Posts

Messy cities: how to strive for more spontaneity in the planned city?
What do we mean by vibrant and liveable cities? Which buildings, activities and groups are desirable or undesirable in this context? And can this be planned and regulated from above by experts and professionals, or is it primarily a matter of leaving room for bottom-up initiatives? The answers to these questions ultimately determine how our cities look and feel: neat and orderly, raw and exciting, or a bit of everything. In the book Messy Cities, numerous authors express their preferences and s…

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How to design a play-friendly living environment
Civil servants, project developers, and urban planners involved in housing construction often find themselves embroiled in debates about balancing affordability, return on investment, and the need for adequate housing. Architects, on the other hand, tend to focus primarily on issues such as floor plans, private outdoor space, and sunlight exposure. Often overlooked in these kinds of design processes is the (semi-)public outdoor space surrounding and between the homes, which determines the play …

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Children’s geographies
The book ‘Children's geographies’ gives insights into the contemporary sociological understandings of children’s competence as social actors and how they reconfigure their living environment in their own favour. It illustrates children’s knowledge of the geographic environment and contribute to debates about spatiality in the social studies of childhood. In this article a summary of this interesting academic book.A few decades ago there was almost no geography research on children. Of cours…

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Playable cities: sources
The model and the chapters for 'Playable cities' are based on an extensive desk research of international literature and websites about public spaces (for kids). Using the work of for example, Mikael Colville-Andersen, Jan Gehl (Making Cities for People; Gehl Institute), Tim Gill, Jane Jacobs, Kaboom!, Kevin Lynch, Project for Public Spaces (PPS), The Bernard van Leer Foundation (Urban95), The City at Eyelevel, and William H. Whyte. But also using the results from scientific research…

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The Open City
Nowadays we make cities to much as a closed system: segregated, regimented, and controlled. Instead of this 'Closed City' we need an 'Open City' where citizens actively hash out their differences and planners experiment with urban forms that make it easier for residents to cope. This is the main message of urban sociologist Richard Sennett in his new book 'Building and Dwelling' that came out last month. Yesterday he gave an inspiring lecture at the Rotterdam Academy of …

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How to make inviting and attractive public spaces? A top 10.
Public spaces come in many different sizes, shapes and forms. Squares, parks, playgrounds, shopping and residential streets, all belong to the outdoor space. They can be found in inner cities and beyond. They can be both big and small. Despite this diversity, there are a number of factors that determine whether a public space attracts or rejects people. In this article, a top 10 - in random order - of items that can serve as a checklist for the realization of an inviting, lively and attr…

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Arrival cities: the need for precision
In the winter of 2015 the City Builder Book Club, an online book club about cities, is reading Doug Saunders’ award-winning best-seller Arrival City: How the Largest Migration in History Is Reshaping Our World. An interesting book about migration to urban centers around the globe with illuminations on all sorts of paths, policies, and people. I was invited to contribute a short response on chapter 10 ('Arriving in style') about migrant neighborhoods in the Netherlands (Amsterdam), Bangl…

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Pop-up City; city-making in a fluid world
After the success of the blog, this summer the book arrived: Pop-Up City. A city where existing urban planning frameworks and architectural landscapes do not hinder spontaneous human activity, but rather serve as an encouraging platform for innovative, inspirational and time-bound activities. In the book a diverse collection of these temporary initiatives pass by. Ranging from funny ideas to interesting improvements to the urban landscape.

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We Own The City
Last week the book ‘We Own The City’ was launched in Amsterdam. The book is about the rise of community planning. It focus on the way traditional top-down players are employing to enable and support bottom-up initiatives in cities. The result is a book with descriptions of inspiring urban development processes around the world.

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Torre David; informal vertical community
In Caracas stands an unfinished 45-story skyscraper. Despite the physical shortcomings it has become an improvised, continually revised home to more than 750 families. Urban-Think Tank, an interdisciplinary design practice, spent over a year studying the physical structure and the social organization that turned this ruin into a ‘squatters’ home. They summarized this process - were the planned city meets the lived city - in a wonderful book.

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Making Vital Public Spaces: the power of observation, community wishes and activities
Last Thursday Fred Kent, president of Project for Public Spaces, gave an inspiring lecture in Amsterdam about placemaking: a community-driven, bottom-up approach for improving public spaces. Over the past 37 years, Kent has worked on hundreds of projects, including Bryant Park and Times Square in New York. “We have to turn everything upside down, to get it right side up.”

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What's in a name?
Maps provide a modeled representation of the earth’s surface: a geographical representation of the countryside or the planned city. On the basis of different kinds of lines, shapes and colors, you get an overview of the most important roads, buildings and facilities. Convenient for those on the road. However, there are also so-called typographic maps, these are maps with mainly words. Words that can be places within the physical structures to represent a social theme or an activity: the lived c…

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The Other Story
Some districts of a city have a national reputation. ‘De jordaan’ in Amsterdam has always been a synonym for popular humour and sociability. No red-light district enjoyed for decades its reputation as much as ‘Katendrecht’ in Rotterdam. And no working-class district enjoyed its reputation as much as the ‘Schilderwijk’ in The Hague, with its street rows and scuffles during the New Year’s Eve celebrations. It is no different in foreign countries. Think, for example, of the French suburbs, the Lon…

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Urban Springtime Books
This blog is on the interface between the planned city and the lived city. It describes inspiring projects, articles, books and private observations. And it represents the beautiful, fun and exciting sides of the city. It is about making the most of opportunities, about creativity and unorthodox regulations. Summed up with the term ‘City in the spring’. This term is hard to define. It’s more a feeling than anything else. Like the first day of spring. In the specialist literature, there are seve…

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