The right to transform the city : a study on social movements and urban redevelopment in Amsterdam neighbourhood "de Pijp"

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THE RIGHT

TO

TRANSFORM

THE CITY

A study on social

movements and

urban

redevelopment in

Amsterdam

neighbourhood

“de Pijp”

Jacopo Targa

Master Thesis in Urban Sociology Supervision and First reader: Dr. Olga Sezneva

Second reader: Dr. Adeola Enigbokan

U

NIVERSITY OF

A

MSTERDAM

Graduate School of Social Sciences

August 2019

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Cover page: The transformation of a segment of Frans Halsstraat (Amsterdam) around the civic numbers 64-66 from 1967 until 2019. Sources: Top pictures, left: Amsterdam City Archives (1967, photographer: J.M. Arsath Ro); right: Google Street View (2014); bottom picture: author’s picture.

To my parents, Stefano and Isabella

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Foreword

Writing this thesis has been a long and consuming process, since the very first moment I started thinking about the research before writing the thesis proposal, until the last editing and formatting operations. More than the final result, I am satisfied with the way that the engagement in this long journey profoundly impacted me, constantly making me question my approach and previous knowledge regarding sociological research, and constantly pushing me to work on my weaknesses. Now that I am at the conclusion of this thesis, I feel that all the intellectual work I did in the past months made me acquire a new sensibility towards urban research, making me discover the topics that interest me the most. All of this, however, would have never been possible without the attentive and dedicated supervision of Olga, who pushed me since the first seminar to develop the ability of critically observe social reality and develop my ideas. I am grateful to her for having supported me in this thesis writing process, giving me fruitful suggestions on how to approach the research and highlighting the areas of improvement. I immensely thank also Adeola, who also helped me developing on her seminar a critical and innovative understanding of cities, stressing the importance of the bottom-up and socially inclusive urban design, besides of course providing me with feedback and tips on how to develop this thesis. Then, I thank all the other UvA professors, Chip, Marci and Kobe, who also played an important role in my academic growth during all the interesting seminars. Moreover, this thesis would not have been possible also without my university mates Sotiris, Tycho, Lorina, Emmirosa, Marit, Lina and Mathis, thanks to long discussions and suggestions and for the help they gave me during the most difficult moments, when the thesis was coming at a writing block. I thank in the same way the university mates from my previous study years in Italy and in Germany, Anan, Giacomo and Claudia, who also always gave me their opinion when I informed them about how my writing was proceeding. Finally, I thank my parents, Stefano and Isabella, who always supported me and gave me the valuable opportunity to conduct this year of studies in Amsterdam. It is to them that I dedicate this thesis.

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Summary

The object of this thesis is the concept of the right to the city. Starting from the question whether it should be abandoned or maintained as a concept, I argued that there are reasons to still consider it as actual since contemporary urban struggles and inequalities are constantly generating a response by civic movements. However, despite the actuality of the concept, I inquired how both the claims of the right to the city and the response to those claims compare to social movements that fought for it in the past. For analytical purposes, I divided the concept of the right to the city in two dimensions: the first one concerns the material appropriation of the right to design the urban space, whilst the second one concerns more the political meaning it entails. Therefore, adopting the methodology of the historical sociological enquiry and critical discourse analysis, I observed the action of movements of citizens who lobbied to claim their taste over the design of de Pijp – a neighbourhood in the southern part of Amsterdam – seeing how their actions and discursive construction of their claims related to the two dimensions of the right to the city. The results of the research proved the fact that both movements present similarities in the action to materially appropriate the right to design the city; to this extent, I argue that both implicitly have the effect to conceive and imagine the city as a common, as a space constructed and shaped by the actions of its inhabitants. However, despite this similarity, the two social movements presented stark differences regarding their political claims. If the movements that took place in the ’70 successfully combined the material claims over the city with political demands aimed at addressing pressing social issues at that time, the citizens’ action that took place for the contemporary struggle for the right to the city was weaker to this extent. This reason can be found in the fact that contemporary urban politics towards the city tend to incorporate in the “seamless web of governance” citizens’ claims, to ‘police’ rather than ‘politicise’ their action. That is why it is possible to affirm that the contemporary claim for the right to the city by de Pijp residents is partial since the right to the city constitutes an ideal that – in order to be fully accomplished – it needs to be complete both in the material and political appropriation of the city. In conclusion, rather than contributing to the urban debate with completely new ideas – this thesis mainly contributes to the confirmation of the argument that contemporary urban politics – and their de-politicisation attitude – pursue a strategy of policing and controlling the dissent, hindering its possibility to emerge outside this framework. Nonetheless, this has the effects of naturalising structural elements – which are included in the policing framework – that might constitute the core of social issues. Therefore, the other contribution of this thesis is the re-affirmation of the right to the city as a tool to re-politicise the urban debate and provide the possibility of developing forms of radical democracy.

Keywords

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Introduction

The right to the city is a concept that has occupied a large space in academic literature. Despite having been used in different declinations and conceptions, it mainly has been used by critical sociology to highlight inequalities in urban settings. However, on the other hand, it is also a term that has been institutionalised and incorporated in traditional politics towards social inclusion from a top-down perspective, hindering the radical political conception that the original formulation by Lefebvre (1996:147–59) embodied. As Villanueva (2017:262) highlights, despite the popularity of the concept, some social scientists proposed to abandon the right to the city, since they claim that it has lost all the transformative potential. Merrifield (2011), for instance, claims that, given the effect of neoliberal politics on the city, the claims that this concept incorporated are outdated, since the city it advocated for – as well as any possibility of resistance – no longer exists.

That is why my aim in this work is to investigate whether Merrifield’s affirmation constitutes the only fate of the right to the city in contemporary times or if, on the contrary, it can still be used as a concept to read the clash over the ultimate function and role of cities. Namely, I aim to research whether critical sociology can re-appropriate and adapt this concept to read contemporary urban struggles, reaffirming its radical potential and observing how it relates to the contemporary neoliberal city restructuring and new participation politics. Therefore, the main research question that constitutes the overarching research question of this thesis is the following: if the right to the city has been suitable to observe past struggles, is it still a valuable concept to observe contemporary ones or is it outdated to fit in the contemporary political scenario? Hence, from this interrogative is possible to elaborate further subquestions: “How does the contemporary policy framework views (or contributes to producing) those claims and how it reacts? Or, even more radically, can we affirm that the right to the city is finally realised by contemporary policies technologies – like participatory development?”

On the one hand, one thing that can be affirmed is the fact that urban struggles are far from being over: as it emerges from the debate on the main academic urban journals, some have mutated, and new ones arose. Because of phenomena like the increasing commodification of housing, financial speculation, gentrification, touristification, and commodification of urban areas, it is possible to affirm that actual city dwellers are far from controlling urban development. The city, in brief, is increasingly in the hand of private investors who ‘creatively’ exploit its potential to increase their profits, transforming citizens in users. On the other hand, there is a growing conscience about the negative impact of these phenomena, leading to the formation of new social and citizens movements which aims at resisting them. Therefore, my aim is to try to investigate if the claim for the right to the city can be applied to the action of these grassroots movements, seeing how they pursue the goal of taking back the control of the contemporary urbanisation process. To this extent, this elaborate also indirectly aims to further expand Harvey’s historical analysis, trying to look for the terms inside which a possible contemporary struggle for the right to the city can be defined.

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To conduct this analysis, I will take Amsterdam as the general context, since it represents a city that has been the theatre of social unrest in the past, and in the contemporary situation is being increasingly shaped by the neoliberal ideological frame. I will focus specifically on two cases of urban protests in the neighbourhood of de Pijp; the first one happened in the ’70 – a period that, as several studies show, has been prolific for social movements actions – and the second one in the contemporary period. I think that this is the preferable approach to answer the research question I posed. I will analyse their actions in two dimensions; the first one is constituted by the material claims and appropriation of the urban space, while the second one is the political goal that drives them. Then, I will show how these two dimensions are intimately linked and come together, how they break or reproduce the dominant technocratic conception of the city.

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Theoretical framework

The right to the city

The right to the city is a valuable concept for urban studies theory, and it can be considered the starting point for theorising what constitutes a city, as well as understanding the claims and the action of social movements. For this reason, I decided to adopt this concept – as theorised firstly by Lefebvre and secondly by Harvey – to analyse how it emerged in the empirical cases I took into consideration and as a philosophical ground concerning the nature and ultimate goal of the city.

The starting point of Lefebvre’s theorisation of the right to the city is the distinction between the use value and the exchange value of the city. As he writes in the essay “Industrialisation and Urbanisation”, the use value refers to the idea of the city as an oeuvre as its final end: divergent groups “rivals in their love for the city” fight to impose their specific artistic taste on it, creating monuments and similar ornaments for aesthetic purposes (Lefebvre 1996:65–68). Conversely, the exchange value is associated with cities after industrialisation: the city acquires its value not on the use that residents make of it, but in the way it can be commodified and sold, used to generate profit. In other words, it is the consequence of the appropriation of cities by the capital and the bourgeoisie:

“The ‘progressive’ bourgeoisie, taking charge of economic growth, endowed with ideological instruments suited to rational growth […] replaces oppression by exploitation, this class as such no longer creates – it replaces the oeuvre, by the product” (Lefebvre 1996:75)

That is why, according to Lefebvre, the conception of the city as an oeuvre must be privileged, with the purpose “to use the streets, squares, monuments, and symbols of the city for the pleasure of its inhabitants [emphasis added]” (Villanueva 2017:257).

Starting from the distinction between the category of people that lives and contributes to the oeuvre and one that uses the city as a mere instrument for profit, he argues that only the first has the right to urban life and its realisation. Specifically, he writes that:

“The right to the city cannot be conceived of as a simple visiting right or as a return to traditional cities. It can only be formulated as a transformed and renewed right to urban life [original emphasis]. […] Only the working class can become the agent, the social carrier or support of this realization. Here again, as a century ago, it denies and contests, by its very existence, the class strategy directed against it. As a hundred years ago, although under new conditions, it gathers the interests (overcoming the immediate and the superficial) of the whole society and firstly of all those who inhabit [original emphasis]. […] [The] Olympians of the new bourgeois aristocracy no longer inhabit. They go from grand hotel to grand hotel, or from castle to castle, commanding a fleet or a country from a yacht. They are everywhere and nowhere [emphasis added]” (Lefebvre 1996:158–59).

In his words, he politically affirms that the city does not belong to the speculators that profit from it without inhabiting, but only the ones that are actually dwelling and contribute to its development as an oeuvre have the right to shape it.

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Starting from Lefebvre’s theorisation, Harvey further elaborates on the concept of the right to the city, maintaining its radical theorisation and affirming that it assumes the status of a fundamental human right:

“The right to the city is far more than the individual liberty to access urban resources: it is a right to change ourselves by changing the city. It is, moreover, a common rather than an individual right

since this transformation inevitably depends upon the exercise of a collective power to reshape the processes of urbanization [emphasis added]. The freedom to make and remake our cities and

ourselves is, I want to argue, one of the most precious yet most neglected of our human rights” (Harvey 2008:23).

Harvey’s theorisation has also the merit of stressing how this right assumes the dimension of a common, implying how collective action towards the city is fundamental both to produce and benefit from this right, and thus he also politically claims that the power to decide and transform the city lies in the hands of groups of citizens rather than individuals. In this analysis, urban struggles assume the dimension of conflicts between urban dwellers that aim at exercising their right to the city and groups of technocrats which aim to dominate and control the process of urbanisation; that is why he defines as “urban revolutions” the moments when the first contrasted the technocratic vision of the latter. Examples of these are the experience of the Paris Commune to claim back the city after Haussmann’s demolitions, the ’68 movement in the United States against the suburban lifestyle imposed by Moses’ redevelopment plans, or the Paris ’68 movement claims against the ‘high-rise’ development (Harvey 2008:25–28).

Besides theorising the affirmation of the right to the city as a struggle to determine the nature of urban development, I think that the merit of Harvey’s theorisation lies in the fact of showing how it appears in different historical moments and how it concretised in a plurality of modes. In this way, I adopt the right to the city as a lens through which observe the action of urban social and civic movements and their material claims over the construction of the urban oeuvre. In other words, rather than being condensed in specific actions, I also conceive the struggle for the right of the city as an action that can take place in different modes according to the period of time.

The right to the city and the institutional framework

The right to the city assumes the dimension of a radical political claim to redefine several institutionalised policed aspects – for instance, housing, property rights, political participation and material transformation of the city. That is why it is a concept that can be hardly institutionalised in the dominant political framework, and when it happens it loses this radical transformative component (Mayer 2009; Purcell 2014). This property raises a huge dilemma, regarding the eventual possibility for movements that fight for claims connected to the concept of the right to the city when they confront with the official urban policy framework. This dilemma has been investigated in the article of Belda-Miquel, Blanes and Frediani about the action of the Movimento dos Sem Teto da Bahia (Homeless movement of Bahia) and its confrontation with local political actors.

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Through a critical discourse analysis and ethnographic observations, the authors analyse how this movement articulates its discourse and how it interacts with institutional actors – like civil servants (Belda‐Miquel, Blanes, and Frediani 2016:326–35). Firstly, by stressing Lefebvre’s claim that movements that fight for the right to the city can assume different forms and can also act through seeking alliances with a plurality of actors (Lefebvre 1996:163), they conceive engagement in the institutional frame as a possibility. Their analysis proves that the discourse towards the right to the city constructed by MSTB1_{– unlike the one developed by an official perspective – still}

embodies the radical character of the Lefebvre’s formulation. When it engages with institutions at the official level, participating in participatory encounters and spaces for discussion, it is not obliged to abandon the radical discourse, but it rather uses strategically these opportunities for carrying on the demands of people that take part in it, adopting a logic of ‘negotiation’ rather than a dialogue to work together (Belda‐Miquel et al. 2016:334).

However, the two authors underline the fact that if the negotiation approach can constitute a useful strategy for this movement to interact with institutionalised actors without losing its radical claims, this strategy however does not enable MSTB to challenge founding elements of the official discourses, especially the logic of private propriety and the use of privatised space, or – because of the fact that they refuse to cooperate with organisations that they defined as ‘co-opted with the state’ – they have difficulties of seeking alliances. Nevertheless, they conclude that – in the way it negotiates with the state – the MSTB strategy is suggestive since it highlights how engagement in the official framework could occur. Namely, “the forces building the right to the city may demand that the state meet immediate needs, but should use these processes of struggle and the expectations created to promote social organization and self-management”(ibidem:336), thus reminding the necessity for movements that are fighting for the right to the city to continue developing ideas that represent alternatives to the framework, rather trying to pursue a strategy of co-optation.

Participation politics: the co-optation of social movements into the

web of governance

The case of MSTB represents an exception in the relationship between social movements and the state. The movement is able to maintain its autonomy and independence, and it is not incorporated in the institutional web of governance. However, in most of the cases, when social movements engage with the state actors, they end up being co-opted in the system of governance, a factor that hinders their radical transformative power. Contemporary politics, in fact, have the tendency and the implicit goal to co-opt social movements: this is visible in the incorporation inside the ‘policing framework’ of social movements that grow to protest against social issues. More in detail, I am referring to this term as theorised in the conception adopted by Uitermark and Nicholls (2014).

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The two authors, in their article, maintain the clear distinction between the two different processes that aim at influencing urban dynamics: politicising and policing. With the first term, they define the action of “taking an explicitly antagonistic stance against extant institutions, values and practices”, which lead to the linkage between local and global historical struggles and the creation of broader nets of networks composed by movements that are fighting similar struggles (Uitermark and Nicholls 2014:974). With the second term, instead, they define “the opposite of politicizing as it aims to neutralize and pre-empt challenges to the legal and social order”, or, more specifically, the incorporation of the actors that could make political claims in the government agenda, with the consequence that “civil society becomes part of a seamless web of governance [emphasis added] rather than an uncontrollable site of multiple resistances” (ibidem:975-76). Therefore, Uitermark and Nicholls, by analysing the action of social movements in Amsterdam and Paris in two different time periods, they demonstrate that in the ’60 and ’70 Amsterdam and Paris were two examples of how the city can become a politicizing machine. On the other hand, in the ’80 and ’90, they have been instead examples of policing machines, since radical movements have been incorporated and co-opted in the system they were fighting against.

In short, it can be observed that the right to the city embodies a material and a political dimension. The material dimension is represented by the appropriation of the urban space, to decide about its development, whilst the political is connected with the vision of the city as an oeuvre for its inhabitants, thus conceiving them as the category who has the right to take control of the urbanisation process. In my analysis, I specifically analysed both separately and subsequently highlighted how they come together.

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Methodology

Historical Sociological analysis

The adoption of a historical sociological perspective was fundamental for the analysis I wished to pursue. I analysed historical facts from a sociological perspective, inquiring how the right to the city assumed different connotation and manifestation according to the period of time and the different socio-political frameworks. Namely, I focused on the contents of the documents which contained the ‘technocrat’ view on de Pijp urban development, both in the ’70 and in 2014, and the content of the actions and the documents published by social and civic movements who resisted those plans. Moreover, I also paid attention to reconstruct the chronological order of the events. To fulfil these tasks, I specifically used historical books, pamphlets of the movements, newspaper articles, visual documentaries, motions, presentations of redevelopment plans and non-structured interviews with key-actors that are participating to the contemporary redevelopment of Frans Halsbuurt, who narrated me also their perspective on the history of the neighbourhood and the meaning of social movements action.

Besides using these documents as sources to interpret the action of technocrats and social movements, I also conducted an analysis of the discursive practices they embodied. If content analysis has been fruitful to illustrate how the claims for the right to the city emerged, critical discourse analysis has been a useful tool to analyse how power is exercised and resisted, and how it emerges in co-optation dynamics.

Critical Discourse Analysis

The decision to conduct a critical discourse analysis (Jørgensen and Phillips 2002:60–95) on the documents I retrieved was dictated by the critical analytical dimension of the concept of the right to the city, In fact, critical discourse analysis,

“is a type of discourse analytical research that primarily studies the way social power abuse, dominance, and inequality are enacted, reproduced, and resisted by text and talk in the social and political context. With such dissident research, critical discourse analysts take explicit position, and thus want to understand, expose, and ultimately resist social inequality”. (Dijk 2001:352)

I think that the adoption of the concept of the right to the city, in fact, implies the adoption of a specific political position and framework regarding urban politics. In other words, it sees inequalities where this right is not equally distributed, critically observing the implicit power relationships that are expressed in the dominant democratic framework of urban politics. Specifically, the concept stands in opposition to this specific framework, calling for innovative modalities of radical democracy and participation. To this extent, by highlighting how these power relationships are embedded and resisted, critical discourse analysis is fundamental to observe how the claim for the right to the city unfolds.

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To analyse the action and claims of movements in the ‘70s-‘80s, I analysed the plans for the modernist redevelopment of the neighbourhood and the opposition pamphlets written by social movements in the ’70s and ’80s. I have been able to retrieve these documents thanks to the work of the Internationaal Instituut Voor Sociale Geschiedenis2_{, which presented a vast collection of}

pamphlets and publications of social movements of the post-war period – among which the ones that took place in de Pijp in the historical period I considered.

Collecting the documents of the contemporary redevelopment has been instead an easier task. I have been able to find online a huge variety of documents, which include presentations of the redevelopment plans, motions written by the residents and the answers of the municipality, surveys addressed to the residents, presentations and reports of the participatory official encounters. Furthermore, I also included as a source the official website of the project3_{. In these documents, the}

discourse analysis I conducted has been specifically aimed at observing how institutional actors interpreted and embodied residents’ claims – alongside how they were framing their participation in the project. In short, the main aim of this analysis was to inquire how the redevelopment was framed and presented in the official discourse, how the narration contrasted, supported or reframed residents’ claims and how power is exercised.

Notes on the methodology and the limitations

The last thing that it is crucial to mention is the fact that the choice to adopt this methodology has been determined after I started the fieldwork and I spoke with the residents of Frans Halsbuurt. At the beginning of this research, I was planning to focus only on the 2019 redevelopment plan of Frans Halsbuurt, since I used to believe that the municipality planned an intervention on the neighbourhood and aimed to conduct an experimental form of project by involving residents: what I wanted to analyse was to what extent this approach related to the principles of the right to the city. However, after speaking with people that were informed about the facts, I realised that this initiative had rather a remarkable bottom-up character, being the result of the clash between people that opposed against the initial plan. Moreover, in each interview the history of the neighbourhood emerged and acquired a relevant role in the narration; that is why I realised that the object that was at stake was different, and it helped me abandoning the former misleading narration of the case. Namely, I realised that it would have been interesting to compare this action with the ones of social movements who opposed the official neighbourhood redevelopment in the ’70, to highlight possible elements of continuity and differences.

Regarding the difficulties and limits I encountered, the first one was the language. Not being able to conduct a full interview in Dutch, I ‘forced’ my interlocutors to conduct it in English. However

2_{The Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis is a institute focused on socio-economic history,}

collecting historical publications, especially of oppressed social movements. Website: https://iisg.amsterdam/

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– despite the fact that they were able to speak fluently the language – I think that conducting them in Dutch would have been a better strategy to make emerge their viewpoint. Therefore, this is another reason why I decided to privilege the analysis of documents as the main methodological tool. Firstly, the Dutch lesson I took gave me the ability to understand the general meaning of a text written in Dutch, and therefore I was able to navigate the document. Secondly, the use of dictionaries and translation tools4_{, as well as the kind help of Dutch fellow students, helped me translating the}

segments that were unclear.

Finally, I think that the main limitations have been the time and grade of involvement. Namely, the optimal way to conduct this research would have been by living in the neighbourhood for at least a period of time of one year, taking part in the social life and the participatory redevelopment. Despite the fact that I could not have been conducted this research according to these modalities, I hope that, with the alternative strategy I pursued, I still managed to make emerge the sociological relevance of the case.

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Chapter I | The Right to the City and the material

appropriation of the urban space

De Pijp is a neighbourhood situated in the southern part of Amsterdam city centre. At the present moment, it appears like a neighbourhood with narrow streets, cafés and attractive spots. Nevertheless, I think that the importance of de Pijp is the fact that the aspect that it assumed nowadays has been determined by the action of social movements who fought for the right to the city against modernist redevelopment. Similarly, also nowadays, there are civic movements that are protesting and reclaiming their right to shape the urban space according to their preferenes. Despite the fact that contemporary ones cannot be considered similar to the ones of the past, in this chapter, I will present how their claims are centred around the question “Who has the right to shape the city?”. By reconstructing the history of these protests and interventions towards a specific urban design, both in the ’70 and in contemporary times, I will thus compare the current and past struggles, highlighting the differences and similarities in their material claims.

The protests against the modernist development of de Pijp

The years ’60-‘70: The car-oriented redevelopment and the plan for de

Pijp

The main urban trend of the ’60 was the tendency of people to move out of the city. The new modernist lifestyle pictured life in satellite towns or suburbs as the ideal of life, since cars gave the opportunity to commute to the city centre during the day to reach the workplaces (Lefebvre 1996:71). In other words, this spatial-temporal compression (Harvey 1991:260–83) and the fact that the car allowed to cover areas wide about 50km faster than with the other means of transportations, made living in peripheries or central neighbourhoods not a material prerequisite to work in a specific town. As a result, cities centres started to depopulate, becoming unpleasant environments where to live; the centre was assuming instead the form of a place where for business, hotels and similar activities concentrate.

This trend was visible also in De Pijp: since the neighbourhood in those years was in a state of decay, part of the people who could afford to live in the newly built modern residential complexes in satellite towns went out of it. Bouwe Olij – a resident of Frans Halsbuurt that has been living in De Pijp since its birth and also actively took part in the political life of the neighbourhood as a member of the PvdA5_{- explains with his own words this phenomenon:}

“In Dutch [the phenomena of building satellite towns through the expansion of small ones] is called bundle deconcentrating. You put people from one city to other cities. You had Hoorn - which was a small city - and you made it even bigger. The same happened to Purmerend and Alkmaar, and they said that all the people had to go there. So, what happened is that poor people came in [de

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Pijp] and students or young people… People were very proud when they could go somewhere else.”

The fact that the neighbourhood became populated mostly with students and young people aged between 20-40 years old had an important impact on the vision of de Pijp. Rather than residents who fled it, they were attracted by the fact that it was the “Quartier Latin”6_{of Amsterdam;}

in fact, it was full of little shops, cafés and cultural places – like theatres and cinemas (Heijdra 1997:98). In other words, de Pijp became increasingly populated by people that were more attracted by the urban nature and lifestyle of cities rather than the one promoted in satellite residential complexes.

On the other hand, besides the depopulation and the fleeing of residents in newer towns, another problem that contributed to the material decadence of de Pijp was represented by the car boom. Specifically, during the years of the economic boom, the number of people who could afford cars increased and, as a consequence, more people have been lured into buying a car. That is why cars in this densely populated neighbourhood quickly clogged the streets since they were narrow and not suited to accommodate this increase in the number of vehicles. Hence, this factor had a high negative impact on the overall liveability:

“[De Pijp] was so busy. If you look now in the Ferdinand Bolstraat, there is one tram in one rail, the bikes, and no cars anymore. Now you have to imagine that in the '60-'70 there was a tram with two rails, cars, bicycles and people walking. This was crazy! So, if you see pictures from the past you can see that it's totally druk (clogged). It wasn’t normal”7_.

To sum up, there were several reasons why de Pijp, at that time, was not considered a liveable neighbourhood: it was overpopulated, lots of houses were in bad infrastructural conditions and it had huge traffic and parking problems. The municipality was aware of these issues and was consulting several architects and technicians to develop a plan that aimed at solving them; however, all the ideas included a radical transforming the neighbourhood, with demolitions of the old housing stock. An example of this attitude was a plan to shape Amsterdam in an American city style, with the idea to make the city more accessible for the people who would have gone to live abroad and commuted to the city centre by car. As narrated in the book “De Pijp: Monument van een Wijk”, this plan included a radical redevelopment of de Pijp into a “New City”, with new hotels and offices constructions, highways, railways and a new place for the new opera and municipality building of Amsterdam (Heijdra 1997:95).

6_{A popular Paris neighborhood.} 7_{Interview with Bouwe Olij}

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More in detail, a plan based on these principles is well sketched in the report “Give the city an opportunity” (Geef de Stad een Kans) by David A. Jokinen (1968). The main aim of the plan, according to the architect, was to build a cityweg – a system of highways and tram rails (Figure 1), even though this would have caused the demolition of parts of the city. In particular, large demolitions would have to be made in De Pijp. He justified them with the fact that “[housing blocks in de Pijp] are generally not among the best that the great builders have left us [emphasis added]; they are anything but monumental, have a very high density of populations and are in addition – like the Beurs – in decline” (ibidem:59). In other words, the neighbourhood in his perspective was in an irreparable state, and the only possible solution to solve its problems would have been its transformation into a “second city” (ibidem:55), by radically changing its character and by performing several demolitions to accommodate new buildings, following a modernist plan of urban efficiency (Figure 2).

This plan was rejected by the municipality, but a more moderate version of it has been still maintained; however, also the new version implied the transformation of the area in a “New City”, radically changing its residential vocation (Heijdra 1997:95–97). Jeroen – a reporter that works ad De Pijp neighbourhood centre (wijkcentrum) – also mentioned these plans in the interview, namely how there was a plan to build several towers and, in his opinion, the building of the Figure 1 Jokinen’s proposed cityweg. Source: Jokinen (1968)

Figure 2 Jokinen's plan for the cityweg in de Pijp. Source: Jokinen (1968)

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Okura hotel8_{(Figure 3) is a good}

testimony of the architectural character that de Pijp could have assumed if those plans would have been fully realised.

This description of the problematics of the neighbourhood and the attempts to solve them proves the fact that there was an attempt to do it according to a technocratic modernist architectural plan. This attempt was conducted based on the abstract modernist ideas about how a city should be designed and how its problems could have been solved. In the next chapter, I will analyse more in detail the political meaning of modernist idea; for the moment, I want to underline that the main critical aspect of this approach was the fact that it completely ignored – or did not value as important – residents’ ideas and material preferences on the neighbourhood, as if everyone had the desire to leave the area. Therefore, it is not a surprise if a fierce opposition grew against them.

The years 70-80: the protests against the car and the spatial

transformation

Residents also believed that de Pijp was a neighbourhood with some problems of liveability. If, as mentioned before, a part of them preferred to leave the neighbourhood, the other part of them and the newcomers wanted to solve its problems with different principles and plans than the one sketched in the modernist agenda. Namely, they wanted to maintain the mainly residential character of the neighbourhood, rather than transforming it into a new city with a plurality of functions. Hence, several groups that advocated for a neighbourhood improvement from a bottom-up perspective started forming in the neighbourhood, asking for measures towards the material improvement of the neighbourhood without carrying out large demolitions (Heijdra 1997:97).

One of the first groups that have been created, following the revolutionary wave that interested Europe in those years, was the Werkgroep de Pijp – a group derived from a former young Catholic group (Heijdra 1997:98). Nevertheless, the series of protests and manifestations for the neighbourhood improvement according to a more inclusive logic started with the manifestation “Pijp-in, Pijp-uit” in April 1972 (ibidem). This manifestation had the merit to spread the consciousness regarding the problems of the neighbourhood. On the other hand, there were also

8_{One of the buildings that were built when a partial realisation of the plan came into action.} Figure 3 The Okura hotel in de Pijp. Source: author's picture

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other groups that advocated for urban renewal, but from a more radical perspective, connected with the squatters’ movement (ibidem). Among those, there was the BHP (Bond voor Hurders in de Pijp). The interesting aspect of these citizens initiatives was the fact that the claims over the redevelopment were directed towards the transformation of the physical layout of the streets and the public space. In other words, they were not happy that there were too many cars that dominated the street. It was not a problem merely confined to the circulation of vehicles, but it was a problem of improperly parked cars that also blocked the circulation in the street. According to Bouwe Olij, one event that played a big role in highlighting the danger that automobiles posed to the neighbourhood was a deadly fire on Govert Flinckstraat that could have been avoided if the streets had not been clogged. This dramatic event is also mentioned in the book “De Pijp: Monument van een wijk” (1997:67) and in the second number of the “Bond van Huurders De Pijp” publication, where it is also specified how it stimulated the idea of promoting less auto-centric urban spaces9_.

Therefore, the demands for a different street design were asking for a general radical redesign, to provide the streets with different functions more than merely guaranteeing the circulation of vehicles. This is visible especially in the October/November 1973 and February 1974 publications of the BHP journal. For instance, there is a complaint on how Frans Halsstraat and Daniël Stalperstraat are roads that were being used to avoid the traffic of Ferdinand Bolstraat, when a plan of the municipality to decrease Ferdinan Bolstraat congestion took place. Therefore, they proposed a partial closure of the street with the implementation of a playground for kids (Bond van Huurders De Pijp 1973a:5). In general, they supported the idea of a traffic restriction in several streets, but they specified that it was mainly against mass auto traffic: “The BHD believes that the Ferd. Bolstraat should be closed to all traffic except the tram, bus, taxi, transport (for loading and unloading)” (Bond van Huurders De Pijp 1973a:8–9)

Nevertheless, another critical element that inspired the claims for a different street design and further actions was the fact that the urban space had become extremely dangerous for children who wanted to play on the street. In fact, with the sharp rise in the number of cars, also the fatalities number of children that have been killed in traffic accidents while playing in the street increased. Supported by their parents, children started to protest by blocking vehicular traffic in some residential roads, constructing – with a do it yourself attitude – what they called “play streets” (Figure 4 and 5). Play streets are simply streets where cars are interdicted, in order to provide a safe environment for children to play. A valuable account of these claims and actions to reclaim this use of the streets can be found in the documentary “Namens de Kinderen van de Pijp” (Kerbosch 1972), where children fiercely expressed their ideas towards urban design:

9_{For instance, it led to the formation of a fire committee (brandcomité), which aimed at preventing a similar}

fact from happening again, by lobbying for removing car on one side of the street, besides asking for the improvement of buildings fire prevention material (Bond van Huurders De Pijp 1973b:8)

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“We wanted to create a play street. […] We want to play in the street as our parents did”

“We had a great childhood 25 years ago. That is all over for these children” “Kids can’t really play here, and the elderly are run over”.

“All these cars are unbearable. there is no space left. Thousand die in accidents and air pollution increases”

In the video, from the minute 15:28 to the minute 17:11, and from the minute 35:12 to the minute 37:08, it is possible to see some examples of the actions they carried out to block a street, and the conflicts that arose with some car drivers.

Eventually, children’s action towards the creation of safer liveable environment and actions that in general claimed a different street redesign succeeded, and the fact that incorporated their claims with the ones of the wider cyclists social movement that asked for a reduction of the car space in Amsterdam played a huge role to achieve this victory (Feddes et al. 2019:70–89). Therefore, it is possible to affirm that the discourse elaborated by grassroots movements successfully pressured the municipality, which had to accept their demands and start sketching a different plan for De Pijp. In this new plan, more attention was given to the vision of residents in the plan of the neighbourhood and the value of neighbourhood actions. For instance, in a publication of the Wijkcentrum Ceintuur (Figure 6), it is possible to read how the problems highlighted by the protestors are embraced, and a

Figure 4 Do it yourself actions for the construction of play streets. Source: Kerbosch (1972)

Figure 5 Do it yourself actions for the construction of play streets. Source: Kerbosch (1972)

Figure 6 A liveable neighbourhood? Source: Wijkcentrum Ceintuur (1977)

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new plan that does not imply massive demolition is sketched (Wijkcentrum Ceintuur 1977:35). For instance, in the section regarding parking, it is mentioned that the high number of illegally parked cars that clog the streets is a remarkable problem and that there is the need to take care of it to make more space for pedestrians and play streets (ibidem:36). Moreover, there is also a section regarding cyclists and pedestrians. It is acknowledged the fact that they are a category that had been allocated scarce space at that moment, and that they were the most vulnerable users of the street (ibidem:39).

The events of the ’70 described above are a remarkable example of how the struggle for the right to the city emerges. The important aspect to stress is the fact that this struggle embodies a mundane character: it is the residents’ will to take control of the urbanisation process in its material character of the shaping of the city. They successfully demonstrated that the solution to improve de Pijp problems, rather than transforming the neighbourhood in a ‘New City’, was with housing renovations and with streets redesign to give more space to cyclists, pedestrians and public transportation, besides adopting more regulations to limit car traffic. In short, the narration and analysis of the fact conducted above represents an example of a successful political protest for the right to the city. They successfully pressured for their design ideas to be implemented, preventing the municipality from following modernist plans inspired by Jokinen model of the city and fought to implement their idea of the neighbourhood urban space.

Frans Halsbuurt parking free neighbourhood

The social movements that took place in the ’70 had at their core the demand for a more human-centred urban design. Therefore, in this perspective, they had the merit to build up a specific claim on the material aspect that the city had to assume. In the same way, I argue that also the civic movement that led to the participatory redevelopment of the Frans Halsbuurt has been inspired by a bottom-up material claim over the design of pubic space. If – observed from a broad perspective – the Frans Halsbuurt redevelopment could be labelled as one of the several redevelopment projects that are occurring in Amsterdam to improve ‘the quality of the urban space’, I argue that it can be instead better understood as the result of the action of the residents that wanted to implement their vision over the neighbourhood. In some extent, I think that it can be compared to the protests against cars of the ’70 and the resistance against the modernist top-down urban design. Regardless of the difference between the two cases, both actions have been inspired by the claim for the right to decide over the form of urban development.

The initial redevelopment plan and the protests of the residents

The initial aim of the Frans Halsbuurt redevelopment can be read on the Nota van Uitgangspunten (note of principles) published on the 14th_{of January 2014. In this document, the}

authors claimed that there was the possibility that overcrowding would have become a problem in Frans Halsbuurt, and therefore they claimed that a redesign of the public space would have been necessary to solve this problem (Stadsdeel Zuid 2014:5). Specifically, according to the project

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managers, the area was expected to become increasingly busy after the construction of the Nord/Zuidlijn, since this infrastructure would have brought more people to the area. Namely, the Frans Halsbuurt is described as a neighbourhood that is becoming increasingly attractive, thanks to the increase in the number of cafés and galleries, as well as of being close to Museumplein (the large open space where there are located the most popular museums in Amsterdam) and the Albert Cuypmarkt. They imagined that a large flow of pedestrians would have walked from the newly built metro stop to the museums, and people visiting the museum would have passed through this neighbourhood to reach the Albert Cuypmarkt (Figure 7). Therefore, for this reason, they affirmed that there was the need to reduce the parking pressure on the area and, at the same time, increase the surface of public space – since the narrow streets of the neighbourhood were not suitable to withstand this flow increase. To sum up, they affirmed that the main problems of the neighbourhood were the increase of flows, the scarcity of parking spots and the scarcity of public space; that is why they thought that this project – together with the already planned construction of a parking garage under the Boerenwetering canal would have constituted the solution (Stadsdeel Zuid 2014:6–9)

The construction of the parking garage, in fact, can be considered the starting point of the demands towards the redefinition of public space. In fact, the garage was meant to have 400 parking spots in total; of these 400 parking spots, 200 were reserved for the residents of the neighbourhood and had the function to replace 200 on-street parking spots. The other 200, instead, were available for visitors. Nevertheless, later in the project, these numbers increased to 600 and 300 respectively. But it is important to mention that, because of the fact that it allowed the removal of on-street parking spots, the ruling coalition of that times viewed the construction of the garage and the Figure 7 De Pijp area and locations of interest. Source: author's map (created with ArcGis online)

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accomplishment of the whole project as a successful strategy to reduce parking pressure, provide additional parking spots for the visitors and subsequently redevelop the space made available thanks to the parking spot removal , increasing the availability of public space.

I did not present this project to assess the validity of project managers analysis and plan for intervention, but to highlight how this attitude embodied a technocratic approach to city design, with a top-down problem definition and solution. In some extent, it reminds the approach of urban planners that in the ’70 adopted to solve the problems that de Pijp had at that time: the solution they sketched is merely technical, and it does not take into account residents’ visions and desires over the neighbourhood function and public space. This aspect is highlighted in an article published in Het Parool, where a group of residents affirmed how they did not consider as useful the talks organised by the project developers regarding the redevelopment plan sketched in 2014 – as if they were not a serious way of addressing their claims but rather ‘wax for the nose’ (Frans Halsbuurt Bewoners 2014). Specifically, they claim that – during the meeting to present the project – residents received no answers to the questions regarding the reason why there was the need to ‘generate extra space’, and then at the end of a meeting the project managers rapidly affirmed that they had the intention to make space for small boat rentals in the Ruysdaelkade – without asking for participants’ opinion. Moreover, the main fear of residents was the fact that the garage was not necessary and, instead of decreasing traffic, it would have caused an increment of it. That is why they did not want this to happen – as Jeroen told me in the interview10_{. The same fact has been confirmed by Bouwe Olij –}

who played an important role in the lobbying process against the project:

“We [the residents] opposed against the construction of the garage, because it was too expensive: 80.000€ per parkeerplaats [single parking space], and it was not necessary". If you see all the reports, you can see that it will become fewer cars, because people in this kind of area they don't need a car, and people will share cars in the future, and you can park your car at the end of the city and then come by public transport. So it's not necessary, you can see it everywhere in the world this. But yeah, of course, they didn't believe it, because yeah, the right-wing party was on the lead and they said we do this”11_.

In short, they did not agree with the analysis made by the project managers and, rather than a solution to accommodate the increase of fluxes of visitors and car traffic, they were asking for measures to reduce them. In detail, the opposition to the plan started in 2012, with the formation of

10_{Interview with Jeroen Overweel. He specifically affirmed: “the neighbours protested [against the garage],}

because the entrance is on the Frans Halsbuurt side. They said that "come on! All those cars coming to the neighbourhood, they will drive around... and we don't want that! We want a car-free neighborhood because it's better”. You know, it's better for the air quality, it's safer, it's modern...”

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the committee called “Comité tegen de Boerenwetering garage” (Committee against the Boerenwetering garage), which made a petition to stop its construction (Figure 8). The main critique they highlighted in the appeal was its high cost, asking for a different solution for the parking problem:

“How profitable are these well-considered 600 parking places? […] with an investment of 47.7 million for netto 300 places (600 built, 300 on the street) after 30 years of operation, it still results in a loss of 13 million. Can we not really solve the parking problems in a better way?" (Stop Plan Zuid 2012)

However, their protest failed and eventually, the construction of the garage started. The motion was brought to court, and – despite this action succeeded in stopping the project for one year – the judge decided that it was possible to make it because something had been modified in the project12_.

Nevertheless, the committee did not resign after the political defeat, and modified its claims according to this new situation:

“they started building [the garage]. And [we said]: "the only thing we can do now is change from 1:2 to 1:1". Not 300 places from the street, but 600. Now [at the present moment] there are 600 places 1:1”13_.

The goal of avoiding the attraction of new car traffic was maintained by preventing the increment of the parking availability. In fact, they asked the replacement of all on-street parking spots with the underground ones of the garage, where residents could have parked for free. Hence, a new lobbying process started towards this direction

The lobbying process for the parking-free neighbourhood

Despite remaining a defeat for the “Stop Plan Zuid” committee, the Boerenwetering garage (officially named Albert Cuypgarage) had the unexpected role of opening the possibility for imagining a neighbourhood without parking spots. In some extent, they took one of the purposes of

12_ibidem

13_{Interview with Bouwe Olij}

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the project – namely, increasing the availability of public space – and further developed it, by imagining its redevelopment from a bottom-up perspective. As Bouwe affirmed:

“You realise that there's really more space on the street [when the parking lots are removed] and you also realise that you can do something with the area. Then, it was a coincidence that we started counting exactly how many places there were on the streets, and I didn’t realise that there were 602 […] and we said: “then we can start an experiment in the busiest part of the city... without

cars!” [emphasis added]. And everybody said that we were crazy, that we will never have succeed

and that was also because the local government that was hearing - Stadsdeel Zuid - they were against that, because they decided 6 years ago that it would’ve been 1:2 [the parking removal ratio]”14

Because the number of parking spots in the garage was the same number of on-street parking spots in the neighbourhood, the residents of Frans Halsbuurt had the possibility of imagining an experimental project: making the whole area “parking free”. Therefore, in this case, the unsuccessful attempt of stopping the controversial Albert Cuypgarage construction, on the other hand gave the residents of the committee that was protesting against it the possibility of ‘appropriating’ it, by discussing its planned use and using it as a way to promote their ideas over the redevelopment of the neighbourhood and their need. In other words, it allowed them to appropriate enormous space that was subtracted by parking spots, and they proposed a different use of it that better reflected their vision over it. In fact, as Peter15_{narrated me in the interview, there is a group of residents – which}

was born out of the initiative of two residents around 2012 – that are actively taking care of the public neighbourhood space, with DIY interventions of greening. That is why I think it is not a coincidence if the idea of using public spaces differently came out from a bottom-up ground.

Nevertheless, although the members of the committee approved this idea with enthusiasm, the political scenario at that time did not allow its realisation. Bouwe narrated how they first tried to propose the idea to the Stadsdeel Zuid (the local council), but they did not want to listen – since they did not want to change the decision that the for two places in the garage, one in the street should have been removed instead of two. Hence, the committee stopped the attempt to discuss with Stadsdeel Zuid and tried to address the lobbying process to the Gemeente, by writing a parking free motion. The main demands expressed in this motion were thus the change in the overground/underground parking spots replacement ratio from 1:2 to 1:1 (except for parking spots for disabled), the creation of an area where the car is a guest, the creation of more play spaces for children and a proper participation project to make a new redesign plan (Ernsting, Boldewijn, and Alberts 2018) Eventually, the motion to change the parking spots replacement ratio to 1:1 succeeded because it passed with a slight majority, with 22 votes against 21.

The right-wing politicians reacted furiously to this motion and to this victory since they never thought it would have passed. However, there were the new elections in March 2018 for the city

14_ibidem

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council, and a new left-wing coalition won. For this reason, the plan was then fully accepted and supported:

“When I hear that she [Sharon Dijksma] was the new aldermen […] I called and said her "Ok, Sharon, congratulations that you'll be the new alderman, but we have to talk very fast because this motions, you have to do it. What are you gonna do with it?". And she said "ok, we do it then!"”16_.

The mutated political composition of the local council contributed to the co-optation between residents’ ideas over the public space and the Groene Links17_{objective of redesigning the city to}

reduce the number of cars. Nevertheless, the fact that the response to the motion did not arrive in a brief period irritated the residents. That is why they started pushing for the application of the motion by organising the action ‘Buurtplaats’ – namely a bottom-up proposal for the redesign.

‘Buurtplaats’ initiative

The Albert Cuyp garage has opened on May 15th_{2018 and, as mentioned before, with the new}

motion 600 spots were made available for the residents (Parkeer24 2018). However, months after its opening, car owners did not stop parking their car on the parking spots that had to be removed – since legally, they were still available because the municipality did not take any action yet to remove them. That is why the residents that lobbied for the ‘parking free motion’ were not happy about this situation, and therefore they organised a form of active intervention to start implementing it: the ‘Buurtplaats’ initiative (Bewoners van de Pijp n.d.).

The ‘Buurtplaats’ initiative has been a bottom-up action that led to the occupation of the parking spots to “give the municipality inspiration about how to transform it” (ibidem). In detail, a group of residents decided to occupy the parking spots with benches, bike racks, picnic tables, play areas for children and cargo bikes (Figure 9). Their intervention on the physical environment extended also to the symbolical dimension, since they also replaced the name of the garage, from Albert Cuypgarage to Boerenwetering garage.:

“…the garage is also for people who are not from here […] if you are a visitor, you can park there. We didn't like that, because we were afraid that it'd have come too many visitors, so that would have been a problem. And there's still a discussion about how many visitors we can let in in the garage. So, we said that the name is wrong. It's better to call it Boerenwetering garage. People

may come in there, but let’s not make promotion of it [emphasis added]. At the same time that we

had the action we had the action we also put a new on the garage: Boerenwetering garage. Aaah, they were very angry!”18

16_{Interview with Bouwe Olij} 17_{The Dutch Green Left party} 18_{Inteview with Bouwe Olij}

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This action provides an example of how the redevelopment of Frans Halsbuurt has a strong bottom-up connotation. The action, in fact, embodied the goal of the “Comité tegen de Boerenwetering garage” of preventing an increase of car traffic in the neighbourhood. They carried it out by appropriating the public space and preventing the garage from becoming attractive for visitors. Moreover, here is also evident the intent to “act rather than waiting for the municipality to do something”. This aspect is also highlighted in Bouwe’s words:

“The alderman, who was still there, he didn't know what to do with it. And he also saw that he was aware that he wouldn't have come back because he lost the elections. So, he did nothing. And we were pushing for doing something. And then we decided that we wanted to show how it could have worked if the whole area were free of cars. To show them, to do something”19_.

Nevertheless, on legal terms, the ‘Buurtplaats’ initiative performed by the residents was not legal, since they were formally occupying parking spots. If in on the one hand the governing coalition expressed approval for the residents’ action claiming that it would not have persecuted it, on the other hand, the local section of the VVD (a right-wing oriented political party) firmly criticised it, stressing the illegal character it embodied. For instance, the VVD member Rick Torn affirmed that

19_ibidem

Figure 9 ‘Buurplaats’ initiative. Author: Beeld Jesper Boot. Source: https://www.parool.nl/ps/plotseling-bankjes-op-parkeerplaatsen~b5ffe27f/

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“blocking parking spaces and repainting the borders because you feel that you have the right to do it is not good” and “fines […] can also be imposed [to the ones responsible for this action]” (at5 2018c:5).

The ‘Buurtplaats’ initiative proved to be successful, since, on 26th_{June 2018, the local council}

wrote an answer to the motion proposed by the residents in March. In this document, they stated that they agreed with all the demands of the residents and that they would have “put out of use” the parking spots (Gemeenteraad 2018). Sharon Dijksma, who in the meanwhile became the new alderman, affirmed that – even though the action was not formally legal – they did not intend to enforce this regulation, and that they could have left there their belongings until the official works for the removal of the parking spots started (at5 2018c). At the beginning of October 2018, the existing parking spots started to be replaced by temporary flower beds, to prevent people parking and force car owners that live in Frans Halsbuurt to use the garage that was dedicated to them (at5 2018b; Gemeente Amsterdam n.d.). This fact can be considered a clear example of how grassroots actions of residents still play the fundamental role of influencing municipality actions, pressuring it to listen to residents’ demands.

The new participatory development

As I already mentioned, a plan for the redevelopment of Frans Halsbuurt was already defined in 2014. That also included a redefinition of the street space, but it was conceived in a technocratic declination. It was not a redevelopment aimed at realising the residents’ ideas over the neighbourhood, but it arose from the necessity to ‘improve the quality of the public space’ to accommodate the increased flows of people that were expected. However, after the parking free motion, the political shift in the administration of the Stadsdeel and the residents’ action of parking spots occupations, it has been abandoned it its original form and a new participatory project plan has been sketched in February 2019, claiming that it would have respected residents’ requests stated in the parking free motion of the 21st_{of March 2018. Therefore, the new project acquired an emergent}

and undetermined character: the result would have been a redevelopment drawn from the ideas of the residents on the public space (Stadsdeel Zuid 2019).

One of the first action undertaken has been contacting the residents with a questionnaire, where they were asked questions about different general aspects of the neighbourhood – like what they considered positive and negative characteristics, what they wanted to improve and how they wanted to conduct the participatory redevelopment. Moreover – as Jeroen told me – another thing that the civil servants did before starting the process was ringing to each doorbell, to speak with the residents about it20_{. Finally, the results of this questionnaire had been published in a report for the}

Research, information and statistics (OIS) section of the Gemeente.