Urban planner and architect Henk Hartzema and Marlies van Diest regularly visit each other professionally. A recent experience of one of the two often provides the reason to take a critical look at the subject of urban planning. The pair now want to take a little more time for that. They meet on top of a dune in Ouddorp on the South Holland island of Goeree. A conversation ensues that is as panoramic in nature as the view: Can you change the world as an urban planner? No, of course not. Or is it?
Make a fist together
Even before he sits down, Hartzema starts. Something has happened to him and it is high on his mind. During an oral explanation of one of his projects, he found a committee that was quite pedantic. The members did not assume Hartzema’s good intentions, but wondered in a defensive tone whether he had thought through the consequences of his proposal. Visibly dismayed: “We are constantly catching each other in this profession, while we should be joining forces as professional brothers right now. There are all kinds of large-scale spatial issues that we need to tackle urgently. As colleagues, we think ninety percent the same about the way in which we do this. We are all working for future generations. So why go against each other, instead of working together?”
Van Diest nods. She recognizes the urgency behind Hartzema’s plea of making a fist together. Thinking through local and regional challenges up to and including the national scale level is of great importance if you want to offer solutions to issues related to energy, climate, biodiversity or agricultural innovation. This can only be achieved by working together. However, she has her doubts whether it will ever be possible to make a fist together as a professional community. “Catching each other’s flies is a persistent phenomenon. People are quick to think that you have ulterior motives if you tell an open and honest story or pull too something. The more emotional we become in the pursuit of beauty, the more it is seen as unrealistic by non-colleagues.” So yes, better collaboration. But not only as colleagues among themselves. Van Diest: “If you want to achieve something, as a spatial designer you have to get people on board from the bottom up. If you manage to gain the confidence that you have good intentions, there is a chance of success in making changes.”
The authentic landscape is under pressure
Even in a small village like Ouddorp, solving tasks require a vision that transcends the local scale. Van Diest worked here on behalf of the municipality of Goeree-Overflakkee on an area vision for the Kop van Goeree. “We came to the conclusion that Ouddorp no longer has room to absorb new program. You come here to find an authentic landscape, to see something different from what you see at home.” The setting of the conversation illustrates this: dune everywhere. Not a beach club in sight, from which loud music comes, not yet another holiday park with exactly the same houses as its counterpart by the sea in North Holland. “Nevertheless, the authentic landscape is also under pressure here,” says Van Diest. “If even more recreation is added, the landscape will become cluttered and Ouddorp will lose its unique quality.” At the same time, there is a demand for recreation and the houses that are now here are only affordable for the happy few. “Are you going to bring all the rubbish you don’t want in Ouddorp to Flakkee?” A rhetorical question.
“At the same time, if you don’t want to expand recreation, what economic value does the landscape in this part of the Netherlands still have? What happens to the landscape when the farmers leave? You can’t turn all the landscape into nature.”
Largest power strip in the Netherlands
Hartzema points across the dune. Further afield, in the area of North and South Beveland, Walcheren, Oosterschelde, Westerschelde and the North Sea, he is working on an entry for the Eo Wijers competition. There are also issues that cannot be solved in isolation within the project boundaries. “That part of Zeeland is becoming the largest ‘power strip’ in the Netherlands,” says the urban planner. All the large cables from the wind turbines from the sea enter the country in Walcheren. There are already three high-voltage lines running inland from the coast and two more will be added, perhaps as many as three. The first hydrogen plant in the Netherlands will also be built in Zeeland. The question is whether Zeeland can handle that. With all these interventions, you are crushing the majestic entry from sea to land. Moreover, in the Green Heart we have put the train underground for a lot of money and it is precisely there that the high-voltage pylons have now been placed above ground. With all those masts in sight, it would have been better to keep the train above ground. Why don’t you let that energy enter the country in Castricum? This is located near the main customer, the city of Amsterdam. That would have saved a lot of cables and masts and cluttering the landscape.”
“This is the type of assignment for which urban planning in the Netherlands knows how to make an elaboration by design,” says Hartzema. “But every urban planner wants to reinvent the wheel over and over again. It is now hilarious when yet another designer comes along who is going to ‘sketch’ the whole thing. How many maps of the future of the Netherlands already exist!? We are busy showcasing ourselves as urban planners, while we should be sharing knowledge. Because if we make a fist together, we can offer people a rebuttal.”
Composing space
The interpretation that is traditionally given to the subject of urban planning does not contribute to better working together. The modernist tradition of thinking that the city can be engineered still dominates among many urban planners. But to what extent do urban planners succeed in designing an ideal world, Van Diest wonders.
Van Diest: “Landscape architects think very differently. They are process thinkers. If they work with living matter, then what you design is never what it will be. So they think in terms of time. Architects think in solidified matter. How does the urban planner think? Is his image of society a solidified one? Can you really make a difference in society as an urban planner?”
“Yes, definitely,” says Hartzema. “How people relate to space affects their well-being. If an urban planner designs a city well, such a city is alive. So how that space is composed actually makes a difference.”
Van Diest raises her eyebrows: “Don’t people actually provide the liveliness? If you have the idea that you can influence society in a period from now to 50 years, you are almost God.”
Hartzema: “That is how you name the big pitfall of urban planning. If it becomes a religious belief, you will have accidents. That is why, as an urban planner, you always have to make a distinction between what you record and what you don’t. There must be sufficient room within a strong framework for initiatives that can develop or for change. The urban planner is not about whether the café on the corner is nice. Before you know it, it’s bankrupt and there’s a florist.”
It is precisely with this approach that Hartzema works as an urban planner and supervisor at the VU Campus in Amsterdam. “There we wanted to connect the campus more fluidly with the environment. At the same time, we also aimed to preserve the individuality of the place. Together with those involved, we went in search of what that individuality was. We designed a system of four squares that will continue to exist in principle, but can change in size and scale over the years. Such a strong framework gives room for change for generations of incoming and going students.”
Leaving the door ajar
Hartzema: “During my studies at TU Delft, I had great difficulty thinking in terms of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ urban planning. Choices were not based enough on spatial considerations.” He saw the light after a course by Professor of Landscape Architecture Clemens Steenbergen and Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture Wouter Reh. “From Steenbergen and Reh I learned that as a designer you have to have an experiential or experience goal. You then achieve this with the use of spatial resources. For example, you have the intention to make people get lost, to make an impressive spectacle or to simulate infinity. Then you choose appropriate spatial means, such as seclusion, closedness, vistas, et cetera, to compose the space.”
Van Diest nods in agreement: “That is thinking in terms of processes instead of malleability.” She herself has a very concrete idea to use time in the process of structural greening of the living environment. “I want to plant more trees, and make sure they can grow big. Then I will still be in the picture in forty years.”
Hartzema: “Let my role now be to open the door a crack and show people what world is behind that door. Will I still have food and what kind of job in the future?”
Marieke Berkers speaks with Marlies van Diest and Henk Hartzema, Ouddorp, 29 June 2023.
