Large cities need planning. Not to record everything or to steer it in a coercive way, but to guide developments in the right direction and to ensure that everything and everyone finds its place in the city. And that is necessary, because a city is a barrel full of contradictions.
An accumulation of people and interests in a small area requires a vision in which everything can live together, including the desired connections and relationships among each other. An urban system such as the Randstad therefore also needs structure, so that this agglomeration remains understandable and can function efficiently. Yet in the Randstad, only partial planning is currently being done and there is a lack of a coherent spatial concept. The physical structure of the Randstad as a whole has not been systematically worked on for decades. That is striking. Over 7 million people live closely together, but we just can’t get around to making a Randstad plan. The last map dates from the 60s of the last century. An update of this map with roads and connections, with a crystallized relationship between city and country, could show us along which lines the Randstad can develop. Whether that is a fuller or a greener Randstad. A Randstad without a plan is rudderless.
With every cabinet term, the Randstad gets a little fuller, so the chances of shaping it become smaller every time. This entails a risk that the neighbourhoods, villages and cities will lose contact with the landscape, that decisiveness will be translated into local solutions to the accessibility problem. In short, that the Randstad is gradually becoming unattractive, inefficient and completely incomprehensible.
Structural vision for infrastructure and space
The Structural Vision for Infrastructure and Space that was recently presented does not change this either. The minister rightly points to the great importance of the Randstad for the Netherlands. The Randstad is the centre of gravity of the economy and population. The vision addresses functional aspects of the Randstad, such as facilitating air and sea ports and solving infrastructural bottlenecks. In addition, it emphasizes procedural aspects of the Randstad, with the decentralization of decision-making being the most striking. In other words, the structural vision is primarily a practical document in which the minister serves all kinds of interests in society and wants to remove obstacles to them.
It is tempting to emphasise the trend break of liberal signature in the structural vision, such as the widening of motorways. More interesting is the fact that there are certain aspects in this vision that are not new but recur time and again in spatial planning. These are therefore not determined by the politic, but are part of our culture and therefore ultimately more decisive for the design of our country. The first is that there is a historically rooted desire for autonomy of the individual cities, districts and neighbourhoods in the Randstad and secondly that our concept of public space is interpreted as a general asset that you can occupy instead of state property that you should stay away from. The first ensures that the Randstad never gets the cohesion it deserves, the second that the landscape between the cities is a no man’s land that is gradually being consumed. Both culturally determined characteristics can be read in the structure of our roads.
The perception of city and country is done by means of roads
Roads make the city, three examples that illustrate this. In the United States the street system has been very consciously aimed at democratic equality. Straight streets with an open end are the physical conditions for equality and liberty that results from this and that is strongly felt in a city like New York, for example. Hierarchy is an inseparable feature of French culture. That is why churches and palaces are given the opportunity to dominate by their position in the line of sight of the street. Conversely, power would be meaningless if the street and street walls did not exist to frame the viewer’s gaze. In Germany, the highways are designed to make the country infinitely large. The illusion that goes with this is of a boundlessly rolling Arcadia. Ruins, castles and rivers fit into this, but not cities that would give the country the concept of scale. To this day, on the Autobahn, on our way to our holiday in Southern Europe, we see a lot of greenery and landscape, but not a single city. These examples show that roads give direction to the relationships in society and that, conversely, the user experiences how society works. In short, roads are the mirror of society. It is therefore interesting to examine the message that the roads in the Randstad convey.
It turns out that the Randstad, not only traditionally, but to this day arises from the bottom up. Well-thought-out neighbourhoods and districts come to the surface one by one. Within a precisely defined planning area, with clear responsibilities and a concrete time horizon, energetic work has been done on the imagination of society. Almost every ten years, new ideas arise about the infrastructure within these newly developed areas, appropriate to the society of that time. Which brings us to the regular and straight road systems from the Vinex districts. The roads are different in shape every decade, but actually they always do the same thing. The infrastructure reinforces the isolation. Every development is more or less on its own. As if the most recent expansion will really turn out to be the last. This reveals our real identity: it is not national, but can only be described on a smaller scale, that of involvement with the local group, with the certainty of unwritten rules and accepted manners. The curtains are open and we belong to the collective. The ideals of the Netherlands can thus be captured in communities of similar interests – neighbourhoods, districts, villages, cities. As a result, the Randstad is divided into hundreds of small parts; perfected urban planning concepts without a clear interconnection. This metropolis cannot continue to grow like this.
Our Ruisdaelian dream, in which every neighbourhood is a hamlet – clear and quiet, and if possible adjacent to the landscape – is shattered. The patchwork quilt that has replaced it offers too little order and cohesion and also eats up space. The Randstad is and remains the most extensive and rural population concentration in the world. And yet it feels full and cluttered.
Conclusion
After 50 years without serious planning, the Randstad is in danger of becoming disfunctional and incomprehensible. With far-reaching consequences. Over the past century, the cities in the Randstad have lost the safe frame of reference of the surrounding landscape. The North Sea, the rivers and the open meadows are becoming increasingly out of sight. Possible new connections, both landscape and infrastructural, fail time and again because of a lack of vision. In this way, the now proposed Rijnland Route, the A16/A13 connection, the New Western Riverbank Connection, the Westrandweg, the RijnGouwelijn and the A4 Midden Delfland are also in danger of being given only a functional and economically driven approach. In a Randstad without a plan, they are orphaned infrastructural and conflict-avoiding stopgaps, which ultimately cause disruptions to spatial cohesion.
In short, the way in which the Randstad citizen has always lived is under pressure. That is why a spatial plan for the Randstad will have to be worked on from the top down. A plan that safeguards the desired image of our idealized living environments. At the same time, it can look ahead and bring out the core qualities of the Randstad (for example, the historically rooted diversity and the green space). To do so, we need to overcome our innate fear of infrastructure and understand that roads are the sustainable fabric of the city. Roads tell us where we are. In addition, we need to make the landscape more part of the Randstad. After all, it is at its best when we experience the space. A direct motorway connection between Amsterdam and Rotterdam could provide an unprecedented panoramic experience. This Green Heart Route/A3 literally and figuratively brings the landscape and the rest of the world closer. Past Schiphol the meadows start and without having to turn off you drive to Paris. Conversely, the Green Heart Route/A3 offers an abundant view of Dutch cultural history and Amsterdam, instead of behind a number of cities, is suddenly located on a landscape with cows, church towers and windmills. We could breathe new life into provincial roads, the old connections from church tower to church tower (comparable to the French Routes Nationales) so that we get a glimpse into the everyday life of Holland again. Or build new provincial roads with a binding character. Especially in the Westland and in the Dune and Bulb Region, logical connections are needed to give a flooded coastal region some breathing space again.
The current cabinet has a liberal slant. This means that freedom is a core value that should be reflected in his policy and in the vision of the Randstad and of the Netherlands as a whole. It is striking that the Structural Vision for Infrastructure and Space emphasizes only one precondition of the concept of freedom, namely the elimination of obstacles and blockages as much as possible. In other words, freedom as in creating opportunities and possibilities. The other precondition for freedom is precisely the setting of frameworks. Freedom is not a sandy desert, but freedom is Route 66. Against this background, it is desirable for the Minister of Infrastructure and Spatial Planning to start with the realisation of physical structures instead of monitoring economic processes and proposing procedural adjustments. A Randstad plan is desirable for a metropolis under pressure. With roads and networks and a prominent place for the landscape, making the Randstad open and understandable again and the Randstad residents can feel free.
Henk Hartzema, reaction on the concept Structuurvisie Infrastructuur en Ruimte, September 2011
