Category Archives: Urbanism

Tunnels under the Eixão

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One of the most striking novelties of the construction of Brasília in the 1950’s, was the complete separation of functions and of transport flows. As Brasília’s Pilot Plan is now UNESCO world heritage, this rigid division is likely to persist in the city’s DNA forever. Subtle changes, however, are in the making:

Not surprisingly, the road system – cars and buses – is the backbone of Brasília. It is often said that without a car, life is difficult there, except for your local necessities that you can find in the living environment of the ‘super-block’. The road system is fluid, almost without traffic lights, using many flyovers and extensive junctions. The pedestrian walkways form a secondary system, literally undermines the main system of cars, diving underneath the junctions by many pedestrian tunnels. The pedestrian flows have not been explored yet for commercial activities, except for some illegal vending, neither for services. A competition, organized by the Institute of Brazilian Architects of the Federal District seeks to change this (application until April 10th!).

Designers are asked to contribute with realistic and innovative plans for one of the main pedestrian tunnels of the city, underneath the main road axis (Eixão), as well as other tunnels in the future. New commercial and communitarian functions should be joined to these passageways, while keeping them safe and functional.

View a short film of Brasília’s pedestrian tunnels, underneath the main axis

Peak travel

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Mobility is a key aspect of urban development. It is generally assumed that the demand for mobility will continue to grow in the future, propelled by increasing activity and wealth, and supported by ever expanding infrastructure networks. Recently, researchers Adam Millard-Ball and Lee Schipper of Stanford University raised another possibility: the demand for mobility may have reached its peak.

First traffic jam on a Dutch highway, on May 29, 1955 (a holiday)

Similar to the concept of Peak Oil, Peak Travel predicts a possible paradigm shift from growing consumption to stabilization and perhaps even decline in mobility demand. Peak Oil, on the one hand, counts with stagnating of oil production, somewhere between 2005 and 2015 (the exact peak year is disputed), due to limited new oil reserves and higher costs to bring the remaining oil to the surface. This is expected to increase prices and therefore decrease demand, because people will seek affordable alternatives. Peak Travel, on the other hand, shows that in western industrialized countries, travel distances have increased with growing incomes. However, this growth of mobility has recently come to a halt, while wealth still continues to grow.

Peak Travel

Many possible  explanations can be given. The personal travel time budget (known to be around 1,5 hours per day on average), for instance, has remained constant, even though people have the financial means to spend more time traveling. Traffic jams are a factor that limit distances one can travel in a certain amount of time, and also the velocity of various travel modes is reaching an optimum. Furthermore, vehicle ownership is more or less saturated, everyone who would like to drive, drives. And the aging population counts with more and more people who don’t commute to work anymore. It could very well be, the researchers state, that this recent flat line is simply some sort of hick-up, and mobility will soon start to increase again. However, it could also happen to be a peak in our travel behavior, which will continue on this level for some time, and perhaps even start to decline in the future. Peak travel could be a major change in cities, regions and the way we plan and build them.

Peak Oil

Highlines for everyone

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Transformation projects, of inner city train viaducts to elevated public parks, are mushrooming around the globe. This week, for example, the design for the third and last section of the New York High Line was presented. At the same time, Rotterdam gained a first and temporary part of its own high line: the so-called Luchtsingel.

The Luchtsingel, designed by ZUS, was pronounced the winner of a special competition organized by the municipality of Rotterdam. All residents of the city could vote for one of five projects, that would then receive part of a 4 million Euro funding. The other projects included a City Farm and a Music program. The temporary wooden structure of the Luchtsingel connects the central but derelict part of Hofplein to places north of the train tracks. There it connects to Rotterdam’s existing high line, the Hofbogen (also known as Hofpleinlijn, before it was deactivated in 2009). Several plans have been made to turn this viaduct into a public park, or build housing on top of it. This hasn’t been made viable yet, except for some reuse of the arcs for the Mini-Mall. Now a first and temporary attempt will be made to explore the top of the viaduct structure and let people experience the high line effect in Rotterdam. The project still lacks funding, so sections of the wooden structure are actually being sold to people or companies who would like to have their name on it.

The High Line at the Railyards, the third section of this famous project, has been designed by Diller + Scofidio + Renfro. Part of the landscaping is left in a rather wild state, with the rusty tracks still in place. People walk through this part on white or steel pathways. Part of the deck is to be removed, showing the heavy overhead structure of the viaduct. Close to the junction of the tracks, a theater space was designed. The entire High Line will be open to the public by spring 2014.

Atlanta BeltLine – lecture, debate and booklet

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The Atlanta Beltline combines the development of a new light rail connection on an abandoned cargo track with adjacent developments of housing, parks and public facilities. The project is marked by the strikingly effective cooperation between volunteering community members, real estate developers and the government. Intrigued by the project, the Deltametropolis Association invited Ryan Gravel (Perkins+Will), initiator of the project, to give a lecture and discuss Transit Oriented Development (TOD) with other experts. This program was part of the SprintCity project, led by Merten Nefs, which investigates opportunities for TOD in the Netherlands.
Gravel has been the driving force behind the Atlanta BeltLine since the beginning. When he graduated on the project at Georgia Tech university 12 years ago, no one could imagine that it would become a billion dollar urban development. Currently, he works on the BeltLine corridor design, as an urban planner at the Perkins+Will office.

Download the booklet on the Atlanta BeltLine and Gravel’s vision on Transit Oriented Development in Randstad Holand.


Open publication – Free publishing

View the lecture, given October 6, 2011 at Delft University of Technology

After the lecture, a discussion was held with Caroline Bos, Dominic Stead and Paul Gerretsen. The lecture was co-organized by Roberto Rocco (TUDelft).

View the debate after the lecture

The following day, Friday October 7, SprintCity also organized an interactive video debate on international practices of Transit Oriented Development: ‘Station to City’. This debate was part of the Architecture Film Festival Rotterdam (AFFR). Three continents were introduced by a keynote speaker:

> The American Way – Ryan Gravel (Perkins+Will)
Creating pockets of urban areas with public transportation in a  car-oriented  country     

> The Asian Way – Slavis Poczebutas (OMA)
Intense integration of urban development, lifestyle and public transport

> The European Way – Sebastiaan de Wilde (NS Dutch Railways)
New policies for increasing public transport use

Read more and view the featured videos on international TOD cases
Download the complete program of the event
Download SprintStad Update #4

New rules, new game?

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The traditional land use plan in the Netherlands does not fit the needs of current times anymore

That was the statement behind a debate, organized by Stroom, Deltametropolis Association and the Netherlands Architecture Fund, on the 1st of March 2012. Just before the debate, an exhibition was inaugurated in Stroom, about the same theme, titled New Space for the City.

The debate and exhibition challenge the traditional technocratic planning mechanisms and state that more should be done to include small players on the real estate market and temporary projects, which nowadays run through the same approval procedures as other projects. Due to the real estate crisis in Europe, investors and other big players have stopped building, so the small and temporary could be a way out. It is suggested that some urban areas can still be developed under existing land use planning. Others, however, demand a new approach, ranging from ‘laissez-fair’ to certain laws that promote transformation of vacant office space into much needed housing. Other possibilities are City Dressing (wrapping of facades), Urban Pioneers (bottom-up community initiatives) and Unbuild City (partly demolish obsolete complexes to promote reuse). According to the architects Maarten van Tuijl and Tom Bergevoet, from the office Temp.architecture, this means that Dutch planning policy would be separated in two different spheres: traditional and flexible.

In The Hague, several areas would benefit from more flexible legislation, such as the Petroleum docks, Laakhaven and Binckhorst. A legal advisor of the city of The Hague, Maarten Engelberts, explains that already within the existing laws, ways can be found to make small housing developments possible in areas that were earlier blocked by environmental constraints. The constraints that are not actually being used, for example by a polluting factory, could be excluded from new and flexible land use plans.

Edward Stigter, of the Ministry of Infrastructure and the environment, explains the project ‘Eenvoudig Beter‘ (Simply Better) that is coming about. It includes a full review of planning law, with the objective of merging environmental and land use policy. Besides ‘simpler and better’, by the way, it also needs to be cheaper, he says. The new legal framework should, according to European guidelines, focus on places and areas, integrating all necessary aspects in one law; and it should provide maximum flexibility and opportunities for development. This new package deal is to be called ‘Omgevingsverordening’ instead of the old ‘Bestemmingsplan’.

A number of statements were then discussed by the panel, consisting of Jan Struiksma (chairman of the Institute for Building Law), Duco Stadig (H-Team), Edward Stigter (Simpler and Better, IenM), Johan Houwers (in Parliament representing VVD) and Wil van der Hoek (Director Housing, municipality of The Hague), for example:

> Organic Growth: growing from a temporary activity to a permanent one is not sufficiently supported by current land use plans

> Reviewing the Social Contract: individual rights and ample demand for legal security by citizens have made urban development too expensive and slow

Most panel members agreed that new legislation is indeed required. Only Struiksma stated that rules will not change the game, it will only lead to more delay, since each player needs to familiarize himself again with the new rules. Furthermore, what really prevents Dutch society from building, is lack of money, he said.