revealed that the residents regard the slab as an the slab, to which they had grown attached. A plan
obsolete obstacle, inaccessible to those with a handi- for the renovation was drawn up, to be implemented
101 cap, and unsafe at night. The local authority decided between 2004 and 2011. Eerie passageways on the
slab were closed and the lighting was made brighter model, but has been confined to a few experiments
in the evening, while a new paving system will suggest which have been scattered here and there in the land-
routes between the five neighborhoods. Views towards scape of Greater Paris. More than curiosities, they
the Seine are being created and new entrances as a bear witness to a rare courage to experiment radically
continuation of the existing streets. The arrangement and on a large scale.
on the slab is being made more clearly differentiated, After forty years of slab urbanism, it is possible
with open squares on one side next to gardens to gauge the consequences of this unique urban
planted with trees. form, to analyze its ageing, and to examine the relation
with the historic city.
Architecture as way of life As one of the last energetic attempts to create
The folder presenting the Olympiades slab in 1965 the ideal city, slab urbanism proves to produce identical
was entitled ‘change your life, change your city’.8 problems. The ambiguity of the space is one of the
It announced that ‘an impossible dream comes true’ causes: in the traditional city the public street is acces-
because the slab marks the invention ‘a new art of sible to all, but it is also spatially demarcated and is
living’. It is conceived as a total city for families in patently distinct from private spaces. The situation on
which they can live, shop, exercise and meet friends. the slab is different, where the spaces that are open
Architecture here is more than an environment: it builds to all are bigger and more diverse, while in legal terms
a way of life. However, the economic crisis meant they are private spaces. The problems may be identical,
that some of the announced services were never but the solutions adopted by local authorities in the
implemented. poor suburbs are different from those of the wealthier
The district was built between 1965 and 1976 capital: demolition instead of renovation, or new
by the architect Michel Holley, who abandoned the spectacular architecture, as in La Défense. Linking
street as a structuring principle. Thirty tower blocks, the slab with the natural ground and with the district
some of them 33 floors high, flank a 15-metre-high is a condition for successful revival. Before the slabs
square, below which are four or five levels of parking are demolished, paying attention to redesigning them
space. The 24,000 m2 slab is overlooked by 3,098 is an option, because they are young systems and
apartments, 45% of which are council homes. Beneath we probably lack enough distance to be able to write
it a kilometer of underground roads provide access to them off immediately. The striking feature is that these
2,700 parking lots, a Buddhist temple and wholesalers districts have been made as if they were petrified, few
of Asian food. changes have been made to their total design in the
The questionnaire conducted among residents last forty years, no buildings have been added, and
revealed that they are critical of their surroundings. the town has nowhere become densified. When it was
There is little for young people to do on the slab, except completed, the slab was not just a utopia – it was a
that it has unexpectedly become a playground for monument right from the start.
urban acrobatic sports. Every day 6,000 pedestrians
walk over the square, but they also – and this was
never intended – walk through the underground rue 1 Loi n°64-707 du 10 juillet 1964 sur la réorganisation de
Disque and rue Javelot to avoid the slab. The difficulty la région parisienne.
of access to the slab is a problem, as well as the long 2 Schéma directeur d’aménagement et d’urbanisme de
time it takes to reach the street from the flats. la région de Paris (SDAURP), 1965.
In December 2005 the Olympiades were incor- 3 Zone à urbaniser en priorité (ZUP). Procedure for urban
porated in the major urban renewal project and development projects that was in force from 1959 to 1967
renovation could get under way.9 The aim is to make to combat the housing shortage.
the paving more attractive and to improve the lighting. 4 Zones urbaines sensibles (ZUS), problematic urban districts
Other recommendations envisage a better link between that are priority targets of government policy.
the street and the slab, the removal of obstacles on 5 Maîtrise d’œuvre urbaine et sociale (MOUS), procedure
the slab surface, the provision of quality services, and in which local multidisciplinary teams work together.
a reinforcement of the shopping function. Private and 6 Accession sociale à la propriété to promote social
public areas are to be clearly differentiated, and the intermingling.
plants in pots are to be replaced by genuine parks. 7 Plan d’Urbanisme Directeur de Paris, 1959.
Since September mediators from the city of Paris have
been conducting surveillance and solving conflicts.
In the future the gap above the rails of the Gobelin
station, where the slab was never completed, has be
filled in or covered.

Ambiguous spaces
Slab urbanism is a radical solution for the division of
space by separating groups of users and is the result
of a total vision of the city that was developed in
parallel to the architecture of the Modernist movement.
Volume 16

It is based on utopian urban projects, Eugène Hénard’s


city of the future of 1910, the Athens Charter of the
1930s, and the Buchanan Report of 1963. It proposes
the model of a new city and society, a total rupture
with the existing city. It has not led to a widely applied 102
Soon to be destroyed slab
in cité Karl Marx, Bobigny
Slab Front de Seine, rupture with
street level and old city, Paris.
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103
slab Front de Seine, Paris.
Buildings with ‘wasp waist’,

Soon to be destroyed slab above


underground parking and road,
cité Karl Marx, Bobigny.

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104
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105
Slab system in Bobigny and
conserved slab Paul Eluard.
Slab Front de Seine, rupture
with street level, Paris
Unfinished slab Olympiades, former partially
covered railway station Gobelins.

Volume 16

106
Principles of Great Stories Make it Compelling
1 in 23
A Day in the
Barrio

AY
Urban Think
Tank /
Alfredo
Brillembourg
and Hubert
Klumpner
Volume 16

108
10:00 am The journey in… inspection of the inside however we are surprised to
The car ride into 23 de Enero, the largest modern social learn that there is a middle class standard of living at
housing complex in Latin America, is like a trip into work: the residents may be stuck in poverty, but they
another world. We find ourselves in Catia on the edge do not revel in it. Many of them, Felix points out to us,
of Caracas and already an odd feeling has surfaced – work hard for a living but find it hard to move up the
there’s an unsettling sensation of anxiety that starts social ladder given their situation. These informal
deep in your bones and pulsates through your heart. housing developments are the living space of much
The people begin to change. It’s not just the look of Venezuela’s working class. Between the blocks,
but also how they carry themselves; they’re a proud however, is a different story. You get the feeling you’re
people but you can sense the disillusionment that’s living in a contemporary medieval village. We are told
set in after years of broken government promises. individual initiative is required for the construction
Still, a sense of ‘high hope’ lingers. Signs fill the side- of a house in the barrio; typically, you build your own
walks just as they do in the rest of the city except here home. However, much of the underlying decision-
the attitude has changed considerably. Street murals making – where and what to build, the degree of per-

AR
that once promoted ‘Viva la Revolución’ now shout
for politics without Chavez, ‘Chavismo sin Chavez’.
Welcome to Blade Runner of the tropics.
We park the car in La Piedrita and proceed on
foot. The fabric of the city reveals itself as we look
ahead: the patchwork seems to fuse like a kaleido-
scope with the metro that stretches east-west through
the city, various towers stand against the backdrop
of red clay and concrete self-built medium story
buildings that checker the mountainside these are the
barrios. Much time has passed since we’ve last seen
it. Hiking up into 23 de Enero we are struck by the
obvious reality that modern urban life is more vertical
than horizontal. In most instances stairs function only
partly as a means of access. They are also meeting
spaces and living rooms, places for conversation,
playing games, domestic drama and day dreaming.
We walk up a past project of ours, a system of prefab
stairs assembled in panels.
You could say the spirit is in the valley landscape
yet the split psyche expresses itself more directly in
the case study of Carlos Raul Villanueva’s 1958 modern
housing complex called 23 de Enero. We have chosen
to highlight this area of Caracas as an example of how
history is represented in architecture. The co-existence
of modern housing block architecture and barrio
urbanism in this complex dialogue shows us that archi-
missible encroachment on your neighbors – is col-
lective. Where individual interests and the common
good collide, the latter prevails. Although technically
the state prohibits the illegal occupation of land,
it tends to turn a blind eye when that occupation is
undertaken by barrio leaders.1 These are generally
the residents of the barrio who inspire the rest of the
community. They were the initiators of the ‘take over’
of the land, making virgin land habitable. They are
the ones to whom families turn when in search of new
land, don’t have the courage to take it over or the
knowledge how to make a slope habitable for their
ranchos.
As a general rule, the leaders of the barrio
population know how barrio committees and groups
work. They know how to solve their own internal
contradictions. They are familiar with the financial
mechanisms available to them as regards the necessary
operations of barrio construction. Sitting here, I’m
amazed watching these guys at work. They know how
to take advantage of the situation, for example, as
Felix tells me. In exchange for votes political parties
will feed the illegal occupation of land by working with
the barrio communities and allowing squatting on
unoccupied land.

1:30 pm community meeting…


tecture exists day by day through history and in its We walk into a barrio meeting already in progress.
own history created day by day. Usually when one thinks ‘committee’ one imagines
The 15-story blocks rise like castles from the a table filled with people in charge of a common
sea of hundreds of thousands barrios. While some situation. We’re surprised to learn that in some circum-
60,000 people live in the blocks, about seven times stances the committee is no more than a single person
that number live in the houses in between them. Like who carries out all of the committee’s functions.
a threat or a promise, the shacks sit along the cliff like We can sense urgency in the air as the residents
a fort engendering feelings of both dread and pride. discuss personal matters regarding their homes. It
doesn’t matter what you call these barrio meetings,
12:00 pm Meeting our guide… they’re nothing other than another of the many ways
We meet Felix, a Venezuelan community activist in residents organize to ensure their possession of the
his mid-30s. An avid martial artist, he is also the father land, the realization of a minimal arrangement of land,
of four young children. He has participated in the and to ensure those indispensable services of urban
establishment and construction of about seven barrios life (water, sewers, transportation, etc.). The creation
in Caracas. His first intervention took place in La Vega of these barrio organizations can be promoted from
Parish where he was in charge of establishing a com- outside the barrio by private organizations, political
mittee board. He says he established the first barrio party leaders or State institutes normally related to
in order to have a house for himself and his family. barrio improvement.
It is a peculiar feeling to step into an apartment In most instances the State has been able to
in 23 de Enero. It is initially easy to dismiss these living solve, to some extent, some of the obstacles encoun-
Volume 16

quarters as dirty and unorganized given the amount tered by groups or individuals unable to urbanize
of trash that builds up outside the houses. This is both because of their lack of land ownership or the neces-
due to neglect from the residents and the aftermath sary technical and financial resources to complete
of torrential rains, which wreak havoc on these com- construction. The State then becomes a key agent
109 munities due to poor infrastructure. Upon closer in the production of ranchos. The State gives tacit
Photo Pablo Souto & U-TT

Volume 16

110
consent by helping individuals build on appropriated built by the time the Pérez Jiménez dictatorship fell in
municipal and private land, hiring construction 1958, but had not been handed over to the public.
companies or permitting users themselves to act as The government advertised the new apartments
builders. Since many residents lack the wherewithal as housing preferably for poor families who lived in
to acquire market housing, build by themselves or hire shacks that had previously occupied the land taken
somebody else to build housing, common people by the super-blocks, thus providing them the oppor-
become real estate agents or promoters of their own tunity to legally obtain proprietorship of the apartment.
residence and its urbanization. The people create a They were portrayed as a self-sufficient housing
tight relationship with the real estate agent appointed complex with commercial and recreational services.
by the State (through its diverse agencies). The State Nurseries, included as part of a plan to take care of
can use ‘underground’ politics to establish a barrio. the children of working mothers, would be run by well-
In several cases the concealed intervention occurred trained personnel and doctors. Government policy
in difficult situations, for example, when there was was to create healthy and comfortable housing for
no immediate housing for homeless or when the State those not able to own their own home.
did not have land to build low-income housing. Thus Immediately after Pérez Jiménez’ fall, on the
homeless families occupy land that the State helps 23rd of January, the people of Caracas invaded the
urbanize by hiring construction companies or permitting vacant apartments. Some 17,000 people invaded
users to act as builders with or without the aid of apartment, commercial and educational buildings.
specialist technicians. Although some may affirm that People tried to get in through doors and windows.
the growth of barrios is due to a real estate specu- Trucks full of furniture would continuously go up and
lation made by the promoters or builders of these down the hill. Some would break locks in order to gain
settlements, the results of our investigation reveals access to the apartments, while others would buy
that 60% of the houses in a typical 20-year-old barrio keys from swindlers only to find the apartments already
district are built by their the final users. taken when they got to them. A few days later there
Making a parallel comparison with the construc- were laundries, bakeries, food markets, etc. up and
tion and promotion of real estate, the committees running. After the fall the provisional government
themselves take over the roles of real estate promoters decided to improve barrio infrastructure and identify
or construction managers. The committees can also its potential. The barrios entered a new phase. The
carry out the functions of the general contractor, con- State accepted the squatters as developers of housing
struction worker, etc. The barrio organization owes and the name of the district was officially changed
its existence to the defense of occupied land, its to 23 de Enero by the government in the 1960’s in
groundwork and provision of services, but it can also memory of the end of the Jimenez dictatorship.
serve other functions to ensure the production of the Moreover, on January 24th, 1958 more than
built environment. In many cases the committee can 18,000 people gathered in the National Stadium.
be transformed into a promoter of cultural and sports Eighty books were filled with the names of people
activities once the barrio or the sector where the who needed housing. Yet this action had no results.
committee lives has successfully provided its services. People continued to invade apartments and nothing
Nevertheless it would seem that when the barrio is could be done to return money spent on fake keys
in danger the committee’s priority is once again the or remove those who had taken over apartments
defense of the built environment. During the day illegally. Even today there are residents in the 23 de
they build the formal city and at the night the same Enero who never paid any money for their apartments.
workforce builds the ‘informal’ city. Five years later, in 1963, the Worker’s Bank gave pro-
prietorship documents to those who had paid for
3:45 pm Lunch, Reina Pepiada… their apartment.
We gather around a street vendor to lunch on ‘reina Remembering a conversation with Paul Spencer
pepiada con todo’ (the ‘Queen’ of corn meal ‘arepas’ Byard, head of Historic Preservation at Columbia
sandwiches) and reflect on the history of this barrio University, who came to visit us in Caracas, we
as it was told to us. We wonder how 23 de Enero came consider that given the deteriorated economic and
about in the first place. The story of 23 de Enero is social conditions of Caracas, 23 de Enero poses a
one of explosive urban expansion during the 1970s oil provocative question for historic preservation. 23 de
boom which fueled the construction of new housing Enero seems to be a great learning model of how
blocks and, in turn, lured thousands of migrants to modern architecture practices can be retrofit and how
the city. Ironically, such public works, intended to the human condition changes over time. With its
modernize and improve living conditions as well as vertical towers, 23 de Enero survives today precisely
integrate communities, have typically resulted in even because it has functioned as a hub where the barrios
greater segregation, raising nearly insurmountable have successfully plugged in. It is worthy to propose
barriers. 23 de Enero is however a different story of the current 23 de Enero project as the anti-hero
design, one with a double story: of building social archetype of modern World Heritage Sites because
housing and of adaptation and annexation. as an architecture project it has evolved over time in
The story goes that on December 2, 1955, Pérez an exemplary way, changing as society’s conceptions
Jiménez inaugurated four groups of housing units, of the modern super-block changed.
Volume 16

made up of thirteen 15-story buildings and fifty-two


four-story buildings each with approximately 2,400 5:00 pm Design of conditions…
apartments. These are located in the sector of ‘la As we walk the pathways of the modern 23 de Enero
Cañada’, in ‘Monte Piedad’ and ‘La Iglesia’. The rest blocks, globalization issues are central to the discus-
111 of the housing blocks to the west had already been sion of the temporary and often unstable process
of cities and contemporary life. In the city there is We ask ourselves, if sustainable architectural design
a sense that important global and local forces are at solutions are about building for today with the future
work. All this is a dialogue about the relations between in mind, then how can we design sustainable solutions
material life, technology, social relations, ideology in the city of the South where the future is uncertain
and so on. These ideas direct us to look at the points and today’s urban necessities more than overdue or in
of articulation between layers of social existence and a state of emergency? How can we think of the future
the production of the city. Buildings should be designed when the needs are immediate? Besides, how can
and executed with the lasting ability to either absorb we design for the future in places in relentless politic,
or undergo change and retain essentially the same cultural and economic flux? For those who understand
structure and identity while continuing to give feed- the state of constant change know also that the world
back to the city. We at Urban Think Tank design from is about the now. The understanding of time is different
the conviction that the dynamics of all linked human for each civilization. Medieval societies, for example,
and natural systems emerge from three complementary were concerned by eternity and not their future. Their
attributes: resilience, adaptability and transformability time was a time outside of time, they knew well that
all of which can be manipulated through urban the world was condemned to extinction and as a result
acupuncture. they organized their societies around saving the soul
Within this system of urban ecology, adaptability and not the world. Modernism had a different outset;
is the capacity of the design project components it was not about saving the individual soul but the
to be classified as sustainable or resilient over time. human race. The collective would be saved through
Transformability is the key with which architecture in progress and so modern societies had a secular and
a highly aggressive, constantly mutating environment almost mechanically precise understanding of time.
such as the megalopolis of the Global South can So you could say, today Latin America has regressed
survive. The capacity of the architectural project in its from the land of the future to the land of a sort of
genesis to recognize and build on some aspect of Darwinian survival of the present. The reality is that
design intelligence recognizes this rapidly mutating we now live in a conjunction of spaces, histories/
environment. Design intelligence is the capacity of the epochs and points of view that have synchronized
scheme to create fundamentally new systems whether confluent and converge time into the pure present.
ecological, economic or social. We believe that the For the past decades the practice of city building,
opposition of ‘legal’ and ‘peripheral’ urban areas, of which 23 de Enero is a reflection, has been largely
the rich and the marginalized, are equally constitutive oriented toward the fast and furious capturing of the
and therefore a new vision for the city model must moment, whether dictated by capital investment or
be implemented for developing cities. Strategies for a need to survive by the marginalized.
sustainability must change. There are desirable and
undesirable pressure points that insure that a system 12:10 am Afterthought…
either intensifies or decreases a threshold between 23 de Enero is a complex living organism, brought
public spaces. Obviously strategies employing this on by the bureaucracies of modern government. The
concept are dependent upon what exists and which barrios inside are being blamed for the social problems
itself constantly changes over time and is inherently they sought to address and because their ‘urbanism’,
complex. with its willingness to destroy the 20th-century urban
fabric in the search of something better, has made
11:08 pm Take away… them seem the problem rather than the solution. Mean-
Looking back on our trip through 23 de Enero with while, the modern blocks in their mutation as programs
Felix, we have come to a new understanding of the and buildings, stand as important witnesses to
complexity of the barrio problem. Our hope is that this possibly the most important event in contemporary
understanding of 23 de Enero will prompt innovative cultural history: the divide between formal and
thinking and real urban solutions and proposals by informal urban planning. 23 de Enero’s hybrid urban
reversing the flow from North to South and from South project, is today a marker for a urbanism plug,
to North, from Urban-Think Tank in Caracas to NY exemplifying a new form of continuity of the modern
and back again. With our exploration into unorthodox ideal within a contemporary condition that embodies
building types, U-TT wants to contribute the idea of both an ancient and modern spirit.
searching for new models of practice in architecture
in the Global South as an exploration into a collective
territory of thought at the intersection of design in U-TT would particularly like to thank Stephanie Trainer
complex socio-political domains. We like to call this and Anna Wachtmeister for their contributions to research
research a kind of non-aligned architecture(s) that for 23 de Enero.
can suggest a new paradigm for research that trans- 1 In The Mystery of Capital (New York: Basic Books, 2000
gresses hemispheric boundaries in search of new [1987], pp. 55-56) Hernando de Soto states that government
global sights of intervention. For this purpose we policy for social housing is often so inadequate (referring to
created the S.L.U.M. LAB, the Sustainable Living Peru and Venezuela), that the State ‘in the face of the evident
Urban Model platform that operates both at Columbia ineffectiveness of the legal system, (…) had to resort to
University’s GSAPP (www.slumlab.org) and our office extra legal regulations, and specifically to invasion to create
Volume 16

in Caracas. The idea of this platform is to work a housing project’. The housing deficit in Venezuela today
toward a practice of architecture that aims to reflect is over two million units…
on the spatial necessities of a society in need of equal
access to housing, work, technology, services and
education as a principal right for all social classes. 112
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113
Photo Pablo Souto & U-TT

Photo Pablo Souto & U-TT


Photo U-TT
A Retroactive Lens on

ETR
the Bijlmermeer
Wouter Vanstiphout
The Amsterdam extension
district Bijlmermeer (1965-1975)
is famous both nationally and
internationally as a problem
area. In the meantime more than
half of the ten-storey apartment
blocks have been demolished
and replaced by predominantly
low-rise housing for the medium
and higher incomes. The
surrounding districts, which were
built after and in reaction to the
Bijlmer, are ripe for intervention.
How much engineering can
Volume 16

the city handle? 116


ENS
The main problem of the Bijlmer (or Bijlmermeer) entirely different now. The main theme is that in the
is perhaps that is was built as a statement, and was past people used to think and work on a large scale
subsequently demolished as a statement, while the in a top-down way, barely paying attention to the
fact that people lived and worked there, who had residents or the human scale, with a strong belief in
an inside view of how the Bijlmer gradually changed engineering society via drawing board architecture
into something completely different, has been totally and urban development; now we work on a small scale,
ignored. That is the effect that an overkill of attention paying a lot of attention to the residents, with an
from the professional world of architecture and urban organic architecture and urban development. A key
development, from the politicians and from the media word is integral, that is, firing simultaneously from
can have. Is it possible to agree on a form of positive three barrels: physical, social, and economic.
fatalism when it comes to issues of this kind? This One of the things I got worked up about in my
would imply that we recognize that people cannot be earlier essay on the Bijlmermeer was the fictionalizing
collectivized, assimilated, integrated, secularized, of raw reality. Ashok Bhalotra, who drew up the master
collateralized or turned into bourgeois citizens, neither plan for the renewal of the Bijlmermeer, turned his
from above – by the corporations – nor from outside – back on the Bijlmer type of urban development because
by the architects and artists.1 it was imposed on society from above, forcing that
Architecture and urban design are deployed society into a straitjacket, which was why society
for Heesterveld, the recent renewal of the Bijlmer, less simply did not accept the Bijlmer any more and thus
as a technical or spatial specialization working with why it had to be demolished. Bhalotra thematized the
a clear quantitative program of requirements than as multicultural aspect of the Bijlmer with metaphors like
a cultural phenomenon with designers, curators, a ‘the street of 1000 cultures’.3 While on the one hand
public, exhibitions and a book. A complex and drastic the Bijlmer was demolished because it was felt that
socio-economic operation is here interwoven with a other people should come to live here instead of the
set of images, ideas and statements that are evaluated poor immigrants, on the other hand the immigrants
in terms of their creativity and originality, and only in themselves were presented as an almost tourist theme
the second instance of their applicability. To make to attract the middle class. Bhalotra aroused my anger
Heesterveld suitable and attractive for the target group, at the time because, as a genuine master planner,
the Ymere housing corporation is keeping all alterna- he replaced the old Bijlmer with a new one, including
tives open, from renovation of the blocks to demolition new residents, by means of demolition and rebuilding,
and rebuilding, with an implicit preference for the but concealed the demographic implications of his
latter. At any rate, the approach will be integral, in other project with multicultural metaphors. Less than five
words, physical social and economic. years later, however, Ashok Bhalotra was himself
What distinguishes a process like Heesterveld dropped by his former principals with arguments that
from the renewal of the Bijlmer ten years ago is the closely resemble the ones with which Bhalotra had
role of the architecture institutes, and as an extension condemned the original urban development of the
of that the role of architecture and urban development Bijlmer to oblivion. In a 2002 publication by the major
itself. In 1997 the magazine Archis devoted a special owners of the Bijlmer – the Amsterdam Local Authority
issue to the renewal of the Bijlmer, in which a serious and the Patrimonium housing corporation – architec-
debate was conducted on the desirability of demolition, tural historian Anne Luijten wrote: ‘The area by area
how to create a new cohesion within the Bijlmer, approach of the structural vision of Ashok Bhalotra
alternatives to the demolition of the flats and their of Kuiper Compagnons from 1997, De Bijlmer is mijn
replacement with a classic urban fabric; now the stad [The Bijlmer is my city], turned out in practice
Netherlands Architecture Institute (NAI) plays a com- to be a late and feeble attempt to achieve cohesion.
pletely different role, not as commentator and curator The question is whether that is necessary. The area
after the fact, but as consultant to Ymere in the choice is too large to be contained in a single vision and
of designers and other professionals.2 Heesterveld implementation strategy. The notion of cohesion
and its current problems, and thus the need for a has the association of something from a remote past
drastic approach, are placed by Ymere and the NAI that did not work then either.’4 The same publication
within a broad architectural historical narrative that contained a report by Willem Kwekkeboom on the
is both riddled with clichés and strange. The question renewal of the Bijlmermeer. Kwekkeboom was manager
I would like to raise here is: How do we explain this of urban renewal of Patrimonium, the superlandlord
remarkable repetition of moves, this vicious circle of of the Bijlmer, owner and administrator of all 10,000
technocracy and amnesia? Why is it that, in spite of homes. In that report he described how one sectoral
the increased pace of changes of course and model plan after another was revised in the course of the
in urban renewal, the outcome turns out to be the renewal until there was not really any central vision or
same one each time: disappointment – demolition – strategy left at all. ‘The urban development that came
rebuilding – disappointment – demolition – rebuilding? out of this step by step approach had an organic
I would like to propose that a part of the expla- character: a new form emerged for each area within
nation lies in the narrative – the word that is used to very diverse limiting conditions (minimal quantitative
refer to the truths supposed to adhere to a presidential demolition criteria to qualify for rebuilding, borders
candidate, for instance – in which we package these of the planning area, financial considerations, wishes
Volume 16

urban renewal projects. It is a cultural narrative, with a of the residents, wishes of the corporation or the local
big role for the designers, clear connections between authority).’ This paragraph is astonishing for more
socio-economic problems and the built volume, than one reason. First, Kwekkeboom describes urban
and with a repetitious story line of learning from the development as something that ‘comes out of’ the
117 mistakes of our predecessors and doing something demolished and built results instead of preceding them.
Drawings Wouter Oostendorp, Jouke Sieswerda
1968: Elevated road infrastructure is finished. The first residents 1973: The honeycomb structure is almost completed. Shopping
of the first quarter, area H (H-buurt), get their keys. facilities are provisional. In the south the first low rise anti-
Bijlmer, Kelbergen, is completed.

1982: The metro connection to downtown is opened, as are 1992: Part of the ‘central reserve’ is filled with low-rise neigh-
the local shopping centers situated under the elevated road borhoods. City center Amsterdamse Poort, next to the train
system. The last towers and high-rise blocks are added to station, finally does justice to the fact the Bijlmer has over
the south-eastern part as is an alternative large scale block, 50,000 residents. First demolition plans for 25% of the flats
Hoptille, to the west. renew interest in the original concept. A ‘classic’, five-story
enclosed building block area (Venserpolder) has been added
to the north-western ‘corner’ of the Bijlmer.

2001: Lowering of the main arteries; ‘new’ typologies replace 2006: Larger part of the Bijlmer apartment building demolition
Volume 16

demolished apartment buildings. In the meantime, to the operation has been carried out (ultimately 55% of the honey-
west an office complex for over 50,000 employees (few from combs will be torn down). Small scale neighborhoods (mostly
the Bijlmer itself) has mushroomed and new leisure center row housing, but also some four-story blocks) replace them.
(including the Arena Ajax soccer stadium, theatres and That Bijlmer faithful can withdraw into the Bijlmer Museum, part
cinemas) is under construction. of the original concept that will stay. Multiculturalism becomes
a theme for the development of targeted neighborhoods. 118
Volume 16

119
Aerial Bijlmermeer Photo archive Kees Hund

Market place Kraaiennest


Second, he describes this urban development as territorial dispute, not only between Amsterdam and
organic. This is a reference to the natural growth of the Weesperkarspel Local Authority that was to be
the historical city, with players who have deposited annexed, but also between the different departments
their layers on the city for countless generations. of the Amsterdam Local Authority: Urban Development,
‘Organic’ implies such qualities as informality, authen- Housing and Municipal Works, as well as between
ticity and human scale. In the Bijlmer, however, the politicians at local and national level. Because they
process was carried out at lightning speed, mainly were already designing the Bijlmer before the Bijlmer-
directed by only two parties. The entire area is admin- meer had been annexed, and were thus formally
istered by the Amsterdam Local Authority, the vast working for the impotent Weesperkarspel Local Au-
majority of the homes are owned by Patrimonium, the thority, the urban planners and architects had a free
process was begun in 1992 and must be completed hand during a crucial period. They took advantage of
by 2010. Kwekkeboom uses an example to show how this to impose a historical obligation on themselves:
this extremely centralised urban project can neverthe- to show that Amsterdam was still a world leader when
less produce ‘organic’ urban development effects. it came to large-scale urban development for the entire
The Geinwijk and Gerenstein flats were demolished community. After the ring of canals from the Golden
in the early 1990s to make room for a low-rise neigh- Age, Berlage’s plans for South Amsterdam, and Van
bourhood. A series of small and slender tower blocks Eesteren’s garden cities in the West, the Bijlmer was
were designed to create a transition from the nearby now to confirm the leading role of the Urban Develop-
Echtenstein block, which was to be left standing. A ment Department of Amsterdam. After the presentation
few years after the completion of those small blocks, of the plan in 1965 and the annexation of Weesper-
it was decided to demolish Echtenstein after all and karspel, the plan for the Bijlmer by Siegfried Nassuth
to replace it by low-rise housing. Kwekkeboom is and his team still had to get through the jungle of rival
positive about the result precisely because it was not departments, arbitrary state policy, bargaining with
planned. ‘The diagonal line with the small and slender building contractors, and so on. First of all the sub-
tower blocks would never have appeared on the sidies for industrial building were abolished in 1966,
drawing board like that, but it is absolutely an improve- resulting in a painful process of cuts for the flats,
ment.’ Is the city supposed to be organic here because enabling the building companies to drive the local
one local government department and one corpora- authority more deeply into a corner. Second, they
tion are unable to uphold those urban development failed to attract the residents of Amsterdam with
choices for even five years? The tone adopted to dis- medium incomes to move to the Bijlmer, and thereby
tance himself from the previous generations, including to make the historic housing districts available again
Bhalotra, is harsh and ideological. The whole word to those who were looking for a new home in the
‘cohesion’ has acquired a suspicious resonance for centre because of the construction of the metro line
the chroniclers of the Bijlmer renewal. Kwekkeboom and the new building in the Nieuwmarkt. The growth
writes about the ‘organic’ model: ‘Such a growth model hub policy offered the medium incomes less expensive
was a curse in the ears of the admirers of Nassuth and homes in the surrounding districts, so that the basis
his team and the advocates of grandiose cohesion’.5 of the Bijlmer was already swept away before it had
What Kwekkeboom suggests is that urban re- been completed. But the most indicative problem was
newal no longer needs urban planning, except at the the fact that the Bijlmer was a meticulous composition
level of the neighborhood, because urban planning of large homes, a luxurious green park and potentially
implies centralized power and the ideology of the fantastic connections, and that all of these compo-
society that can be engineered. Urban development nents were interlinked by the collective amenities and
on a large scale and with a position as initiator is simply infrastructure. It was precisely the collective elements
removed from the process and replaced by a neigh- of the Bijlmer that slipped through the cracks of the
borhood by neighborhood integral growth model. compartmentalized bureaucracy: they did not fall under
In 1997, during my tirade against Bhalotra, I could not the Housing Department – they did the homes; they
have predicted that not only he, but in fact his entire did not fall under the Municipal Works Department –
profession would be dropped by his principals. Of they did the roads. That is why these features had
course, what is happening in the Bijlmer is not unique difficulty in getting off the ground, if they ever did, and
in the Netherlands. Gigantic demolition and rebuilding they were not included in the planning of the depart-
operations are going on everywhere, often on the basis ments, each of which took care of its own particular
of the pasting together of sectoral plans, with urban preserve. That, plus the cuts on the garages – which
development agencies that present structural visions were given a purely technical form in the end instead
when the homes have already been almost completed. of the symbolic one that they were supposed to have –,
Still, what is happening in the Bijlmer is acquiring an and the reduction of the public space inside the apart-
almost mythological status because of the significance ment blocks were to lead to a serious impoverishment
of the location. of the concept. All the same, what always survived in-
In several respects we could consider the tact, majestic and unique, was the scale and the splen-
renewal of the Bijlmer as the perfect reversal of the dor of the whole and the unique quality of the flats.
design and construction of the original Bijlmer. The The Bijlmer was thus the victim of a lack of
critical Delft study of the Bijlmermeer by Wouter Bolte cohesion and a lack of top-down, autocratic leader-
Volume 16

and Johan Meijer, Van Berlage tot Bijlmer [From Berlage ship rather than being the ultimate product of cohesion
to Bijlmer], published in 1981, presented a very different and hierarchy. Bolte and Meijer therefore qualify the
picture from that of the downright autocratically Bijlmermeer as ‘fictive urban development’ because
designed Ville Radieuse that one finds in the national an image of the city is created that is designed to
mythology. The Bijlmer was the stake in a bitter form an escape from reality, which is in fact too chaotic 120
to make plans of this kind really workable.6 The process planning from the process is a cunning way to avoid
of the creation of the Bijlmer is thus an illustration an open debate on the issue: there are no easy
of the claim of Ed Taverne and Kees Schuyt that the targets any more.
reconstruction of the Netherlands in the 1950s and And Heesterveld? The special feature of
1960s steered a course ‘between chaotic planning Heesterveld is the modest approach of this project:
and planned chaos’.7 The Bijlmer is both a heroic it lacks the ideological content of Nassuth’s Bijlmer
attempt to build a coherent and collective image of to show what the city of tomorrow can be, and it also
the city in spite of everything, and an attempt to hide lacks the ideology of the small-scale and the (pseudo-
the internal chaos and ineffectiveness of the planning )interactive. It is not an architecture that seeks to rise
and housing departments from the outside world. above reality with an ideal alternative or a symbolic
The renewal of the Bijlmer is a perfect reversal form. There is no split between fiction and reality here.
of this. Since 1983 all of the 10,000 homes have been The building is what it is: as precise an organization
in the hands of a single corporation, first Nieuw as possible of elements of reality in an architecture
Amsterdam, then Patrimonium. In the course of the of character and distinction. Heesterveld is an oasis
1990s and 2000s the corporations have taken over of metaphysical calm in a sea of self-delusion. People
an increasing number of the tasks of the municipal have ended up there who have not chosen to live there,
departments in the field of educational premises, public even who have not chosen to live in a house at all.
space, welfare, and so on. In the case of restructuring, However, the complex has such a large degree of archi-
this has come to be called the integral approach. tectural clarity that it can work perfectly as a three-
The social problems of the postwar housing districts dimensional grid with which the totally different use
have given the corporation a large amount of self- and housing requirements of these groups can be
confidence. Only major intervention in housing, contrasted and can lead to surprising and functional
combined with the integral approach to social and use. As a radical alternative to the demolition and
economic problems, would bring them back to life rebuilding that Ymere favors, we could pay heed to
again. The Bijlmer has become the biggest symbol Carel Weeber’s call to give such complexes to the
of a problem district, and its renewal is on the largest residents; we could give them to the residents for them
scale that we know. One difference with the equally to do up themselves under certain conditions. We
large-scale building of the Bijlmer is that this is a project could implement the more activist and bottom-up pro-
on all fronts, from the demolition of the flats to taking posals of architects and artists. But these artistic or
an interest in the residents even behind their own political statements with a lot of media effect still drag
front door. This centralization of public tasks in the Heesterveld back into the world of myths and symbols,
hands of a single private party, plus the draconian of smoke-screens and optical illusions. All that I would
interventions in the occupation of the Bijlmer through wish for Heesterveld – it is too late for the Bijlmer – is
the demolition of flats, is disguised by a project that that the corporations, architects and curators would
presents itself as small-scale, organic and interactive. exercise a little self-restraint.
The narrative of the renewal of the Bijlmer,
however, is a good deal more negative than that of
the construction of the Bijlmer. Because the designers 1 This article is a version, shortened by Volume, of a longer
of the Bijlmer believed in cohesion and coherence, article originally written for the publication Blikveld 1:500
all the coherence and coherence of the renewal is Ontwerp Heesterveld. Stimuleringsprijsvraag voor wonen
concealed behind the fiction of an organic growth en woonomgeving Ymere NAi 2007. After discussions of
model. While the urban planning of Nassuth conjured the content of the text between the author, the publisher
up a dream of collectivity and energy from a swamp (NAI Publishers), the initiator (NAI) and the sponsor
of bureaucratic compartmentalization, the renewal of (Ymere housing corporation), the author decided to
the Bijlmer throws a smoke-screen of small-scale and withdraw it from publication.
organic operations around a ruthless demographic 2 See: ‘The New Bijlmermeer’, Archis, 1997, no. 3, theme issue
policy using the wrecker’s ball and the concrete mixer. on the Bijlmer reconstruction,
The city form is the medium in which the oligarchs of 3 Marieke van Giersbergen, ‘Goodbye to Utopia, Interview
the Bijlmer (mis)inform. The eerily quiet and suburban with Ashok Bhalotra’, Archis no. 3, 1997, pp. 43-45.
Bijlmerdreef, the cramped low-rise neighborhoods 4 Anne Luijten, ‘Een modern sprookje, de Bijlmer in verandering’,
where the flats once stood, the extreme makeover of in: Dorine van Hoogstraten and Allard Jolles (eds.),
the shopping centre, the office district on the other Amsterdam ZO, Centrumgebied Zuidoost en stedelijke
side of the railway line that is completely abandoned vernieuwing Bijlmermeer 1992–2010, Bussum (Uitgeverij
in the evenings and weekends – they are all examples Thoth) 2002, pp. 7-25.
of the most banal of all that has sprung up without 5 Willem Kwekkeboom, ‘De vernieuwing van de Bijlmermeer
effective planning on the outskirts of cities and beside 1992–2002, ruimtelijk en sociaal’, in: Dorine van Hoogstraten
motorways all over the Netherlands in the last fifty and Allard Jolles (eds), Amsterdam ZO, Centrumgebied
years. A ‘worst of’ selection from the New Map of the Zuidoost en stedelijke vernieuwing Bijlmermeer 1992–2010,
Netherlands has found its way as a malicious mix Bussum (Uitgeverij Thoth) 2002, pp. 7-25.
to a neighborhood that once wanted to distance itself 6 Wouter Bolte and Johan Meijer, Van Berlage tot Bijlmer,
as much as possible from the normal run of things in Architektuur en stedelijke politiek, Nijmegen (SUN) 1981,
Volume 16

the Netherlands. The picture of the Bijlmer as a place pp. 192-391.


where some tinkering is going on here and there is 7 Kees Schuyt, Ed Taverne, 1950, Prosperity and Welfare; Dutch
being deliberately presented, in my opinion, to disguise Culture in a Euopean Perspective, Assen, 2004, p. 163.
the fact that what is going on here is large-scale,
121 top-down and authoritarian. The removal of urban
Smart Governance
Erik Gerritsen and

MA
Jeroen de Lange
Erik Gerritsen, former
Amsterdam city manager,
and Jeroen de Lange, his
head of staff, recount their
experience in leading the
changes to Amsterdam’s
administration to make it
more effective and relevant
to the new urban context.
Along the way they devel-
oped a number of smart
Volume 16

governance principles. 122


Reality hit hard when Amsterdam’s new city manager of urgency based on a common understanding of the
confronted city hall with dysfunctional operations which problems and a shared vision of the way ahead. An
were disconnected from the increasingly complex and explicit change management strategy such as those
chaotic urban context. Serious problems were not used to turn businesses around was not formulated,
being tackled effectively; promises by politicians and but the core ingredients of change management were

OV
targets set in policy documents were not being met. implemented along the way.
These problems included the failure of immigrants
to integrate, decreasing levels of social capital, high Emergent vision: governance around
numbers of long-term unemployed, school drop outs, wicked problems
failing youth care, urban congestion, the slow speed Early on in the process of change management the
of construction, pollution, widespread feelings of crux of the matter that guided all the actions was
being unsafe, and large numbers of drug addicts. formulated: we had to organize governance around
Local government was not able to tackle these (difficult) problems, not problems around government.
problems and it seemed that its ability to effectively Governance instead of government, since govern-
intervene in urban society had been seriously eroded. mental organizations are no longer the only organi-
This situation was not unique. City administrations all zations involved in policy making and implementation.
over Europe face these wicked and messy problems Policy making and implementation takes place within
that seem resistant to policy making and the standard policy networks made up of many public stakeholders.
repertoire of government interventions. Wicked The key problem of government nowadays is
problems are those that cannot be easily defined and the dominance of vested, sectorized interests of these
solved. They have incomplete, contradictory and public stakeholders which take precedence over
changing requirements. Many administrators recog- solving society’s complex problems. It is thus not
nized the problems identified by the new city manager. these vested institutional interests (their budgets,
This group of people shared a sense of urgency to power, prestige, careers and so on) but the societal
improve the capacity of city government to be able problems to be tackled that became our point of
to intervene more effectively. They made up the core reference, our analytic starting point and our goal.
group of those who were to set in motion a process The real challenge was to dismantle these vested
of change. interests so that governance became possible. For
An investigation of trends that had led to this example, if you want to improve service delivery you
situation followed. The new urban population had do not want to bother citizens with the complex way
become particularly diverse: the highly individualistic you are organized internally (the city of Amsterdam
and hedonistic lifestyle of the upper classes who consists of 14 boroughs and 30 central directorates),
demanded excellent services co-existed spatially with it is important to show citizens one consistent face.
lower social classes excluded from society and the Ultimately governance is not about tackling
economy. Increasingly informal social relationships difficult problems but about co-producing public
and the horizontalization of power relations had made values: an educated, healthy population, clean, safe
the old ways of doing things ineffective. The hype and attractive public spaces, and economic self-
focused behavior of the media compounded the reliance. Difficult problems frustrate co-production
complexity and uncontrollability of the urban context by public stakeholders and citizens of these values.
with which a city administration must connect and Developing new principles – they were named
for which it must be relevant. Simple command and principles of smart governance, as opposed to
control from city hall no longer existed; most public governmental protocols – went hand in hand with
institutions and stakeholders had multiple lines of implementing them. We started with rather simple and
accountability. Political power was fragmented and straightforward actions and continued to search and
spread thin across many organizations and those struggle our way forward. We were searchers, not
organizations often did not cooperate effectively planners. Our action was our analysis, and we learned
to tackle shared problems. by doing. The guiding coalition grew incrementally
and in tandem so did the vision of smart governance.
The pitch: a new design for local ‘It is the process, stupid!’ A second basic point
administrative interaction of departure for change management was the process
After having made an inventory of challenges to approach: rather than taking official structures as the
the relevance of the city administration, the new city subject of analysis and intervention, we took the work
manager and his team asked themselves how to processes. Only organizations whose work is organized
design and implement new principles that would steer in smooth functioning processes are able to organize
the internal working processes and the interaction themselves around the urban problems to be tackled.
of the city administration with other public actors and
citizens toward becoming an effective player in the Immediate uncontroversial needs: start simple
new urban context. On the one hand, the city was full From the start there was a shared urgency among a
of messy problems, yet on the other hand there was group of city administrators regarding the city adminis-
a city administration with roughly 22,000 civil servants tration’s fragmented and inefficient support processes.
and an annual budget of about five billion euro. How The problems with the support processes were rather
Volume 16

could they make this machine work better? New straightforward and non-political but frustrated
principles needed to be firmly grounded in the reality effective and efficient administration. This is where we
of the new urban environment. Both design and imple- started. The vision to solve these problems was already
mentation required change management. A guiding present among many city employees but needed to
123 coalition needed to be build that would share a sense be articulated. Our first observation was that the city
administration needed more cooperation between We put the problems at the heart of this com-
the different decentralized sectors of operational munication and confronted public managers with street
management which could be accomplished by using level reality: the aggressive psychiatric patient that
shared systems, shared (ICT) standards, and shared neither the police nor the city psychiatrists wanted to
service centers. This became the first principle of deal, the hard core young criminals responsible for a
smart governance. large part of crime in the city, criminal drug addicts, etc..
Because of the absence of vertical power Many organizations were involved with these problems,
relations, the only way to get cooperation for change but they did not work together. Our approach was in
from boroughs and autonomous central directorates essence simple: we asked these organizations what
was by tempting them to take part in these efforts the ideal solution would be and how they should
to improve the common support processes. With a work together to achieve this. The concept of chain
coalition of the willing, able and desperate we started management and network management techniques
to implement improvements in support processes aimed at getting the noses of all the public agencies
by providing simple solutions and products for free to involved aimed toward the same common goal became
those parts of administration (boroughs and direc- another principle of smart governance. Based on a
torates) that wanted to participate. Examples of those common goal and shared understanding of the best
products include collective advertisements in news- strategy to achieve that goal, the details regarding
papers for jobs and software to build a standard web- linking the work processes of the different organiza-
site. We did not wait for all parts of the administration tions involved could be discussed.
to get on board. It was more important to simply start. By applying these principles of smart governance,
Nothing succeeds like success. With time more serious urban problems were tackled more effectively:
boroughs and directorates expressed interest and aggressive psychiatric patients are being taken care
joined the growing coalition. We started to communi- of by the police and mental health workers in good
cate successes weekly to all civil servants: change cooperation, young criminals are being arrested
works! The vision is not just empty talk. Support much more often and more quickly and they are more
processes and thus organizational capacity improved often convicted and fed into rehabilitation programs
and costs went down. One logo was introduced because all the institutions involved (i.e., the police,
for the entire city administration; one simple website the district attorney’s office, local government, youth
design was introduced; one telephone number for workers, etc.) now work effectively together.
the whole city administration was put into effect; and In vertical relations between layers of govern-
one ICT standard for the whole city administration ment and public institution red tape and unnecessary
was implemented. control and perverse financial relations frustrated
When there was no more money to invest in effective and efficient cooperation. Here the solution
improvements we used budget scarcity to tempt was the CFA concept (Clarity, Freedom and Account-
boroughs and directorates to cooperate more with ability in vertical management relations): giving more
each other. We offered a proposition, like collective room to government agencies and professionals
tendering for standard products, shared service centers working on the implementation of the projects with
and a single administrative database. These cooper- regard to the question of how to achieve results, in
ative programs would save money if enough boroughs exchange for strong accountability. This concept was
and directorates participated. This proved to be a introduced, for example, with regard to channeling
relatively easy way of dealing with budget cuts. central government funds meant to tackle urban
problems. Instead of micro-managing from city hall
No escape: systemic change how that money had to be spent, targets were agreed
The strategy of temptation had built a guiding coalition. upon that boroughs had to achieve. They had the
We had made it crystal clear to all parts of the city freedom however to decide on the best way to achieve
administration that we were all in it together but that those targets. Each year they had to account for the
there were rewarding ways out of the institutional money spent and the results achieved. Finally a
paralysis. We had tempted people into a process of systemically different way of working was introduced
change. Once they were in, they engaged more with by redesigning working processes using principles
the overall process of change once they had seen the of process management, logistics and modern ICT.
first successes. Thus we created an army of change A feature of process redesign is the parallelization
managers that worked from practice, not protocol. of work processes in such a way that most time and
Now we needed to transform that practice into prin- energy (on average 80%) is devoted to the cases that
ciples, to support endemic system change. demand specific attention and the least amount of
Improved support processes were a pre-condition time (say 20%) is devoted to the standard cases (80%
but not enough to enable the city administration to of the cases to be dealt with by an administration)
perform better in the governance of wicked problems. since these can be dealt with in a standardized way.
Sustained better performance demanded a systemic The service delivery of products for handicapped
change in the way the administration worked internally citizens was greatly improved using this principle of
and interacted with other stakeholders in the pro- smart governance.
duction of public values. The principles of smart governance enabled
Volume 16

Again, we found that the vision was already the city to play a more effective role in governance.
there among people working for the city and for other Most of the steps described here constituted a radical
public bodies, but it again needed to be made explicit break with the past. The city administration was
and the sense of urgency to really change needed slowly starting to look and work very much like the
to be fed by continuous communication. city it was dealing with. Making use of actual rather 124
than dreamed-up incentives. This meant it was finally
recognizing the multi-layered, multi-party, messy
and complex nature of the city’s challenges. This
observation made us stumble into the last phase
of our redesign project.

Citizens enabled to co-produce


Citizens play a crucial part in the co-production of
public values. The production of public values is a
shared responsibility between government, citizens,
private enterprises and societal organizations. Nothing
is more effective for improving public health than less
drinking and citizens eating a more diverse diet (Jamie
Oliver on tv!). Nothing is more effective for improved
output of the education system than parents actively
supporting their children. Nothing is more effective
for improving safety in public space than responsible
and active bystanders.
What we did was to empower citizens, busi-
nesses and societal organizations by putting them
in the driver’s seat and letting them come up with
the solutions to social problems themselves, that is,
making them co-producer of government policy and
partner in implementation.

A coherent set of mutually dependable principles


The principles of smart governance work in interaction
with each other. ICT-based, shared and uniform
support processes are a pre-condition for a smart city
administration. They are a pre-condition for network
and chain management, a pre-condition for effective
interaction between front and back offices. The CFA
concept is another pre-condition for chain and net-
work management: without enough freedom for the
actual implementers of policies they cannot improve
the way they work with each other using network and
chain management techniques. The CFA concept is key
to enabling parts of the city administration to deal with
complex realities within a common framework that
makes responsibilities clear and sets legal boundaries.
Continuous change and adaptability had become
the adage. The principles of smart governance give a
firm basis for reflective and adaptable organizational
behavior. But every new politician and city admin-
istration needs to keep on building this new type of
governance.
It is work never finished. People can build these
reflective and adaptive organizations that organize
themselves around problems if they want it and have
the vision. We are social beings and our actions are
not determined by the laws of physics. Therefore
we believe in optimistic governance as a principle
and as a duty.
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125
Oosterman

XX
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126
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127
XX
How Sim City Changed the
Game of Planning
Edwin Gardner
The God complex could acquire
new meaning for an upcoming
generation of architects and

IM
planners. Some of them played
a ‘God game’ growing up called
Sim City. It’s God’s point of view
minus the attitude. As teenagers
they learned to operate within
the dynamic forces of their own
home-grown cities. While these
boys and girls have exchanged
the sandbox for the construction
site, Sim City has changed its
scope from city planning to social
Volume 16

engineering. 128
The next generation of architects, urbanists and games underlying principles. ’A fundamental aspect
planners got their first lessons in their trade before of the paper was to stress how it reflected real world
they entered the university or the schools of their conditions, and what aspects were ignored or sent
respective disciplines. They didn’t learn their first to a second plane.’3
lessons from a book, from their parents or a teacher. Last year another incarnation of Sim City was
They learned it from a computer game, a computer released: Sim City Societies. This time it’s a different
game in which you couldn’t win, a game without a Sim City. The rules of the game have changed. Where

ITY
plot, a game without game over. Revolutionary at the the object of desire in the game used to be the ‘the
time, nobody could conceive that a game in which city’, now it’s the ‘society’ it houses. What are the tools
winning was not the objective would sufficiently and rules of Sim City in its new guise, where the God-
engage players, let alone become one of the biggest like mayor has turned social master-planer? The game
hits in the gaming industry. The game is Sim City. revolves around six societal energies: productivity,
I remember sitting in a small attic room fixated prosperity, creativity, spirituality, authority and know-
on the monitor (black and white) of my XT computer ledge. These energies manifest themselves in the
(imagine a hard drive of ten megabytes and a working kinds of buildings you put in your city. A certain building
memory (RAM) of a fraction of a megabyte!). I sat embodies a certain program with regard to certain
there for hours on end, making a city, watching it grow, societal energies. The clown school is a happy fair-
making the right configuration of residential, com- ground looking building, which will stimulate creativity
mercial and industrial zones, sprinkling in a good around it. The cryogenic prison is where you can
distribution of fire and police stations across the city effectively exercise your authority and freeze unpro-
and keeping my citizens, or Sims as they are called, ductive members of society.
from rioting out of discontent with their mayor’s In contrast to the old Sim City where a city
policies. That’s what you were, the mayor, but also grows from a sketchy composition of interlaced with
master planner, urbanist and politician. In short, you infrastructure and tweaked by tax policies, now you
were God. Sim City in this sense was the birth of a must choose a combination of buildings which radiate
new genre in gaming: the God Game, because you a cocktail of social energies to effect the city and
could not only create everything, you could also its citizens. Instead of architecture following society,
destroy it. There was this dangerous array of buttons now society follows architecture. The script of the city
with which you could unleash tornados, earthquakes, is no longer just the interrelation of the functionalities
floods and even Godzilla like monsters upon your city. of zones, electricity, laws and taxes, but an organism
Yet even God has to play by rules. Although they can with citizens as its blood cells. Citizens are pumped
be bent, they can’t be broken. through society’s multiple hearts: its working places,
Sim City was the brainchild of game designer its housing and its venues. These multiple hearts
Will Wright. He designed the algorithms that guide the irradiate citizens with the six social energies because
choices in the game. There were many factors to in the end your citizens are society. In the real world
calculate: optimum ratios and the proximitys of the one could say that most of these social energies are
three zone types, commercial, residential and industrial, more or less balanced, but in the game you can really
to each other. So Sims like to live close to commerce force your society in certain directions, from Orwellian
and away from industry. Commerce wants good infra- dystopia to artist colonies and suburban utopia to
structure; industry needs a huge power supply and dictatorial hyper-capitalism. It’s all possible, but the
flourishes best if you tweak the tax and pollution laws operating system under which the six social energies
in their favor. The kind of problems you’d solve as function is still the market economy, and in this game
mayor included traffic congestion, budget worries even God needs money. In this case it’s up to God
(somehow there was never enough cash), power-grid how many hours he wants his citizens to work per day,
failures and crime. But the rules upon which the game how many days a week, and how he will keep his
was built weren’t purely Wright’s invention, he had ‘co- citizens at it. If citizens are unhappy and go on strike,
authors’ who are probably more familiar in the archi- God’s tools for countering this are ‘venues‘: theaters,
tecture and planning circles. For Wright the inspiration malls, theme-parks, but also gulags. These are basically
mainly came from Jay Forrester’s Urban Dynamics1 and different ways to condition your society, some more
Christopher Alexander’s essay ‘A City is Not a Tree’.2 benevolent, others more authoritarian. So what kind
Since its initial release in 1989, Sim City has been of God are you?
continually developed. Sim City 2000 (1993), Sim City Although the game won’t say if you’re evil or
3000 (1999) and Sim City 4 (2003) evolved and good, there are enough clues in the esthetics your city
expanded over the years parallel to the explosion of develops. Generic music will change, all of a sudden
the computer into our everyday lives. Sim City added CCTV cameras spring up on the facades of your
more and more planning parameters, sustainable buildings and the ambient color of the city changes
energy options and added in addition to a flat top- from bright blue skies to a murky brown haze. So
down God view, birds eye views and eventually street while you’re exercising your social engineering skills,
view and more God like tools such as terraforming. the game designers have built in some mood engi-
Yet the game’s basic premise remained the same. In neering of their own. In addition to the esthetic hints,
the education of student planners and decision makers your conscience is played upon by your citizens. Each
Volume 16

a Sim City analysis exercise has been used to help one indicates their mood on an individual happiness
students understand the dynamics of planning and scale. So how would you feel if your society consisted
governance. For example, David Lublin, Professor in of a happy few successful industrialists exploiting
the Department of Governance at American University, the city’s workers who are on the verge of depression
129 explains how his students wrote papers analyzing the in the factories and sweatshops of the elite?
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130
Sim City lets you learn about certain dynamics
which are also active in the real world. In this case it
lets you learn about the dynamics of a society, but of
course this simulation also has a source code which
limits the kind of things we can learn from it. The market
economy is a given for instance, but what is perhaps
more noteworthy is that the esthetics of the game
give an implicit judgment. This isn’t a problem really.
The Orwellian perspective is communicated as some-
thing bad, although few will have a problem with this.
More problematic is that the transparent facades or
sunny skies may not necessarily cover an open and
balanced society. Singapore is nice on the surface,
but the regime that hides behind that surface is less
benevolent than its façade. Although the game allows
social conflict, you, the player, remain instrumental The top- down city view in the city editor,
Sim City on the Macintosh (1989)
in bringing this about through building specific venues
in a context that conflicts with it.
Therefore I propose an update for Sim City
Societies: a feature called neighbors. Nearby cities,
outside of your view in the game and built by other
gamers who upload and share their cities and connect
them to each other influence your game play. In this
update players would be confronted with refugees
(economic as well as political) leaving or coming to
your city, what kind of immigration policy will you put
in place? Perhaps your citizens have reached perfect
happiness, but somehow they are missing something,
what will they do, where will they go? Will your open-
minded city fall victim to populism, or will you be the
first to successfully establish a genuine utopia?
These considerations once again raise critical
questions for the game designers as well as its players.
The designers will have to write rules that govern the
game, and in this case not buildings radiating social
energies and contaminating the blood vessels of a
societal organism also known as your city. In this case
Citizens request lobby for money to build
they have to write the script of human behavior itself a stadium, Sim City on the PC (1989)
and calculate the basis upon which individuals make
decisions. Would Maslow’s pyramid suffice? Should
emotions, intelligence and memory play a part? What
would happen if your citizens were actually able to
learn?
And what would a gamer take from playing this
game, especially those who may one day become
planners and architects? What if their citizens fled to
a neighboring city and learned about communism
came back and spread the word? What if communism
seemed a very tempting alternative in contrast to the
regime you’ve been exercising over them? What if
your people declared you, the gamer, the God of the
game, dead? What if they supported regime change
and installed a new government? Perhaps societies
do have a moment of game over. What would you,
future architect, learn from that? Would you learn that
you can lose, but can’t win? Or that no matter the
result your computer always anew: ‘New Game?’

An overview of info-graphic maps and timeline


1 Jay W. Forrester, Urban Dynamics, Cambridge, MA (MIT displaying: population density, growth rate,
Press) 1969. crime rate, traffic density, power grid and land
Volume 16

2 Christopher Alexander, ‘A City is Not a Tree’, Architectural value, Sim City on the PC (1989)
Forum, no. 1 and 2, 1965.
3 Daniel G. Lobo, ‘Playing with Urban Life’, in: Borries,
Walz and Böttger (Eds.) Space Time Play. Basel/Boston
131 (Birkhäuser) 2007.
A New Arena For Collective
Activism

NRI
Jeremy Hight
The breadth and coverage of
our realities keep expanding,
but they are converging in our
awareness of space and time.
More and more is happening
at the same time and is experi-
enced in the same space.
Where once the devices that
wired us up to the rest of the
world were distinct objects that
needed manual operation, now
the interfaces that separate
man and machine are slowly
Volume 16

creeping under our skins. 132


EAL
Imagine one world overlaying another like a thin film, it is in fact the most frequently used subway station
only this overlay does not involve established visual in the city and that a grand speech was given here
technology such as film projectors or video screens. when the station was opened three years ago as the
Imagine projecting visual information, art, movies, etc., network’s flagship station. Fuel prices are currently
from the thin membrane of something as seemingly so high that many are enraged that the subway system
flimsy as a contact lens. Think of a supercomputer and the city are taking advantage of this by raising
lying right on the eye, able to run at the speed of the public transport ticket prices.
human brain.
This is augmented reality, a new and emerging 21:28
level of interaction. Augmented reality is a system of You pause, turn on the photo function, adjust it to the
technology and visualization that allows information right framing and light values of the entrance and its
to be placed in the field of vision as one moves. This sign. ‘Click.’ The image is encoded with a time stamp
‘augmentation of reality’ can consist of text, images, as well as your GPS coordinates. You figure this will
video or even three-dimensional objects that can be be a great location for a shut down action. ‘Send.’
manipulated as though real. The more pop cultural The photo goes off to many community discussion
sense of this reality has been seen at many sporting forums and to the organization for fair transit.
events and even Olympic events with virtual logos,
slogans or markers placed in the broadcast as though 21:40
actually there. You note that several of your acquaintances are within
The growth of social networking programs such a few hundred feet. You consider messaging them
as Facebook, Flickr and YouTube as well as rss feeds or heading over to meet them, but need to focus on
and the growing number of linked blogs is increasingly some tasks at hand. You’ll catch up with them another
creating a space that is a new interconnectedness. time, so you tag yourself as ‘Busy.’ You note an older
Its surface is rife with entertainment, sharing of cursory car in front of you and wonder what model it is. You
information about current events, birthdays and cats send a visual scan to Google Images as a ‘Match
among other things. There is also a deeper and more Image’ query. Voila: it’s a 2003 BMW 330i series.
charged space increasingly emerging from these
networks. The emerging protest movement in Egypt 21:41
which has utilized Facebook is a prime example of ‘Incoming Message.’ The message contains an en-
how social networking can be a galvanizing catalyst.1 coded VR object of a way to block the subway using
According to globalvoices.org, the networking power storage containers and the help of bike messengers
of Facebook has transformed what was once a simple at rush hour sometime this week. You rotate and
bulletin board urging protesters to rally against the examine the VR object. You note that twenty other
rising cost of food into a movement to overthrow the people are logging on to this feed. A plan is emerging.
present regime. Instead of the static medium of the
internet, augmentation can bring a more immediate
urgency and awareness of various situations around 1 See for instance:
the world. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7382598.stm;
True, augmentation is not readily available, but http://www.hrw.org/english/docs/2008/05/10/egypt18800.htm
we are close enough to create a near future scenario
as to what this fusion will likely be:

20:34
You are walking down a city street in the early evening.
You shoot video of the light of the setting sun over the
rooftops, but the light is caught in a brown-yellowish
cloud of smog hanging over the city. Through voice
recognition you command your camera to send the
video to both your environmentalist and clean air
advocacy networks. This video is sent to 12,000 people
within a few seconds.

21:02
You recall the news you heard earlier today about
escalating tensions in several countries in Northern
Europe and the attacks upon the protesters. You call
up a live video stream from a contact in Norway.
While the video streams you select a percentage of
field of vision you want to see, setting the size of the
video image, opacity level and placement location
in your field of vision.
Volume 16

21:25
As you walk another few blocks you come to a
seemingly innocuous subway entrance. As you move
133 closer you scan the Wikipedia database and find that
Images Jeremy Hight

Volume 16

134
Volume 16

135
Dossier Social Engineering in
the Amsterdam Metropolis
Office for Social Engineering
What makes a good society? What makes people
happy? Can societies be engineered for the better?
Addressing these existential questions eventually
implies taking position in the debate on ‘social
engineering’. Essentially it boils down to this:
do you believe in it, or not?
For starters, could we categorize happiness in a
universal fashion so it transcends earthly time and
space? And if we believe so: which set of perspec-
tives, methods and tools should be applied to realize
this enlightened state of being? Furthermore, who
should we sanction to sit in the social engineering
cockpit, geared to improve the human condition:
politicians, architects, scientists, the market, god…?
Or even ordinary people? Quite a fashionable line
of thought, since the postmodern nebulous concept
of diversity, individualism and relativism has thrown
dust in the eyes of 20th century high modernist plan-
ners, who were devotedly striving to homogenize
subjects, standardize practices and centralize power
to enfold their totalitarian blueprints of utopia.
So now what? Is it ‘all individuals now’ (like Margaret
Thatcher enjoyed to proclaim) engineering their
Volume 16

own micro–utopia’s of living, working, culture and


identity? 136
‘Laissez-faire was planned, planning was not’ order to gain critical mass we decided to compile an
From a social engineers point of view: the point is interdisciplinary team of students that would search,
taken. Many 20th century schemes to improve the with us, the limits of the possible of social engineering
human condition have failed, dramatically; to para- in a concrete context: the city of Amsterdam.
phrase the anarchist anthropologist James Scott, We contacted the Institute for Interdisciplinary
whose volume Seeing Like a State has functioned as Studies at the University of Amsterdam. Our experi-
‘deathbed’ literature for the creature of social engi- mental learning scheme seemed to be right up
neering. And indeed, often springing from an amalgam their alley, so the course: Social Engineering in the
of benign intentions and high modernist hubris, we Amsterdam Metropolis was born. Then we selected
have witnessed efforts to ideologically engineer public our critical crop from the many student applications
and private life turn into megalomania and misan- for our course, and then, in our search for practical
thropic projects. In the process, taking democracy cases, went to the municipality where, after some
and freedom as its first victims, usually at the expense autistic responses, we kicked in the right door. The
of the general population. former City manager got fired up right away, this
So, has social engineering died? The answer project symbolized the freshness of mind he fancies.
irrefutably has to be: no way! Nor the desire (ideology) So the aim of the course was to have students
for, nor its apparatus (centralized power) of inter- from various backgrounds (sociology, architecture,
ventionist politics has died. The reality of the ‘end of history, economics, anthropology, arts, etc.) engage
ideology’–era has been pulled over our eyes to hide themselves in real, existing ‘puzzles’ of social engi-
us from the truth – to paraphrase character Morpheus neering provided by the municipality of Amsterdam.
from the movie The Matrix. For example, the very These are either social or physical spaces that do not
tombstone under which the USSR was buried was in ‘work properly’ in the perception of the city govern-
fact a clear cut case of classical social engineering: ment, or that demand further research.
the 100 days of liberal-economic shock therapy by In the end we collected four compelling puzzles:
which the 80 year old soviet command economy was Damrak street as a ‘trashy’ entrance to the city
to be replaced by one run by the free market. The ‘Invisible’ Moroccan girls in the northern city peripheries
economist-philosopher Karl Polanyi catches it beauti- ‘Hangsters’ in neighborhoods old and new
fully: ‘Laissez-faire was planned, planning was not’. The creative challenge posed by dangerous and dirty
So if we bear in mind that planning is intrinsic to ‘ghost spaces’ in Amsterdam
human behavior, and we take into account that social The multi-disciplinary student teams ‘made camp’
engineering is of all times and places and will continue on site and effectuated a ‘laboratory for social engi-
to occupy the wishful minds of society’s most smart, neering’. For 16 weeks they got embedded and
determined and powerful. How can we best cope with engaged with the aim of designing a concrete inter-
it? How can we deal with the eternal wish to intervene vention (not another report, please!). The student
in society based on a particular idea to make society teams were lectured and supported to be able to do
better? And again who should be at the steering wheel, this in a meaningful and academically sound manner.
and with what perspective, method and toolkit at hand? In this case it came down to ‘reading’ their puzzle in a
multidisciplinary fashion with no underlying interest
Social engineering 2.0 but to find out: ‘what is actually happening here?’. On
Significant questions that need to be scrutinized in a the basis of thorough analysis of the data they would
meaningful way, in order to set the beacons for a new, strategize and design an intervention that would be
21st century style of social engineering. Doing so implemented during the course!
would imply a combination of critical reflection on ‘Masters of Intervention’ were invited to advise
existing practices and action research exploring new the students with respect to their research (‘reading
ones. And that is what we did. the field’), and possible interventions, but also to
Our first act was the founding of the Office for contribute to the public debate on a particular site or
Social Engineering (OSE), in an effort to dust off, re- problem area. Masters of Intervention included Yale
claim and operationalize the concept social engineering professor James Scott, Saatchi & Saatchi creative
for future use – a provocation, that too. The OSE set mind Dick de Lange, P2P guru Michel Bauwens,
out to spark the discussion on social engineering: if Architect working with McKinsey: Michael Shamiyeh,
we are disposed to engineer everywhere and all the and Creative Media mind Andrew Bullen.
time, we might as well discuss the most suitable ideas, Curious whether our new school of social
methods and instruments. For one reason: to do no engineers pulled it of? The preliminary results can be
harm, and for the second: to maybe even succeed. found in the dossier below.
That’s when we determined to search for a new,
less disaster-bound type of social engineering, com-
pliant with and respectful of specific political and cul-
tural contexts as well as with technological standards.
In order to achieve that end we realized we needed
fresh minds and an open learning environment, with the
daring to jump in and stumble on practical experience.
Volume 16

Taking it home: Social Engineering in


the Amsterdam Metropolis
With the aim to jump, stumble, learn and improve we
137 decided to initiate a course in social engineering. In
Case # 1

Photo Lard Buurman


The Decay of
Damrak Street
Case # 1
Damrak Street is the gateway to
the city of Amsterdam, an urban
canyon through which 100,000
commuters and tourists enter and
leave the city on a daily basis.
Recently, both mayor Job Cohen
and his deputy Lodewijk Asscher
embraced the idea of a drastic
facelift of the degraded street.
The Amsterdam local government
wants to get rid of its visual
vulgarity and image of snacks, beer
and tits. The urban developers of
the Project Management Office,
a subsidiary of city hall, consider
its esthetization fundamental
in the branding of Amsterdam
as a top-notch city.
The redevelopment of Damrak
Street amounts to the creation of
an envisioned self-image. But which
self-image do we desire? Options
range from excessively sleazy
cheapness to posh consumer
decadence.

Contractor Project Management Office (PMB),


municipality of Amsterdam
Assignment How to turn Damrak Street into a
gateway worthy of the Amsterdam Metropolis?
Student team Eline Veninga, Richard Nooij,
Jasper Overweg, Jort Schuitemaker, Jenne
Meerman
LAB Beurs van Berlage
Context city branding, esthetization
Volume 16

140
The Damrak This consciousness appears to be missing at the
moment among those who, in addition to the city,
play an important role on the Damrak. It is the art

Reconquest of activating a feeling of responsibility within citizens,


visitors and entrepreneurs.
The Damrak lacks political representation.
Amsterdam’s Department of Research and Statistics
Amsterdam’s Damrak is a transit port through which reports that attendance at information and participa-
some 100,000 people pass every day. On the Damrak tory meetings has fallen.3 The attendance percentage
people don’t live with each other, but alongside one for the city center district is a distressing 7%. Have
another at stampede tempo. The City of Amsterdam people lost their belief in these participatory meetings?
has already declared that a sense of community is mis- One explanation is probably that citizens are involved
sing and has sought control in the form of surveillance in the transformation process only very late.
cameras. Now the city has opted for a fundamental, Much more than marginal adjustment is thus no
spatial, functional make over, after all, ‘A degraded longer possible. For this reason we argue for a multi-
environment will attract more unwanted behavior. By media, interactive participation machine in the form,
the same token a well tended appearance will generate for example, of a wandering tree. The challenge is to
more desirable behavior and developments.’1 Is this find a form with which you can once again address
measure patronizing or is it really necessary in order citizens in their role as critical citizens and bind them
to provide citizens and visitors a better Damrak? to the space. ‘Neighborhoods decline when the people
The current selection of stores provides for a who live there lose their connection and no longer feel
number of basic needs: eating and souvenirs. The city part of their community. Recapturing that sense of
classifies these as ‘low value’ functions. Yet must it be belonging and pride of place can be as simple as
well-known, expensive store front signs that will soon planting a civic garden or placing some benches in
determine the street’s look? ‘Low value’ is a qualifi- a park’ (Jay Walljasper, 2007). Citizens as well as the
cation which fails to consider the preferences of a government are actively involved in transformations
large part of the population plus those who disdain of public space. As street photographer Theo Niekus
regulations. Charm can also be found in those places says: ‘becoming conscious only penetrates where
that don’t fit in such as street musician James, artists “consumers” are “citizens” again.’
Ori and Jan and their friends who amuse themselves in The city ought to be civilized disorder. ‘The city
the Sex Museum. In ‘The Generic City’ Rem Koolhaas is a threshold world between order and chaos, between
wrote about representation: the old city is becoming the private and public spheres, between market
a caricature, a kind of open air museum.2 When you forces and government, between the masses and the
simplify an identify there is an appreciable chance individual, between legality and illegality, between home
that it then becomes generic. The city’s plans attempt and strangeness’. (René Boomkens in de Volkskrant,
to create an identity which is not representative of 29 March 2008). A top-down approach which tries
the street or its users. to run things will not work. The Damrak is a typical
The danger is that this will kill the city’s true example of this civilized disorder. It disguises an
dynamism. We Damrakkers have the ambition to ensure attraction for the visitor, but also a danger. Freedom
that a particular cadence comes into being in the must be treated with respect. The Damrak is the
development of the city. As regards physical shape welcome mat into the city’s living room which means:
and functionality, we share the city’s opinion. It takes feel at home, behave likewise.
effort to find the west side of the Damrak pretty. If Finally we turn our attention to the entrepreneurs.
you examine how the buildings are used, you see that They play a major role in the physical as well as the
some are empty, others abandoned, a kind of lassitude. functional use of the Damrak. This group does not
But look at how public space is used then you appear to understand that they can mobilize for the
see vitality, an enormous difference and a pleasing street’s improvement. A cultural reversal is necessary.
dynamic. Entrepreneurs and the city are not all that informed
Just as with architect Le Corbusier’s plans, we as to the possibilities for the advantages of working
are scared that visitors to the Damrak will be expected together. As ‘Team Damrak’ we have two advantages:
to find pleasure in fitting logically into a rational plan, an uncontaminated reputation and an independent
a plan that must give Amsterdam a high-quality image. position. At the beginning of June we will organize
A place where there is no longer a place for a mish- a forum with entrepreneurs, city representatives and
mash and a kind of autonomy. external experts. An improved awareness of other
people’s desires and space for accommodation (on
Back to cadence both sides) are the keys for entrepreneurs to feel that
We feel called to reconquer the Damrak in order to they have a valuable position play on the Damrak.
cultivate a new feeling of ownership for tourists and Thus it must be made clear that prosperity can only
Amsterdammers. The city must not be the only one be achieved if it is shared.
to lay claim to ownership of the street. The Damrak
is generally known and many have memories of it. This
Volume 16

can be a source of strength for the transformation 1 Nota Uitgangspunten Rode Loper, May 2007, p. 15.
of this street. The Damrak can see a new day via the 2 Rem Koolhaas, Bruce Mau, S,M,L,XL, New York (Monacelli
organization of events and positive publicity. This Press) 1995.
can make people aware that it is their street, that it is 3` Amsterdamse Burgermonitor 2007.
141 worth the effort to think about modifying the street.
Case #2
‘Invisible’ Girls
in Nieuwendam-
Noord

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142
Volume 16

143
Photo Anouk Steketee
Case #2
The Dutch government wishes
to help its subjects on the road
to happiness and successful
coexistence. The Amsterdam North
sub-council sees young Moroccan
women as being isolated from social
and economic life, even invisible,
and wishes to elevate this supposed
’disadvantaged’ group to active
and successful citizenry. The results
so far have not been encouraging.
Benign community workers packed
with dropout- and unemployment
rate statistics visit these women
in their homes, only to leave disillu-
sioned since they find nothing but
perceived incomprehension. What’s
going wrong here?
The sub-council’s slogan is
‘social participation’. But the ques-
tion remains: participation in what,
what for, with whom and to whose
benefit?
What do these stimuli mean
for the specific group of Moroccan
women? How do they experience
attention (or intrusion) from above?
What do they make of the relation
between government and citizen,
between public and private? In
short, what lies behind their veil of
invisibility?
Contractor Sub-council North (Amsterdam) and
housing association Ymere
Assignment What’s the meaning of the invisibility
of Moroccan girls in Nieuwendam-Noord?
Student team Sanne Schot, Katusha Sol, Mandy
Lauw, Paul Adriani, Lydia Sprenger, Tanja van Nes
LAB IBAN (Individual citizen advisory body
Amsterdam North)
Volume 16

Context social integration, framing of good


citizenship, cultural diversity

144
Invisible or target group invisible to the city and the city invisible
to this target group.

Unnoticed A number of our observations are summarized below:

· Interviews have revealed that it is better to look at


all women in Amsterdam-Noord rather than focusing
People do not resist change; specifically on problem cases or ethnicity.
people resist being changed · Some girls report that trust between a social
Richard Beckhard worker and those in need of help is essential for
the admission of a problem.
As regards integration, the Nieuwendam-Noord district · Social organizations report that the bond between
of Amsterdam has dedicated itself to the participation individual girls and social organizations is formed
of immigrant groups according to the 2003 policy more quickly with someone who has had similar
document Integration: work in progress. One of the experiences rather than with someone who is an
groups the district is concerned about are ‘invisible’ ‘outsider’.
Moroccan girls. We are dealing here with second · It is important that the environment of ‘the example’
generation Moroccan girls between 18 and 26 who matches that of the person to whom the example’s
have not completed high school. The term ‘invisibility’ story is being told. A girl who had been in this situ-
is used because these girls do not show up in statistics. ation, Khadija Aulad-Achmed, reported that someone
They neither work nor receive government payments struggling with school, possible unemployment
and are thus not ‘seen’ by government agencies. Most and financial problems was not waiting to hear the
are drop-outs who are no longer obliged to attend success story of someone who had started his own
school by virtue of their age and are thus no longer firm. They are waiting to hear someone say, ‘I am
enrolled in one. familiar with your problems, for I’ve had them myself.
The Dutch government’s campaign for equality, I then went there and they helped me.’
participation and control is the basis of the need to
make difficult-to-see groups visible. The Nieuwendam-
Noord district’s campaign to improve its residents’
socio-economic position via participation in education
and working life can be seen as a component of the
national program. Their motto is: ‘Be part of society’.
Although the district acknowledges that the
number of Moroccan women who experience their
lack of socio-economic participation as a problem is
unknown, they nonetheless want to chart this specific
group. We note, however, that this continuous charting
of these people emphasizes their position as immi-
grants and/or minorities. If we closely examine young
Turkish and Moroccan women they do much better
at school and in the labor market than their parents.
In an article entitled ‘For new citizens it’s not about
culture’ (NRC-Handelsblad, 12 April 2008), Tariq
Ramadan wrote that it mustn’t be forgotten that these
women live here and are as familiar with the laws and
history of the Netherlands as other Dutch. By focusing
on those women who are less successful in this regard
attention is placed on less good examples of inte-
gration within an already tense public debate. Ramadan
says that just as ‘you start getting the feeling that
you belong when integration is no longer the topic
of discussion’ women will feel less left behind when
the district does not classify them as invisible. What
is at stake here is that categorization is used as a
‘public accusation’.
The complex network of supporting social
agencies forms another aspect of this case. That
complexity prevents the city from seeing these
people. In Amsterdam-Noord too is there an excess
of (mostly municipal) agencies which target various
groups. Because these target groups have overlap-
Volume 16

ping fields a complicated network of communication


and rules arises between the city and its agencies.
This results in much energy and money being lost.
A lack of coordination within this network appears
145 to the problem and it is this which has made this
Case #3

Photo Aukje Dekker


Ghost spaces in
a crowded city

Volume 16

146
Volume 16

147
Case #3
Large parts of the area neighboring
the Amsterdam city ring highway are
mainly suburban, residential mixed
with large office spaces. Shops
and cultural facilities are scarce
and at first sight the area lacks any
‘hot’ spots for grass root creative
enterprises. This has serious
consequences for the area’s local
economy and quality of life. How
can functional diversity and socio-
economical dynamics be improved,
when logistical conditions and
exploitable space seem to be
lacking?
Startgoed Amsterdam B.V. is
a corporation driven by the munic-
ipality and market participants to
develop creative small businesses
in unexpected and unused spaces.
They explore vacant or ‘left-over’
spaces under bridges, railroads,
highways; even the exploitation
of old tunnels is an option. These
places are usually dirty, smelly,
shady and rather unsafe corridors
connecting different areas and
neighborhoods. By turning these
vacant spaces into ‘hot’ spots the
benefits could vary from increased
quality of life, safety and work, or
meeting space for creative minds.
From hell to ’hot’ spot?
Contractor Startgoed Amsterdam B.V.
Assignment How to add new fragments of
creative enterprise to a crowded city?
Student team Nick Naber, Ruth Stoffels,
Lynn Koppe, Iris Pauw, Socrates Schouten,
Björn König
Volume 16

LAB at Startgoed Amsterdam B.V.


Context Urban planning, functional diversification,
creative industry

148
bodies responsible for transport, these residual spaces
Tunnel visions are literally gaps in their plans, unaccounted for
spaces. To make sure they do not interfere with the
larger plans, they would rather have them boarded
Central Amsterdam – the historic city including its up or fenced off. One of the means to promote the
19th- and early 20th-century expansions – is a walled quality of living by the sub-council is to promote small
city. It is surrounded by an almost perfectly circular scale business. Residual spaces could be interesting
mound, a six meter high dike on top of which the to such business. Finally, we have the neighborhood,
Amsterdam ring road (A10) has been constructed. the actual users of the tunnels. For most of them
Beyond this highway lie the post-WWII extensions. the tunnels were transition spaces where one never
Numerous viaducts and tunnels allow for passage lingered because there is nothing there but
between the new and old city. occasional trouble.
Most of these tunnels are robust and efficient.
Their definition is spatial, logistical, functional and A fourth level of use: tunnel visionaries
transitional; although people use them, the tunnels These tunnels are nothing, yet can become anything,
lack a distinct social dimension. They have no everything. In a city as clogged as Amsterdam, we
emotional, historical or social value. They are junk found that merely pointing out the presence of empty
space: residual space in the liminal zones of high- or junk space provoked a cascade of ideas and positive
speed infrastructure, consequential by-products of reactions. We would therefore like to bring in a fourth
high-tech and high-speed modernization. level of users, the creative class; the introduction of
We focused on the throughways under the new ways to use these spaces can serve as a platform
western ring road as well as the metro and train tracks for other potential users to reassess and develop the
parallel to it, in particular the more open ones that, tunnels.
upon closer inspection, stimulate many fantasies The ring road is a rupture. It is a symbolic and
regarding their potential. What is the potential to social barrier, and as such a rupture in the urban fabric
activate these non-places? and the social continuity of city life. How can transi-
tional space be transformed into meaningful space?
Speed, function and ownership How can a pasture be made from a desert? We saw
First, we set out to read the places. The layers of three ways to proceed. The first option was to take
meaning are not so much a consequence of use, but away the need for a tunnel by removing the ring road.
rather of speed, function and ownership. The elevated The second option was to take away the negative
highway is designed for high speed. That speed has consequences of the tunnel by raising the city level
induced a high level of simplicity. Contextuality and and bridge the road. To carry out either of these
complexity have been reduced to rules and signs. The solution would consume considerable political and
freeway is highly systematized and does not allow for financial assets, which we don’t have.
much variation or dissent, but a different speed can That is why we will be working on option three.
be found in the adjacent urban field. A reduced speed Make these tunnels into an attraction, a destination.
makes for more variation, complexity and social inter- Key to this transformation is a social program to fill
action. It allows for various directions and activities. the social vacuum. Through a process of co-creation
Because of the difference in speed and its conse- on different levels we need to make the city engage
quences, the freeway and the city are two distinct with these spaces, so light won’t be confined to the
worlds. end of the tunnel, but be brought right in.
The tunnels, the ring road, the city extensions
are all part of the general outline of the post-war sub-
urbs and strictly separate functions. They constitute a
grand design, attempting to divide the area’s possible
uses: living, recreation, shopping, work and transpor-
tation. Whereas the original design has been slightly
tampered with by residents, resulting in overlapping
functions to some extent these days, the tunnels have
remained true to their original design and are still
highly singular in function.
Upcoming plans for the New West, the western
district outside the ring road, include massive demo-
lition and densification. Space, air and green are being
sacrificed on the altar of the ‘living city’. Separation
of functions is to be avoided. The first combinations
are living with working and recreation; we are curious
where and how social collaboration with the infra-
structure will be achieved.
Apart from speed and function, the area can
Volume 16

be read through its different owners and users. We


identified an initial level, the government, a second,
the district, and a third (least involved) level, that of
the neighborhood and the people using the passage-
149 ways. For the government, in this case the national
Case #4

Photo Roger Cremers


‘Hangsters’
in Amsterdam
Zeeburg
Case #4
A clear-cut example of supreme
social engineering: the municipality
reflects on methods to anticipate
and intervene in the prosaic act
of kids hangingabout in the streets.
Youth-policy usually tends to be
reactive and therefore approaches
problems on the basis of symptoms.
But who or what exactly is the
problem? There seems to be no
mutual goals, ambitions or culture
shared by youngsters and the
municipality.
The ‘Indische buurt’ or Indone-
sian quarter is a typically old, ‘blue
collar’ neighborhood, with many
immigrants, youngsters and a vibrant
The sign says:
street life. The local government Agreements between youngsters, residents
and sub-council Zeeburg:
and housing association Ymere 1. The square is for adults and children
2. No noise after 10 pm
recently decided to give the area 3. Speak and act with respect for each other
fresh stimuli. Timor Square in the 4. Don’t shout, talk
5. No scooters or cycling on the square
heart of the neighborhood can now 6. Throw garbage in the garbage cans

boast a Stay-OK youth hostel, as


well as Studio K, a cinema/café run
by students. These initiatives aim
to revive the area and facilitate,
integrate and regulate youngsters’
behavior. Do we need to fear a
pre-emptive strike on real, existing
urban loitering? To what effect,
how and more importantly why?

Contractor Zeeburg sub-council and housing


corporation Ymere
Assignment How to deal with outdoor meetings
of youngsters in the city?
Student team Maaike Poppegaai, Annemarie Niks,
Leonne van Vlimmeren, Martin Gevonden, Johan
van Breda, Olivia Somsen
LAB a former shop on the corner of the 2e Atjeh
Street and Sumatra Street
Volume 16

Context quality of life, public nuisance, youth


policy

152
Criminal Act or One of the profound problems we identified
early on is the total lack of communication between
policy makers, neighbors and young people. We found

Social Affair? that the (mis)communication between the involved


parties – residents, policy makers, implementing
organizations and young people – centered along two
main themes: trust and control. The parties involved
The Indische Buurt or Indonesian quarter is an old all have a radically different outlook as to where the
neighborhood within the eastern district of Zeeburg in neighborhood should go, who should be trusted, and
Amsterdam. Most of the housing dates from the how control should be organized.
1900s; the population is generally made up of poor, At the same time, everybody seems to agree
large families of non-western, mostly Moroccan that young people should be allowed a place in the
background. This neighborhood has undergone a neighborhood. It struck us that many young people
scheme of radical renewal in recent years. Almost a want nothing more than a place they can call their
third of the current housing stock (all social housing) own, a neighborhood house they can be proud of.
will be ‘upgraded’ to more expensive housing, It almost sound pathetic but most of them just want
resulting in an influx of young urban professionals. to hang out with each other, very much like old people,
We focused on hangsters, a neologism created truckers, students or church-goers. A youth center,
from the Dutch word hangjeugd (kids who hang to our surprise, is also just what social welfare workers
around) and ‘gangsters’. We examined their place in in the area would like to see. They see it as a place
the neighborhood and how the ‘youth problem’ they can meet, keep an eye on things and facilitate.
should be addressed. The sub-council told us they According to one social worker, ‘in here, the laws
‘had had it with seventies-style pampering’. As a of the street do not apply. If you have them in, you
consequence, the welfare system in this district has can get to know them. If you get to know them, you
been outsourced to a commercial group. Three can influence them.’
takeovers in less than five years sacrificed all but the A simple place – a squat, a mobile unit, an anti-
local welfare workers. Neighborhood centers were squat – should make use of a combination of push
closed, their knowledge, archives and hard disks got and pull. It should be built through participation, a
lost. ‘No loss at all’, according to one bureaucrat, combination of self-organization and regulation, of
because ‘kids wouldn’t be found in there dead.’ freedom and responsibility, of support and sanctions.
After the destruction of the old infrastructure, A simple plan that can be backed by a number of
a new system was designed and implemented. comparable and very successful youth centers in
Loitering young people are dealt with through what other parts of town. Centers that in addition to their
is known as the Ferwerda method. Ferwerda, a crimi- social function serve as a place for debate, entertain-
nologist, was called upon to deal with what otherwise ment and production. Municipal affairs cannot be
could have been understood as a cultural, social, a zero tolerance business. It should be grounded in
educational or even leisure issue. His method takes a education and upbringing, a combination of sticks and
tough approach. Police and private security personnel carrots. Yet it seems policy makers have a fiercely
(euphemistically called ‘neighborhood coaches’) negative stance toward a possible youth center and
surveil the neighborhood at night collecting data and are most likely unwilling to cooperate, let alone facil-
photographs in order to build dossiers on the young itate. They seem to be missing the point altogether.
people. Every square and most streets have CCTV all In a city space is limited per definition. However
wired to a 24/7 monitored video wall. On many streets every group should find a place that is respected by
you can find public notices detailing the things for others. At the heart of the ‘youth problem’ lies a rather
which you can be fined. fundamental question of mentality. Some perceive
Against this background of an urban war against loitering as a criminal act, others as a social affair.
loitering young people, we decided early on to work Avoiding rigid group-think is most important. Partici-
beyond the stigma and the stereotype. Inspired by the pation by all concerned is key: address what people
work of American urban ethnographers, we plunged want, not what you want.
into our action research. To understand the area and
the kids at stake we felt we had to engage their world
and feel what they feel. For several nights we loitered on
the other side of the rift. We got to know some of them,
an experience which turned out to be far less exotic
and dangerous than we had been led to expect from the
public opinion of them. We conducted research using
participatory observation, interviews and meetings;
the output was organized and classified online.
Are they disturbing the peace or are they reacting
to the perpetual high-tech observation of their peace?
These young people are encouraged to turn their back
Volume 16

on the police, the neighborhood and the municipality.


Even more, we found that the neighborhood, the former
social workers and the young people had become
more frustrated and distrustful. We could feel the
153 atmosphere of despair and distrust.
From the Volume archive:
new ways of social engineering
Joos van den Dool
Apart from describing great and grand ex-
amples of social engineering by architecture

EW
or design and how they influence millions

Archis 7 (2000)

Archis 8 (2000)
of people more or less by accident, since
the late nineties Archis has developed an
interest in grassroots, bottom-up efforts by
people to change the circumstances under
which they life. Let’s call this the hopeful part,
the part that testifies to people’s optimism,
activism and vitality. Have the examples
mentioned below been durable? You may
take it for granted that many of these exam-
ples come from developing countries. But
aren’t just these approaches needed as badly
in the west, in countries developing as well?

Urban Heroes, Urban Vitality Archis (2000)12

Archis 9 (2000)

Archis 12 (2000)
Vitality
Charles Landry, ‘Urban vitality: a new source of urban
competitiveness’, Archis 12 (2000) 8.
Jaime Lerner, ‘Making it happing. Curitiba and the
potentials of the city’, Archis 12 (2000) 18.
Roberto Segre, ‘The city shaped by community hope.
Viva Rio, Rio de Janeiro, Brasil, Archis 12 (2000) 40.

Grassroots social engineering


Muhktar Husain, ‘Planning on the micro level. Arif
Hasan, Karachi, Pakistan’, Archis 12 (2000) 26.
William de Bruijn, ‘Controlling the local power
network. Electric power station in Schönau,
Germany’, Archis 12 (2000) 72.
Gil M. Doron, ‘A new urban paradigm. Kyong Park
in Detroit’, Archis 9 (2000) 67.
Gil M. Doron, ‘Guerrilla Gardening: Reclaim the
Streets in London’, Archis 7 (2000) 48.

Open source
Look also at recent issues in which Volume went
Archis 2 (2001)

Archis 5 (2001)

beyond merely reporting or signaling events to actual


intervention such as Volume #4 Break through! which
contained shareware, a free exhibition and plenty of
opportunities to start engineering your own society.
Archis (2001) 5

Contemporary calls for social engineering


Lucien Kroll, ‘MANIFESTO for the G8 meeting on
March 2nd 2001’, Archis 2 (2001) 53.
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Colophon Volume 14 published and exhibited.
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