The street tells you where you are

When you see the image of an ordinary Dutch street, such as the Overtoom in Amsterdam, no one will be able to argue that this is a street in, for example, Rome or Barcelona. Apparently, there are so many Dutch characteristics attached to the statue that confusion is excluded. For example, the world has millions of streets, not one of which is the same as the other, even though all streets are basically the same, namely a long line with two walls, a beginning and an end. The laws of the street are the laws of the relationship between the individual and the collective and the relationship between the individuals themselves. The cross profile of the street tells about the relationship between the individual and the collective. A building can rise above the street, withdraw from the street, determine its position with a distinguished door, or seek a barrier-free connection with the public space. A choice can be made every time. For example, a town hall was traditionally a building with authority, with a large door and a number of steps to enter. Since the 70s of the 20th century, they have come closer and closer to the ground, often colourful and with everyday architecture. The city council has exchanged authoritativeness and distance for accessible approachability. The relationship between the building and the street tells us about the fundamental choice that the institute wanted to make in its relationship with society. In a similar way, the longitudinal profile of the street shows the mutual relationships between the individuals. A well-known example is the canal houses in Amsterdam. The width and height of the building and the termination of the façade, to name the most important ones, logically underline the choices that the architect makes to profile himself in relation to the neighbours. However obvious, nowhere else will we find such street walls. Nowhere else do we find such unanimity of individuals, narrow modesty of capital, and money that looks into its houses through such large windows. What applies to the canal belt also applies to streets of the famous planners Berlage or Van Eesteren, the boulevards of Haussmann, to the avenues of Hollywood, the paved roads in Flanders or the avenues of New York. Look at the street façade and the relationships between the buildings and the users are coloured, determined by culture, zeitgeist, structure of society, etc. And so it can happen that of the millions of streets in the world, not a single one produces the same image, unless made in the same place, by the same hand to the exclusion of outside influences. There is endless variation on the two dimensions of the street. Each building always chooses how it wants to belong to the public domain and how it conforms or distinguishes itself from its surroundings. All the separate considerations together make the street and because these considerations are strongly culture- and time-bound, the street tells where you are.

Street patterns

These laws of the street also apply to the structure of streets that make up the city. The total of streets organizes our perception of time and space and groups the relationships and larger connections within the society of the city as a whole. In many societies, the expressiveness of roads has been recognized and consciously used. The shape of the street pattern is the messenger of the ruling ideology and therefore an inseparable part of the national identity. Thanks to Thomas Jefferson, at the end of the 18th century, the United States has a street grid named after him, which shows that all Americans are basically equal. According to the constitution, which he helped to draft, every resident has the right to the pursuit of happiness. This happiness can best be achieved through individual freedom. A freedom, or at least the suggestion of freedom, that would be endangered by the termination of a street, by means of a T-junction or a monumental building. Thus, the streets in the land of unlimited possibilities are open-ended. In neighbouring European countries, too, the construction of infrastructure, and in particular the motorways, has been used to support ideological ambitions. In France, for example, the infrastructure contributes to the image of Paris as the absolute center of the continent. The city must also be felt by train, so changing trains is the only option during a journey from north to south. In Paris itself, the story of the city is told through spacious boulevards that put important buildings in place. Hierarchy is an inseparable feature of French culture. That is why churches and palaces are given the opportunity to dominate by their position on the axis, the street. Conversely, power is meaningless if the street and street walls did not exist to frame the viewer’s gaze. As a general without an army, is an important building without the serving context of subordinate architecture. In Germany in the 1930s, motorways avoid all cities. Nazi Germany strived for a world empire, there is no place for finitude in this. The suggestion that arises from the highways is of a boundless rolling landscape. Ruins, castles and rivers fit into this, but not cities that would give the country the concept of scale. To this day, this illusion is maintained. The road patterns in these examples thus become the carrier of the image in which a country wants to recognize itself. And so many remember Paris for its monumentality, New York for its open character and Germany for a long journey.

The Netherlands as a patchwork

Just as the road pattern can express the prevailing ideology, conversely, it should also be true that the road pattern can be read when there is no definite or all-encompassing identity. The Netherlands is an example of a country that is not easy to capture in an unambiguous definition. Think of the incredible effort it takes to implement large-scale interventions. Or the endless series of analyses about the Randstad (one metropolis or not) without ever leading to sound instruments for planning. Both lead to the same conclusion. The Netherlands, or at least the Randstad, is in a state of total confusion. It is therefore worthwhile to read our country on the basis of the road patterns. Understanding the Randstad starts with knowledge of the roads. The report ‘A culture of design’ from the summer of 2008 by the then ministers Cramer and Plasterk starts with a curious paradox: “On the one hand, Dutch architects, urban planners and landscape architects are highly regarded internationally. At the same time, there is a widely shared feeling that the Netherlands is becoming cluttered, both among the public and among professionals or politicians. “The report then discusses the quality of designs and the aesthetics of the spatial image, without referring to structure. This is striking, because disorder or so-called cluttering is by definition not an aesthetic paradigm, but a question of structure, order. The Netherlands should not become more beautiful, but more structured, or more understandable. With this conclusion, the ministers’ invoking the paradox becomes as strange as blaming the loose items in a room for the lack of a cupboard. In the Netherlands, a national road plan was last drawn up in the 1960s, which was not implemented. In the Randstad, the construction of motorways has since then no longer been based on structures, but on local solutions to problems. In combination with the very short distances between the cities, this ensures that our highways are not continuous and wide, as is often the case abroad. Our country also lacks a system of structuring regional roads. The old provincial roads that had their origin in the Napoleonic era, mostly dead straight roads between the main cities of the country, have largely disappeared. Examples of this are the Boschdijk in Eindhoven, the Amsterdamseweg in Utrecht, the Rijksstraatwegen (for example in Haarlem) and the Napoleonsbaan between Roermond and Venlo. Remnants of these long lines are still visible in many places, but due to the fragmentation of the long line into pieces and the loss of traffic significance, they rarely play a role in the orientation to the environment. This makes the Netherlands the only country in Europe that has abolished the Napoleonic roads. The recent rediscovery of the regional road does not have a structuring or urban, but only a mono-functional infrastructural significance. Encased between noise barriers, she follows a course that denies the link with the buildings and the subsurface. Planners, urban planners and landscape architects have therefore not been subservient to regional cohesion and supra-urban connections for decades. Their expertise and decisiveness have benefited a lower level of scale. The urban developments of our country, especially in the Randstad, show that we excel in devising and realising area developments. In this project, construction assignments are energetically worked on within a precisely defined planning area, with framed responsibilities and a concrete planning horizon. An optimal implementation of the experiment, in which the state of the art and legislation, fed by the then prevailing social views, led to an unprecedented wealth and diversity of plans. It is not for nothing that our ability in this area is sung about worldwide. It is striking that the infrastructure is used as a means to enable plan development, but at the same time to limit it. Every development is more or less on its own. When this description is superimposed on that of the lack of a network of provincial roads and the cramped appearance of our highways, it leads to the conclusion that the solution to the paradox of Dutch planning lies in the question of scale. Our identity is not described on the scale of the country, but on a smaller scale of the involvement with the collective, the group. The ideals of the Netherlands can thus be captured in communities of similar interests. The consequence of this desire for area autonomy is that after about a century it comes to light that this tradition of optimized sub-plans lacks a coherent spatial concept. The suggestion of a Ruisdaelian dream image, in which every neighborhood is a hamlet, preferably clear and quiet, and if possible adjacent to the landscape is shattered. The patchwork offers little order and coherence. Side-by-side arrangement is also a very space-consuming form of organization. The Randstad is and remains the most extensive and wide-ranging population concentration in the world. And yet it feels full and cluttered, we don’t oversee it anymore. The Randstad is incomprehensible.

Conclusion

The Randstad therefore needs connections. The realization that the perception of space and distance on the one hand or of proximity and direct relationships on the other hand colour the spatial relationships and give everything a place, leads to the conclusion that the roads must be designed. After all, it is the movements that put our perceptions one after the other and thus order reality. By invariably using the design of roads to guide our view, cities can be reconnected to the landscape. Can space be experienced from the road, or urban fragments can be strung together. Against the prevailing culture, long lines and patterns of infrastructure will have to be designed. There are plenty of opportunities for this. A Green Heart Route between Rotterdam and Amsterdam, for example, floating exactly on NAP, so that both cities will once again be located on the peat meadow landscape. Or setting up free lanes; shortest routes for cyclists and electric cars on the old Napoleonic roads between the cities, from church tower to church tower. The Hollandse Kustboulevard as a green provincial road, which organizes the excessively urbanized area along the North Sea. Eliminating the fragmentation of this part of the Netherlands is the only way to prevent our location by the sea from disappearing further from the picture. Streets and roads make the Randstad and its cities and villages more understandable and give it air. Opposite the pragmatics of control, there is the open perspective of connecting. After all, that’s what roads are for.