Practice

Subject

At the central station and the area around the building I find so many different things happening. The one thing that gets me the most is the modern architecture of the building and what message it brings out to the visitors and residents of the city. The central station is an efficient transport hub. During the period of time the station was built, the city was transforming into a metropolitan city. This is exactly what the Station and the buildings in the area represent. Great big companies have taken their place in these big, modern buildings. But I also see the big distance between this modern-, fancy-, business class look and the several other parts a bit further down into the city. Only 2 blocks away from the central station there's Kruisplein and Nieuwe Binnenweg. Looking at these buildings I see how much older and also neglected these buildings are.
With my research I've been focussing on the development of the city of Rotterdam, what gentrification does to the city and how the difference of social class is growing bigger. What I find interesting is to learn more about the social class and how we can stop it from dividing the city and her residents from each other.

Can we prevent, the gap between rich and poor, from growing into the wrong direction? Is there a possibility to make this gap disappear, or at least smaller? To create a city that binds, not divides.

The goal is >>>>

Find a way to decrease the gap between higher class and lower class (residents)

Research about social class

Creative class_binds the city

Gallery>>

Two kinds of bike storage around the central station -

One at the main entrance

One at the back entrance

new vs. old

well restored vs. unwell restored

Creative Industries, Cultural
Quarters and Urban Development:
The Case Studies of Rotterdam and Milan

Tall shiney buildings - it's intimidating

The unusual shape of the station's roof -
impressive and shiney

The shape of the roof - it sends a message, it needs attention

Tall shiney buildings - it's intimidating

Two different kind of neighbourhoods or buildings, both close or next to the central station.

"Where Rotterdam meets the world"

The new rotterdam: an internationally popular city that takes care of business, or welcomes (well paying) tourists

In fact, the city’s memory is constantly shaped, appropriated and transformed through the dynamic interplay of the city’s three dimensions as
a meaningful space. Firstly the physical space: the geographical site, the
buildings and the cityscape as they have grown throughout history and
present themselves at a given moment. Secondly the urban space: the
city as a planned and administered community (civitas), represen ted as
a closed entity with a programmatic and recordable identity. And thirdly
the civic space: the city as it is culturally appropriated by its inhabitants
(communitas), as their own personally and collectively owned town.

Every attempt to change its
Physical Space, Urban Space, Civic Space: Rotterdam 43
physiognomy or to modernize its appearance provokes an upsurge of
resistance to the urban authorities and the city planners. Yet, the city
keeps changing. New idiom emerges for its urban identity and civic
memory. Present-day Rotterdam has evolved from a post-war industrial
city into a post-industrial phase, the ever-growing harbour moving away
and becoming invisible to the general population. The harsh, masculine,
twentieth-century working town ideology is being replaced by a sexier,
feminized image of the ‘city lounge’, subject to ‘gentrification’, codified
in the Binnenstadsplan 2008–2030.

In this period, Rotterdam was dealing with a rise of unemployment, a strong suburbanisation of the higher-income families to the peripheral district following the urban
crisis of the 1970s, the consequent social unbalance in the city centre and a deteriorating
investment climate. The policy memorandum “Revitalising Rotterdam”, issued in 1987,
started to look at culture, leisure and tourism as elements of an appealing ambience, part
of the vision of the “complete town”, aimed at increasing the urban quality of life.
Policies were developed to promote high-grade services for citizens and visitors and to
raise the spatial quality through, for example, architecture and the reorganisation of
public squares. Architecture has then been used as a form of advertising for the city,
able to transmit a catching, idiosyncratic image of urban vitality and integral part of the incorporation of cultural investment and policy into urban growth strategies. Among the
development priorities, were mentioned the renovation of the old city districts, the
transformation of former harbours and the upgrading of the waterfront into an attractive
place to live, work and relax, a greater concentration of diverse museums and the
creation of a «museum quarter»9
(masterplanned by Rem Koolhaas) in a existing park
area (the Museumpark), improvements of existing products and incentives to business
tourism. Many festivals and events were organised, aiming at exploiting the potential
for stimulating artistic experimentation, improving the overall attractiveness and image
of the city, stimulating the urban economy, attracting tourists, improving the cultural
infrastructure, and in some way facilitating the accessibility of deprived groups to
culture.

It seems to us that Rotterdam is falling into the same trap that many cities
already have: focusing too much on appealing to tourists and investors and
forgetting the people that already live here. Touristification and gentrification
are already backfiring in many European cities and neighboring Amsterdam
offers a good case in point. We would really like to urge you to learn from these
cities and not repeat their mistakes.


The housing market in Rotterdam is rapidly getting out of hand. Both rental
and selling prices are going up everyday, making it impossible for young people
to stay in the city. Be it students unable to find affordable rooms, young families
unable to buy a house, or working people with lower incomes unable to access
the constantly shrinking stock of social housing. There is also a significant
amount of self-employed professionals in the creative sector, that managed to
survive the crisis and contribute to the current, innovative profile of the city.
Their survival and possibility to develop creative work however heavily depend
the affordable housing and working spaces which are rapidly disappearing.

by 2000 Rotterdam had the image of the most metropolitan of
all Dutch cities. Artists and other cultural practitioners
– a group these days termed the ‘creative class’ –
were the first to advance this metropolitan vision, thereby
paving the way for the New Rotterdam that would begin
to take concrete shape at the end of the 1980s.

MARIANGELA LAVANGA
Amsterdam institute for Metropolitan and International Development Studies (AMIDSt)
Universiteit van Amsterdam (UvA) (September 2002)

Own Mapping >>>>>>

This map is an analysis of the neighbourhood around the central station. Here we have an overview of the different kind of buildings in the area and which function they have. With this information we find a percentage of the more modern buildings that make the centre's view.

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Experiments according to research

field research _ interviews and fill out forms

Would you rather live.... (two images of buildings)
Would you rather work....(two images of buildings)
Would you rather visit, stay on vacation at.... (two images of buildings)
What building do your friends live/work?
What building does your family live?

artistic research _ social intervention and art

idea one

Two buildings, one modern and fancy looking building.
One older, more neglected, traditional architecture-building.