Since I haven't posted in a while, I'll start from Friday, March 19th with my 'Cities' class. We took a field trip to Bijlmeer, which is in the south of Amsterdam.
Here is the sheet our professor gave us with a complete discription and history, feel free to read or skip. Nonetheless it was incredibly interesting to see Amsterdam's social housing issues with my very own eyes. Amsterdam is known for its good urban planning and social services and housing. As you can imagine, after years of dealing with water (canals), the planners figured out efficiency and functional yet great aesthetics .The area we went to somehow flopped.
Some background information.
History
In December 1966, the Mayor of Amsterdam lays the foundation stone fore what was then regarded as a unique urban planning experiment in Holland: the Bijlmer. More than 25 years later, the urban planner’s dream has turned into a nightmare and now the Bijlmer is already in a radical process of special and social renewal. In the early 1960’s the Weesperkarspel council to help realise major Amsterdam housing plans bought it. Since 1987 the Bijlmer has formed part of the South East municipal district. It has been the construction of a ‘functional town’. A town where living, working, traffic and recreations are separated. This idea was not new. Le Corbusier (Swiss architect) used it in his plan for Voisin near Paris. The topic was discussed at the 1933 CIAM conference. The Dutch architects Stam, Duiker and Rietveld attended. Chairman was Van Eesteren, director if the Amsterdam planning Department and responsible for the AUP of 1934. Le Corbusier published the results in his famous ‘Charte d’Athenes’(1941.
A functional town.
The concept for the Bijlmer largely comprised high-rise (10 floor) deck-access apartment blocks in a honeycomb pattern. Of the 18.000 units, 12.500 were built this way. The units were large by Dutch standards. Also the ‘green spaces’ between the blocks were large. Bicycle and pedestrian routes were also created there. Car traffic was led above ground level to multi-storey car parks. Metro lines crossed the roadways.
Problems.
In 1975 it was ready for occupation. There were long waiting lists for these homes, but many Amsterdam residents decided to move to single–family dwellings in one of the overspill communities around Amsterdam. And in spite of the enormous housing shortage at that time, there were still vacant flats in this Bijlmer area. The plan costs much more money than had provided for (the frequent breakdowns of the lifts, the not functioning waste disposal system, the completion of the housing units far ahead of public facilities as shops and metro, the lack of maintenance). The inhabitants felt the car parks, interior walkways and the green public area unsafe particularly at night. The district tumbled downward and around 1985 25-33% of the homes were unoccupied.
National policy, slower growth of population, relative high rents compared to the 19th century housing area, maintenance problems, less families than foreseen were the most important reasons for the bad image of this part of Amsterdam. The Bijlmer became an area that attracted many people who couldn’t find anywhere else to live (and often left again if the got a chance). Around 1975 many Surinamers came to the Netherlands as a result of the independence of Surinam, once Dutch Guyana. The Bijlmer was the only place they could easily find a home and also the immigrants from the Dutch Antilles settled down. It is the largest community in the Netherlands of the Surinamese, Antilleans (and also Ghana’s) immigrants.
There is still a group of inhabitants – the ‘Bijlmer Believers’- who took arms against the problems. They focussed on the advantages of the Bijlmer, the green, the spacious, safe from traffic lay out and campaigned for facilities such as a children’s zoo, a local broadcasting station and local bars runs by volunteers.
But the images deteriorated and too less people were moving to the Bijlmer to compensate the high percentage of leavers.
Renewal process.
In 1992 the reconstruction process started. Based on spatial, social and management renewal.
Spatial renewal: Demolition of 6500 of the 12.500 flats, no interior walkways, and new functions for the storage spaces, no aerial walkways to the car parks, new refuse systems and so on. The 6500 houses marked down for demolition will be replaced by 7.200 new ones: 30% free market rental, 40% owner occupied and 30 % owner occupied and rental sectors (1/3 social rents). The shopping centres (situated beneath car parks and traffic ways) and market locations are renewed and rebuilt. Many roads are lowered and brought to ground level so to prevent unsafe places. Cars can now be parked in front of the homes. The green area (English landscape style) will get a new lay out easier to maintain and where people feel safer. Clean, whole and safe are the essential propositions
Social Renewal: Childcare facilities and facilities for ethnic minority’s organisations are created. Health enters, sport facilities and also art and culture will be stimulated, and a new cultural building is constructed. Street of the 100 cultures, new primary schools,
Management Renewal: The Nieuw Amsterdam housing corporation, the district Council of South East and the City of Amsterdam started a renewal process."
My Berlin Trip
I boarded a train with my friend, Mo, at 7 pm. We had a great time on the long train ride as we had an entire old school cabin to ourselves. We dimmed the lights in the cabin, spread out over 6 cushy seats, put our headphones in and enjoyed the soothing motions of the train. Everyone should take a long train ride at some point in his or her life. I am really into the idea of taking the trans-siberian train from Moscow to China and hope to do it at some point. We finally got to Berlin at 4:30 AM and didn't know what to do till things opened. We wandered around outside as it was nice out (thank gosh, that would have totally bombed otherwise) and landed at our hotel at 5:30 AM. Mo and I explained that our train got in super early and we were wondering if, for some great chance, our room was ready. It wasn't so they showed us to a lounging area near the workout equipment upstairs and we fell asleep for the next four hours. When we got up, we decided we wanted to get acquainted with the city--which I highly recommend doing. We landed on a Famous Tour led by Insider Tours. It was the best thing we could do. The tour guide was direct, gave the perfect amount of information about each place so that we could remember it when the tour was over, we saw all the main sites, and we knew our way around pretty well afterwards.
On the 4-hour tour we saw:
Museum campus, some Nazi sites including where Hitler shot himself--now a parking lot but what once was his underground lair, the Brandenburg Gate, Potsdamer Platz, the Reichstag building (the parliment building, really cool), the TV tower, the beautiful Protestant and Catholic churches, Checkpoint Charlie, and where the Berlin Wall was forcibly taken down in the Revolution of 1989.
We also saw sites where various US presidents gave speeches about how the wall needed to come down. This is where the title of this post comes in...
JFK gave a speech in Berlin where he said in very terrible German, "Ich bin ein Berliner" which translates to "I am a (German) jelly-filled doughnut" passionately instead of saying that he was a citizen of Berlin in solidarity with the people. Supposedly this is questionable if he did in fact butcher what he was supposed to say, but I thought it was pretty funny, especially in a time when he was trying to spark change and revolution. Here is a site to read more about this incident: http://urbanlegends.about.com/cs/historical/a/jfk_berliner.htm
After the tour, Mo and I checked in to the hotel and chilled for a while as our feet were exhausted from all the walking. We then headed to Kadewe, which is Germany's huge department store fashioned after Harrod's. We examined the gourmet food floor--an incredible site with anything you could imagine eating and more.
Mo and I landed on a German restaurant for an authentic meal--do as the Germans do and eat sausages and potatoes! Yes, I know I blew my no red meat rule just this once and sort of regreted it later that night. After dinner, we both wanted to go back to the Reichstag, the German Parliament building, to walk up the cool walkway and get a great view of the city as well as an intimate view of parliament. The German government purposely built a new portion of the Reichstag on top of the old since a) the old part was mostly blown up during WWII and b) to show the transparency of the parliament--one walking on the walkway can see directly into the government room where important decisions are made. Pictures will be posted to my facebook page.
The next morning, we got up and ate the wonderful breakfast at our hotel. We then went to the New National Gallery and the Pergamon museums--both of which I greatly enjoyed. We nabbed a quick lunch and crepe on the street and then headed to the East Side Gallery. There, we saw remnants from the Berlin Wall which were decorated by INCREDIBLE murals from artists all over the world. I took at least 100 pictures (which, again, will be posted to facebook) of the works of art representing various messages--anything from freedom to questioning God--all pertaining to the many meanings of the Berlin Wall. When we were finished seeing all of the gallery, which is probably about a mile long, we found a huge crowd gathered just beyond the last peice of the wall. There was a film crew and several stunt actors and cars. We stood and watched while they filmed car stunts for a movie--super cool. Mo and I split up and I headed to the Jewish Museum. It was interesting to see how different Jewish museums try to convey Jewish-ness to various audiences, especially the non-Jews. Later, Mo and I tried to go to Solar, a bar on the 12th floor of a hotel where you sit on swings overlooking the city, but it was closed. We headed back to the hotel for a good night's rest.
The next day, Mo caught an early train back to Amsterdam and I stayed and wandered the city by myself for several hours. I headed to the Synagogue (sephardic) that was significantly destroyed during Kristallnacht. It was jaw-dropping--the building and its beauty as well as seeing the destruction and how the people didnt purposely rebuild it. I looked around until I could no longer see straight and finally decided I needed a cultural plunge. I walked down random streets away from the synagogue. I love purposely getting lost. I think that is when you find some of the best things. I saw art gallery after art gallery, eventually turning into funky store after beautiful store. I landed in a really cool, hip, and artsy area of Berlin. I walked around for 4.5 hours, ate lunch around there, and grabbed great coffee. I was super content. I didn't realize how much time I spent there until I looked at my watch to find that I was running late for my train back to Amsterdam. I bolted to the hotel through the intricate, yet really helpful train system, and managed to gather my belongings and get to the main station for my train with 4 minutes to spare.
Berlin was such a nice place. I am not sure if because everything worked out so well, the weather was stunning, the trains worked well, the people were friendly or any combination of those but I just fell in love with the city. Volkswagen and Mercedes haven proved itself surprisingly well.
Spending a long weekend there led me to some conclusions. I have concluded that Berlin is affordable, trendy, haunting, new, and historical all at the same time. Plus people are friendly, even though I went into it thinking German was a harsh language--still,no question about it--but after being around Dutch for the past two months I am pretty used to the sounds (which are very similar to each other in both Dutch and German) . A part of me couldn't stop thinking about all the Jewish people that were deported from Berlin or were murdered there, some in the exact spots where I stood just 70 years ago. Or how some escaped into the forests which I gazed into from my seat on the train ride back to Amsterdam. I cant help but stay positive--Berlin is a thriving and beautiful city despite its dark history.
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