The self build city : how the self-build city is creating new forms of exclusion

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Master’s thesis.

Urban and Regional Planning, URP.

Graduate School of Social Sciences, GSSS.

University of Amsterdam Course number - 7354102004

Project - Private Sector Involvement in Public Interest Date - 15/8/2016

Student and author - J.A.L. van den Boom, BSc. j.vandenboom@student.uva.nl Supervisor and first reader - Prof. Dr. M.T. Tasan-Kok m.t.tasankok@uva.nl

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Abstract

The Dutch planning system and housing sector have rediscovered plot-based urbanism, in different forms of self-build. The Netherlands, where a strong planning tradition made sure government held an autonomy in creating and implementing urban policy, is becoming an exemplar case for participatory small-scale and bottom-up approaches to urban development, especially in relation to the self-build movement and the involvement of active citizens in shaping the urban environment. This study will focus on self-build efforts and policy implementations in Amsterdam. Using an exploratory, broad qualitative approach this study aims to show a glimpse of how these small-scale initiatives of active self-organising citizens will impact the larger scale of the city. This city is booming. The growing popularity of the city, and with that the growing demand for housing, have resulted in an increasingly exclusive housing sector of which a growing group of people is being excluded. Is implementing exclusive forms of self-build in this urban context leading to new forms of exclusion in the city?

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Acknowledgements

Realising this study has been challenging at times, and therefore I sincerely want to thank everyone who has assisted and helped me. Tuna Tasan-Kok, as my supervisor, for her helpful feedback, advice and overall support. I want to thank all the respondents who were willing to give their time and share their stories within a very short timeframe, many of them having very busy schedules. My study friends, for their moral support and coffee breaks as well as my other friends who I have not seen as much as I would have liked. My colleagues and internship supervisors for their flexibility and feedback. Finally, my family and partner Sjoerd, for always being there.

Joris van den Boom, August 2016.

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Content

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1.3 Focus and relevance 1.4 Study outline

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2 Methodology

2.1 Research strategy and design 2.2 Research and analytical methods 2.3 The case of Amsterdam

2.4 The case within the case - Buiksloterham

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3 The marriage of housing and spatial planning

3.1 The institutionalisation of housing

3.2 The housing corporation as the ideological re-constructor 3.3 A changing discourse

3.4 The turn to self-build 3.5 The end of an era

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4 The (new) Self-Build City

4.1 Revival

4.2 European context

4.3 Presumed benefits and motivations of self-build 4.4 Potential barriers and threats of self-build 4.5 Conclusion

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5 The active citizen in the exclusive city

5.1 The ‘death of the social’ and ’government through community’ 5.2 Citizen participation and initiative

5.3 A socio-spatial, political and economic perspective on active citizenship 5.4 Active citizenship and social exclusion

5.5 Conclusion

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6 The aspirational landscape of the Self-Build City 6.1 Born out of ideology

6.2 Born out of crisis 6.3 The pioneers

6.4 From pioneers to ‘sustainable hip’ in a booming market 6.5 Different perceptions of diversity

6.6 Provoking diversity and access 6.7 The entrepreneurial self-builder

6.8 Public space of aspirational urban landscapes 6.9 New forms of exclusionary urban space 6.10 Looking forward

6.11 Conclusion

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7 Conclusions

7.1 The context

7.2 A community of active citizens - the socio-cultural arena 7.3 The urban space of aspirational landscapes - the spatial arena 7.4 Who pays, decides? - the economic arena

7.5 Power, vision and influence - the political arena

7.6 Answering the research question, reflection and discussion

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References

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Introduction

Many consider it the most beautiful part of Amsterdam, it’s 17th century canal ring. Renowned for its beauty, flexibility and its monumental cultural value when it was added to the UNESCO world heritage list in 2010 (UNESCO, 2010). This example of plot-based urbanism has recently been rediscovered as the Dutch planning system and housing sector has been undergoing profound changes. The Netherlands, where a strong planning tradition made sure government held an autonomy in creating and implementing urban policy, is becoming an exemplar case for participatory small-scale and bottom-up approaches to urban development, especially in relation to the self-build movement and the involvement of active citizens in shaping the urban environment (Lloyd et al., 2015). This study aims to explore this recent rise of interest in self-build as a type of urban development, its implications and what kind of urban spaces are being created.

1.1 Problem definition

Amsterdam is booming. Not even considering the city’s rise of international traveller’s and tourist’s ‘places to visit’-lists, the city is experiencing explosive population growth, adding 10.000 new residents every year (OIS Amsterdam, 2015). Since the most recent global financial crisis, house prices have been rising tremendously, and so were the average income levels compared to national numbers (Boterman et al., 2013). The growing popularity of the city, and with that the growing demand for housing, have resulted in an increasingly exclusive housing sector of which a growing group of people is being excluded. Boterman et al. (2013) mention how in a broader international context, the financial crisis has exposed growing inequalities in housing sectors in a variety of cities in the developed world, and Savini et al. (2016) show how several cities have started questioning the viability of their earlier models of urban policy. While Amsterdam is pursuing its development

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model, Savini et al. (2016) have witnessed certain unexpected discontinuities with new experimental urban policies. One of them being the self-build model of plot-based urbanism. On the one hand this form of housing provision fits within societal trends of decentralisation, increased self-reliability and demand for participation (Tummers, 2015). On the other hand, in an increasingly exclusive city that is burdened with a large quantitative task for developing housing, self-build seems to be a illogical policy choice. As Lloyd et al. (2015) state, in many cases, self-build is primarily an opportunity for higher income individuals to express their free choice. A question remains, if self-build in a city like Amsterdam could contribute to new forms of exclusion in the city.

1.2 The context

According to Qu and Hasselaar (2011), what is happening in the Netherlands is in line with an international context. At the beginning of the 21st century planning and housing systems in many developed countries had been experiencing paradigm shifts. Unprecedented globalisation, worldwide urbanisation, financial insecurity, climate change and emerging new lifestyles have been challenging the capacity of cities to to cope with their environments (Feliciotti et al., 2015). Planning in western democracies over the last several decades has been largely managed by centralised, blue-print approaches in implementation and control. This top-down, centralised planning approach has been receiving a lot of criticism for conveying an unrealistic, positivist and static perspective on the urban reality, underestimating the complex and unpredictability of contemporary societies (Jacobs, 1961; Feliciotti et al., 2015). Davoudi and Madanipour (2015) observe that as a response many western countries, over the last decade or two, have been transforming their planning traditions. Planning systems are being deregulated, decentralised and devolved. Innovative partnerships with private sector actors, bottom-up and grassroots level approaches as well as civil society collaborations are being fostered and encouraged in order to change the planning structure towards a more collaborative and pluralistic playing field. Davoudi and Madanipour (2015) see this shift marking the trend of a retreating state that anticipates a more directly involved private sector, civil society and active individual citizen. The so-called ‘right of the citizens’ to shape their own future is acknowledged as if this fact has been ignored by professional planners up until now. Qu and Hasselaar (2011) confirm this as they witness a policy narrative emerging that focusses on the individual citizen, with mottos like active citizenship and private initiative being promoted. Citizens are

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expected to become actively involved, embodying a shared responsibility for the spatial environment between government and civic communities (Boonstra and Boelens, 2011). Moulaert et al. (2005) argue how institutional arrangements relying on greater civic involvement have the potential to foster social innovation in urban policy, Swyngedouw (2005) has notably claimed how ‘governance-beyond-the-state’ is fundamentally ‘janus-faced’ - these policies have an empowering potential as well as leading to eroding democratic values by the imposition of the neo-liberal market. This could raise questions on the outcomes of these trends, is collective citizen responsibility over the urban environment increasing? How inclusive are these processes and does it justify a retrieving role for the government? Or, how ‘janus-faced’ is the self-build movement itself?

1.3 Focus and relevance

This study will focus on self-build efforts and policy implementations in Amsterdam. Using an exploratory, broad qualitative approach this study aims to show a glimpse of how these small-scale initiatives of active self-organising citizens will impact the larger scale of the city. Self-build housing is an ambiguous but interesting phenomenon. Until about 100 years ago, self-provided housing was the norm in the Netherlands, as it still is in many parts of the world. In developing countries, self-build is often the only housing solution. The favela’s in Rio de Janeiro are a famous example, but also in urban areas with more affluence like Vienna, self-build villa’s in centrally located neighbourhoods form a distinct part of the city’s urban fabric. This type of self-build is not based on necessity but on comfort and luxury. In relatively new, fast-growing cities like Vancouver, the grid type urban form of equally sized plots was the base for many of its residents to build their own house and together shape the city. Other well-known examples in both developed and developing countries have focused on safety and security, forming ‘gated communities’ that are shut off from their urban surroundings. So, self-build is not necessarily an individual matter, as renowned examples in Germany have also shown. Self-selected groups united to create their own living environments, known as ‘Baugruppen’, in cities like Tübingen and Freiburg. The reasons and motivations behind self-build are as diverse as the city itself.

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The focus of this study, having all this context in the background, will be the ‘new’ forms of self-build that have recently been embraced by national and local governments in the Netherlands. Amsterdam is one of the cities that is quickly embracing self-build as a new approach to urban development in a radical shift from what was previously a strong, integrated model of planning. The concept has seen a recent resurgence, also in academic research, and therefor is terminologically challenged as different people use different labels, often overlapping with other fields like co-housing or alternative housing (Benson, 2014; Tummers, 2015). The main difference between self-build and the traditional development type in the Netherlands, and the main aspect of self-build is the fact that the eventual resident commissions the project of his or her own eventual house. This does not necessarily mean that someone is building a house with their own hands, even though that is of course a possibility, but the idea of self-build is about full participation and control for the person that is going to live in that specific environment, and this can be in either an individual form or a collective form. In the Dutch policy narrative, it has been named ‘individual self-build’ (in Dutch, ‘particulier opdrachtgeversschap’, P.O.) or ‘collective self-build’ (in Dutch, ‘collectief particulier opdrachtgeversschap’, C.P.O.) so in the case of the latter a group of people commissions the project. Finally, a third type is put under this umbrella, participatory commissioning (in Dutch, ‘medeopdrachtgeversschap’, M.O.), where the end-user is highly involved by the contractor or project developer at an early stage so the resident itself is not the commissioner (Boelens and Visser, 2011). These types of urban development, while labelled differently by many, will in this study be referred to as ‘self-build’.

Table 1. The concept terminology of ‘self-build’ (loosely based on Boelens & Visser, 2011).

Type of Self-build Commissioned by

Self-build

Individual self-build (P.O.) Individual end-user

Collective self-build (C.P.O.) Self-reliant group of end-users

Participatory commissioning (M.O.) Developer or contractor, with high level of influence from end-user

These self-build initiatives are starting to provide a substantial alternative to the traditional housing sector in the Netherlands, and is challenging planning systems (Tummers, 2011). The question

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remains, are we dealing with a hype in times of changing economic and cultural factors in society, or is this model of development a long-term concept that will substantially change our urban environment? Boonstra (2015) in her research on urban planning in ‘the age of active citizenship’ states how between 2008 and 2015, civic initiatives have become common practice. “However, little

is known about the large-scale and long-term effects of more civic initiatives in urban development” (Boonstra, 2015,

p. 371). She states that there are many questions still to be answered while these types of policies are being implemented on a rapid scale. One of the most pressing and relevant questions is regarding social exclusion that could be accommodated by increasing self-reliance of citizens and whether governments should take action to counter this and how (Warren, 2009; Van Meerkerk, 2014 in Boonstra, 2015). In the cases of self-build in Amsterdam that will be dealt with later in this study, Savini et al. (2015) state, “Despite lofty social goals, new practices are still dominated by middle-class

values and outcomes” (p. 110). It remains unclear of how these policies and projects will fit into the

context of the city as a whole, with special attention to the issue regarding affordable housing and inclusive development. Will Amsterdam be able to retain its status as Fainstein’s (2005) ‘just city’ (Uitermark, 2012)?

Establishing the focus of this study, the main research question trickles down to the following -

To what extent are current self-build efforts in Amsterdam

shaping new forms of exclusion in the city?

1.4 Study outline

The structure of this study is as follows. After introducing the subject and the its context in the introduction, the second chapter will look closer at the methodological choices made for this study and focus on the specific context. Building on this, chapter three will look at how 100 years of planning and housing systems have shaped the Dutch landscape, and search for the factors leading up to the resurgence of self-build over the last 10 to 15 years. Chapter four will shed a light on the existing literature on self-build. As mentioned before, the concept of self-build is quite broadly understood so this chapter will try to distil the relevant literature and research and connect it to the

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current trend in Amsterdam. Chapter five will connect the debate to the literature on active citizenship, aspirational landscapes and the element of social exclusion in this context. Following these reviews, chapter six will outline the main results from the study, connecting the themes out of the theoretical frame to the specific data gathered for this study. Following this body of work, a concluding chapter will answer the research question.

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Methodology

This chapter will illustrate and justify the methodological approaches used in conducting this study. A methodology contains a strategy to get to a certain outcome, which in this case gain insight in the trend of self-build in Amsterdam. First the research strategy will be explained, followed by an outline of the case.

2.1 Research strategy and design

The research strategy for this study is a broad qualitative approach. The main aim of this study is to gain insights in the way the urban environment is changing now society is taking (and given) more responsibility over the urban domain. How is this active citizenship taking place and what implications will this have for the equity of our cities? In order to pinpoint this objective, the following research question has been set:

To what extent are current self-build efforts in Amsterdam shaping new forms of exclusion in the city?

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The main concepts involved in this study, and those will be dealt with in the following chapters, are self-build housing, active citizenship and social exclusion. How these concepts are believed to relate to each other is illustrated in the conceptual frame (figure 1). Influenced by the theoretical background of the following chapters, self-build is believed to be part of a bigger trend of active citizenship in contemporary urban settings (Raco, 2009; Hamiduddin & Gallent, 2015; Boelens & Visser, 2011; Boonstra, 2015) which could lead to new forms of exclusion in the city (Droste, 2015; Boonstra, 2015; Madanipour, 2015), that being the main argument of this study. These concepts are difficult to quantify, illustrate in numbers and measure, especially being such a recent development in the case of Amsterdam. Even though social exclusion has often been involved in quantitative research, including quantitative data on income or employment opportunities, the type of exclusion in this study is of a different kind. It if about urban development focused on select groups of people in society, excluding other. The creation of exclusive urban environments, exclusive public space, from where certain people are included and others excluded. The creation of pockets of wealth in otherwise, relatively, deprived areas. These kind of concepts do not ‘occur’, are not directly observable. They entail a series of narratives, mental images and, perhaps most importantly, context and influence. Over a longer period of time, quantifiable data would be relevant in this context, but not necessarily in the context of this limited study.

A set of sub-questions will complement and support the process of answering the research question. They will provide conclusions that will eventually trickle down to a main outcome. These question will pop-up in relevant parts of the study, during literature reviews or data analysis.

-   Citizens have taken initiatives to create alternatives for standardised housing at all times in history (Tummers,

2011, p. 156). So the question remains: what is so different now?

-   Is collective citizen responsibility over the urban environment increasing?

-   How inclusive are these processes and does it justify a retrieving role for the government? -   Or, how ‘janus-faced’ is the self-build movement itself?

-   What kind of urban space is created when self-build is introduced in a city like Amsterdam? -   This raises a question of diversity in an area that is developed by self-build.

-   What about the people living there, the ‘sustainable pioneers’?

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select group?

-   Is it the case that self-build attract a certain, more affluent group of people or is it a matter of limited access? -   Could this type of development be perceived as inclusive and accessible for anyone in society?

-   To what extent are self-builders active in the community, or what is their influence on the urban environment

extending from their own plot of land?

-   How this will effect the use of public space?

-   Buiksloterham is surrounded by traditional working class neighbourhoods, with a large share of social housing.

How will these areas affect each other?

-   How is the ‘self-build’ discourse being framed in Almere and Amsterdam, by different actors?

-   How is the discourse of the self-build city changing the relationship between government and individual actors? -   Are iterations of the self-build city seen as experiments or a new norm of area development?

The research design chosen for this study is a case study design, for both practical and substantive reasons. This study aims to have an overview of self-build on the city-wide scale, but needs to zoom in to a more specific scale of an area in order to get a real sense of the context of self-build projects. The study tries to limit zooming in to the level on one particular project as this will limit the ultimate external validity of the outcomes. Self-build of Amsterdam is the main case, considered a unique case at this point in time when the type of development is still relatively new but at the same time the first outcomes have taken shape. Self-build has gained prominence in an upmarket situation, which has created a unique situation. The study will zoom in and out from Amsterdam level to the level of the neighbourhood, the case of Buiksloterham. Also, for comparable purposes, the case of Almere is highlighted often. These cases are elaborated upon later on in this chapter.

2.2 Research and analytical methods

“Social life is premised on stories” (Harling Stalker, 2009, p. 219) states Harling Stalker in her essay on the importance of narratives in qualitative research. She emphasises the importance and even the necessity in her opinion, of narratives in qualitative research strategies. She presents ontological and epistemological types of narratives, that “enrich our understanding of embeddedness in cultures and

societies, as well as situating our, that is the researcher’s, attempts to make sense of social worlds” (Harling Stalker,

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and state how in social scientific analyses of cities, research is influenced by two kinds of narratives that are, as they put it, in dialogue with each other. The epistemological narratives are the analytical meta- narratives that are prominent in the urban (planning) studies literature while the ontological narratives in any given city are those that “residents, policymakers, community activists or businesses” (O’Dowd and Komarova, 2013, p. 526) use to make sense of their everyday life experiences. This study on self-build in Amsterdam aims to present these two types of narratives, even though it might just be a glimpse of the whole story. The meta-narratives are presented in the first few chapters of this study, focusing on the main concepts involved. Following this review, the ontological narratives will be presented in the following chapter. The data gathered for these ‘spatial stories’ (O’Dowd & Komarova, 2013) to be established was mainly based on interviews and discussions with key respondents based in Amsterdam and Almere. In the case of the in-depth interviews, these were semi-structured with only a limited list of set questions, on order to leave enough space for the respondents’s own story. Respondents were found using a purposive sampling (Bryman, 2008, p. 458) method, based on finding people relevant to the research question. A total of nine in-depth interviews have been conducted, and all interviews were conducted in person and took between 60 and 120 minutes. A list of interviews respondents is provided in the appendix (table A1), all respondents gave their consent to be named in this study.

A deliberate choice was made to interview respondents who would look at the development of build from a ‘higher’ scale level, without being too involved in a single project, for instance as a self-builder. The self-builders themselves have been approached multiple times for interviews of other input for research and have been not too willing to participate anymore, very understandably. The few that are still very visible and willing to participate have been portraying a very specific, ‘politically correct’, point of view that is widely available from other sources and therefor an interview for this study did not seem relevant. In order to get a more general sense of the type of people involved in self-build projects, so as opposed to interviewing a very select number of them, sources such as documentaries and media have been conducted, and several public events have been visited to speak to them in an more informal setting, like the Amsterdam Day of Architecture (18 and 19 June 2016, Arcam and Buiksloterham) that had self-build as its main theme, and public events held at Pakhuis de Zwijger in Amsterdam (like ‘Buiksloterham, the last experiment?’ on 2 June 2016), respondents of these events are shown in the appendix (table A2). Also, publications from

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the municipality of Amsterdam that were specifically focused on self-build were conducted, in order to get a sense of the framing of the development. Benford and Snow (2000, p.1), in their research on framing, indicate how framing processes have come to be regarded as a central dynamic in understanding the character and course of social movements. Their notion of ‘motivational framing’ seems to be applicable to the case of self-build. Also, the researcher has been doing an internship at a firm that is located within Buiksloterham, in a collective self-build project, so observations and informal conversations with self-builders have been conducted there.

The main method for analysis has been a thematic narrative analysis. Bryman (2008, p. 553) stated that while there is little consensus on what narrative analysis entails, at the very least it entails a sensitivity to the connections in people’s accounts of the past, present and future events and state of affairs, people’s sense of their place within those and the stories they generate about them. It is an analysis of the stories that people employ to understand their lives and the world around them (Bryman, 2008, p. 553) - from what happened to how people make sense of what happened (ibid., p. 556). This type of data gathering and analysis will provide the research with a very high ecological validity, as no artificial reality is created. In order to keep the data structured and make the analytic process more transparent, the transcribed interviews, documentaries, documents and memos have been imported in MAX-QDA, a computer programme that can be used for a CAQDAS (Computer

assisted qualitative data analysis) method (Bryman, 2008, p. 565). Using this programme, an open

coding method was applied. This process of coding yielded concepts, which later were grouped and turned into themes, becoming the basic analytical framework. The study has a mainly deductive stance - from observations to theory to findings - but includes some inductive elements too as findings are reflected back to theory. Bryman (2008, p. 12) states how most qualitative research is either deductive with inductive elements or the other way around.

Figure 2 is an illustrations of the analytical framework of this study. The concepts influencing the extent to which self-build is contributing to the construction of new forms of exclusion in the city have all come out of the data gathered, and are mostly interrelated. Pioneers and entrepreneurs related to the specific target group that self-build attracts and facilitates. Diversity comes in as focusing on the diversity among the group of self-builders, mostly based on socio-economic backgrounds and ‘like-mindedness’. This connects to community as well, and what kind of community is created and

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how well connected it is to its surroundings. Access is about ‘subjective access’, of who is included as well as financial/economic opportunities for self-build. This subjective access is connected to the

image of the area, as is the focus on sustainability that is connected to a certain kind of lifestyle. As said,

these themes came out of the data and are guiding the analysis, but were also loosely based on Madanipour’s framework of social exclusion (2011), that he argues can be understood from the perspective of different arenas. This connection is made in table 2.

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Concept Dimension (Arena) Indicator

Social Exclusion Social - Cultural Active citizens Pioneers Lifestyle Spatial Public space Facilities/services Connections/infrastructure Economic Access Financial background (Property) market situation

Political

Vision

Specific target group Influence

2.3 The case of Amsterdam

As mentioned earlier, ‘self-build in Amsterdam’ is the main unit of analysis in this study. The city of Amsterdam presents itself a a unique case in this context, as at this moment self-build is still considered relatively new and unique in the city while at the same time the first results have taken shape. Amsterdam is unique in the Netherlands as well, as the city is immensely popular and growing rapidly, in residents and at the same time in house prices. Recently, NRC published an overview article on the Dutch housing sector and it shows how in Amsterdam more than half of the houses were sold over the asking price, compared to 13% nationally (Dohmen, 2016). The average housing price in the city was 14% higher than before the recent financial crisis, while nationally this was 7% lower. The city was also compared to peripheral regions like

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Groningen where the market was lagging behind and less houses were selling, as in the first six months of this year in Amsterdam 7% less houses were sold. The market is so ‘heated’, the article stated, ‘the city is out of housing’ (Dohmen, 2016). The amount of properties up for sale in the city have decreased with over 40% in the last year. Only Haarlem and Utrecht, other popular cities in an upmarket environment come close. This makes the situation of self-build in Amsterdam rather unique in the Netherlands, if you would compare it to the situation in Almere for instance, where the market is very different as the city is not as popular.

Amsterdam slowly started experimenting with self-build in the late 1990s, with projects in the newly developed city districts in the Eastern Harbour (Borneo-eiland) and IJburg (Steigereiland). The results were considered successful, ‘varied’ and ‘lively’ (Gemeente Amsterdam, 2011). From 2011 on however, the city committed to the task of making self-build a ‘gown-up’ form of urban development and started giving out plots all over the city. How this process was initiated will become more clear in chapter six. The city aimed at introducing self-build in most parts of the city, in standard densities (so also in collective forms), rather than just in the ‘golden periphery’ with spacious plots (Gemeente Amsterdam, 2011).

Figure 3. Map of plots available for self-building initiatives. In dark grey the plots for groups of individuals, in light grey those for individual dwellers. Buiksloterham is circled (Savini et al., 2016).

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In has been mentioned before several times, the ‘pioneer’ city of self-build in the Netherlands is not Amsterdam, but its neighbour Almere is. While Almere is not a focus point or case in this study it is referenced many times as it is seen as the exemplar case of what is possible with self-build in the Dutch context and its close proximity to Amsterdam. The scale of self-build in Almere is tremendous as the city put out 600 plots per year between 2006 and 2015, varying from 100 to 4000 square meters, with corresponding variety in prices (Tummers, 2011). Around 3000 plots are reserved for moderate incomes (between €22.000 to €36.000 a year before tax) with

home-Figure 4. Quantity and dispersal of dwellings on plots that were offered at Amsterdam’s four plot-markets between 2011 and 2014. From left to right - detached, in a row, small-collective, large-collective and renovated existed structure (Gemeente Amsterdam, 2014).

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ownership and self-build ambitions. The maximum cost of construction is set at €188.500, with co-financing, depending on income, from the IBBA fund (‘I Build Affordable in Almere’). This co-financed share needs to be bought back by the residents if their income rises and the houses can be sold on the market without conditions (Tummers, 2011). This fund will come back later in this study.

2.4 The case within the case - Buiksloterham

Within the case of Amsterdam, the focus of this study shifts from the city scale to the local area scale, mostly to that of Buiksloterham. Of the self-build areas, neighbourhoods, in Amsterdam the four largest and most visible are Amstelkwartier, Zeeburgereiland, Houthavens and Buiksloterham. Buiksloterham was selected as focus area as this could be perceived as the most exemplar case in the city of a neighbourhood that is being constructed by, up until now, mainly self-builders. It combines individual plots, individual self-build in a row, collective self-build buildings in smaller and larger scales. It is an area that could be seen as an experiment where active citizens are shaping the city, where, up until now, no developers or corporations have intervened. Projects like the Ceuvel or Schoonschip add to the variety of what could be labeled ‘self-build’ in Buiksloterham. The Houthavens area, which is becoming very visible in the city as well, is still very much in progress and it might be too early to get a sense of the community that is being shaped there. Same can be said for Amstelkwartier and Zeeburgereiland. On top of that, in the Houthavens only collective self-build has been realised, in Zeeburgereiland only individual self-build and in that area developers and corporations are also realising projects already so in that way the area is not only being shaped by self-builders like in Buiksloterham.

Savini and Dembski (2016, p. 8) in their research on the creative city in Amsterdam North, paint a very suitable image of the area;

“The Buiksloterham area, between Overhoeks and NDSM is a brownfield with some active industry and is presented today as the living laboratory of the new city. Here, an organic approach entails a careful combination of urban fabrics, industrial production, knowledge economy and housing. The city alderman uses the motto ‘mix to the max’ to describe the redevelopment, which serves as a benchmark for national and international development projects. The organic approach consists of combining industrial locations with housing and offices in order to promote living-labs discussions of alternative energy consumption and waste reuse, and for the purpose of engaging citizen and small entrepreneur to

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find innovative solutions. Symbolic terminologies like The hackable city, a recently proposed interactive research platform in North, combine references to smart technology, emergent urbanism, self-organisation and creative production. A giant shovel installed by the district government around new housing developments symbolises this narrative of self-organised and manufactured urban change. In the area, the patchwork of self-build houses, incubators, companies and social activities is supported by a narrative of bottom-up urban metamorphosis and of gradual and socially embedded urban change. Today, Buiksloterham is described as ‘the green utopia’ and is used to evocate the meaning that this area has for an alternative future for the city of Amsterdam as a whole and beyond” (Savini &

Dembski, 2016, p. 8).

The potential of Buiksloterham as an attractive location has been known for a while, right in between the developing NDSM and central station, but because of the patchwork of land ownership and polluted soil, the development of the area stagnated for a long time. Buiksloterham, as well as Zeeburgereiland were designated as ‘grootstedelijke locaties’ (‘metropolitan locations’), meaning they were targeted at large numbers of housing construction up until the crisis, of 6.000 dwellings in Buiksloterham. After the crisis, this has changed into a more ‘organic’, step-by-step approach in a ‘transformation plan’ as opposed to a close-ended masterplan (Gemeente Amsterdam, 2011). The zoning plan was targeted at longterm development, integrating a high level of flexibility and space for a diverse set of developments and functions (Dembski, 2013). As Dembski (2013, p. 6) states, it is an innovative project in the Dutch spatial planning tradition - “The innovation of the project is in its

different development model. In traditional urban development projects the municipality all land is acquired, cleared/prepared and then released to a select group of developers. In this case the municipality does not clear the land but tries to enable by law and via interactive governance the ‘organic’ transformation of the Buiksloterham”.

The total area size of the Buiksloterham is 100 hectares and the investment area of the municipality is 35 hectares large (Dembski, 2013). The intention is to achieve a gradual transformation into a mixed-use urban neighbourhood while the industrial character of the area remains intact. There is a particular emphasis on sustainability. The project commenced in 2005 with a time span until 2030.

26 Fi gu re 5 . M ap s of A m ste rd am -No rth w ith a z oo m -in o f B ui ks lo ter ha m in clu din g se ve ra l s tre ets a nd p ro jec ts th at ar e na m ed in th is st ud y (o w n w or k, 2 01 6) .

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The marriage of housing and

spatial planning

Self-build housing is not a 21st century innovation. Just like anywhere on the planet, self provided housing defined Dutch housing provision until well into the 20th century. Over the last 100 years, more or less, the Dutch housing sector has changed dramatically and shaped the country that it is today, as housing market dynamics have dominated urban development and spatial planning dynamics. When compared to neighbouring Belgium and Germany, it is a world of difference as self-provided housing has always played a larger role in those countries. This chapter will illustrate how the Dutch housing sector has evolved over the last century and how this has ultimately lead to the current increased interest, or even return to, self-build housing.

3.1 The institutionalisation of housing

Housing policies and spatial planning have been connected and institutionalised since 1901 when government implemented the ‘Woningwet’ (‘Housing Act’). Because of the geographical setting of the country, with a quarter of its land under sea level, the need for determined land use planning was always high. The battle against water was institutionalised the year before in 1900, with the ‘Waterstaatswet’ (‘Water Act’), that gave the national Ministry for Water Management the power to undermine local spatial planning decisions, leaving large parts of the country vacant. The ‘Woningwet’ was on one side an answer to the detrimental living conditions of large parts of the population, as well as tackling the unmanaged urbanisation patterns shaping the country up until

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then (Geldof, 2012). The Act created a legal framework for both the structural quality of the housing sector and the public coordination of the expanding cities. The role of each governmental agency was clearly put down, laying out the structure of a strong, decentralised planning system consisting of three administrative levels, the national, provincial and municipal. Zoning plans were introduced and housing corporations were granted access to specific locations within municipalities. This system of housing corporations, with the public task of providing affordable housing, had been evolving in the years leading up to the ‘Woningwet’, the first such corporation was ‘De Vereeniging tot het verschaffen

van geschikte woningen aan de arbeidende klasse’ in Arnhem in 1851 (Boelens and Visser, 2011), and the

Act was essentially a way of supporting it structurally. A system that combined subsidies and cheap loans was set up to help sustain the corporations. In fact, it realised a system where the government acted as the commissioner and the corporations as executor for the housing provisioning of the general public (Casciato, 1980 in Boelens et al., 2010). This model was basically an extension of the successful self-organised water boards and agricultural corporations already in place, and you could say that the modern day housing corporation was a Dutch invention (Boelens et al., 2010). While in the shape of Housing Districts (USA), Housing Associations (UK), Sociale Huisvestings-gemeenschappen (Belgium), Wohnungsgesellschaften or Heimstätte (Germany) similar models exist, nowhere as institutionalised as in the Netherlands. In 1990, about 44% of the Dutch housing stock was social housing and corporation owned, compared to France and Denmark at 17%, Germany at 16% and Belgium at 7% (Boelens et al., 2010). In the period between the implementation of the ‘Woningwet’, and World War II, 160.000 housing units were built by the corporations. The basis was also laid out, in true paternalistic fashion, to steer the public towards better living behaviour, social cohesion and pillarisation around norms and values.

3.2 The housing corporation as the ideological

re-constructor

The period following World War II is significant in the way that during the reconstruction period the basis was set for the current shape of the Netherlands. Approximately 80% of all housing was built after World War II, in an unprecedented rise in wealth (Bosma et al., 2007). The Netherlands was seen as one of the countries that was most severely damaged during the war, as infrastructure was mostly destroyed and there was a housing shortage of between 350.000 (CBS in Geldof, 2012)

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and 700.000 dwellings (Bosma et al., 2007). Also, the Dutch population started growing rapidly making the housing crisis even worse. Because of the size and severity of the problem, the Dutch government took on an active role in the process – in contrast to for instance Belgium where the Catholic government promoted home ownership and even self-build as the ideal model for ‘family life’, or West-Germany where government was very much decentralised after the war. The Dutch post-war government quickly designated the housing shortage as public enemy number one (Boelens and Visser, 2011). The model of the housing corporation being executor of government housing policy remained in place and proved to be very effective (Boelens et al., 2010). First seen as a temporary measure, it was deemed successful as the government could build up the housing construction up to 100.000 dwellings a year and in that way mitigate specific shortages. With this increased level of production and responsibility, there were increasing (bureaucratic) rules, leading to a professional turn in the corporation sector. The housing corporations turned into huge professionalised organisations, losing their supportive tasks (Boelens et al., 2010) and growing more alienated from their grassroots (Boelens and Visser, 2011). Following many conflicts of interest between government and corporations, changes in the political landscape set a trend into motion, reaching its height during the 1990s, of a government withdrawing from the housing sector and a corporation that increasingly could act as a commercial market player, while officially still being under the supervision of the government. It could be seen as a privatisation measure, based on the idea that the main housing crisis was solved, national wealth had increased significantly and instead of being supply-driven, the housing market was seen as becoming too demand-driven. Alongside these trends, control and manageability of government expenditure on housing played a significant role as well (Boelens et al., 2010).

The main ideology behind the reconstruction period in the Netherlands was based on modernist planning traditions. The ‘wijkgedachte’, or ‘district concept’, was a modernistic socially ordered concept originally conceived in the 1920s in the United States. In contrast to the garden city concept, which was part of its inspiration, the district concept was not anti-urban but meant to stimulate the positive experience of the urban environment (Geldof, 2012). The districts were situated orderly around the city’s core as modules and connected through infrastructure and green spaces. This created the possibility for rapid, district by district, urbanisation opposed to the large-scale masterplans such as Amsterdam’s earlier plans by Berlage and van Eesteren. Rotterdam’s

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reconstruction was realised following this ideology. The commission responsible for the expansion and reconstruction of Rotterdam stated that “the spiritual crisis brought about by the war and by the dangers

of mass society should be countered by providing people with a dwelling environment that is well-structured and integrated into the wider fabric of the city, while at the same time offering the possibility to identify with a community”

(Heynen, 2010, p.166 in Geldof, 2012). This ideology was supported broadly by government, corporations as well as architects and urbanists because of the combination of social goals and straightforward design ideals that fitted the reconstruction mindset and the Dutch rationality paradigm. It believed in order and top-down management of this order. The government deliberately chose a collective housing model. Supporting architects stated that not the wishes and preferences of the individual were to shape the environment of the neighbourhood or the dwelling, but the structure of society as a whole (Schuyt and Taverne, 2012). That mantra would resonate throughout the Dutch housing and spatial planning systems for decades, frustrating architects in Belgium where the unplanned individual housing unit was prevailing (Geldof, 2012).

The specific locally focused approach of the Dutch spatial planners resulted in a lacking overall vision. This remained the case until 1960 when spatial policies of different governmental departments were integrated into a new instrument; the ‘Nota Ruimtelijke Ordening’, the ‘spatial planning note’. It meant the transition from the paradigm of ‘admission planning’ to ‘developmental planning’ (Geldof, 2012) and focused on the spread of living and working and respecting the countryside and agricultural interests. Eventually it trickled down to the first spatial planning act, the ‘WRO’, institutionalising an integrated and top-down regulated planning system that would be the base for the Dutch planning doctrine that would dominate the sector until the end of the 1990s (Faludi, 2011).

3.3 A changing discourse

The modernist ideology that focused on rule and order, a sense of community and social cohesion had not taken into consideration the rapidly changing conditions in society, for instance the increasing trend of individualisation. Also, the pillarisation of Dutch society did not contribute to the sense of community. Already in the 1960s first signs of critique on the monotone living environments were exposing threats of the model supported by philosophical, human geographical

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and sociological research on the idea of the neighbourhood community (Schuyt and Taverne, 2012). Nonetheless, the model remained dominant as well as the social housing sector controlled by the large corporations. Because of the focus on collective models, the individual detached house was very rare until at least the middle of the 1980s (Bosma, 2007).

At the end of the 1980s, the political belief in the market was so strong that almost without hesitating, the housing policy was transferred from the national government to local municipalities and developers (Rodermond, 2009). It did however, set the framework for large suburban expansion areas at the edges of existing larger cities, the notorious ‘VINEX’-locations. The results were large, monotone and serially produced suburban areas, that were far from the multifunctional extensions of the existing compact urban structure that from the outset had been the aim of the policy. Rodermond (2009) states how poor public transport infrastructure, scarce and low quality public space and uniform production of housing lead to an immense wave of criticism.

By the 1990s, when many ‘VINEX’-locations were going up, socio-economic and spatial developments were resulting in citizens setting higher demands for their living environment and mobility. The reconstruction period was long gone, and people didn’t want to give in to the ‘Dutch sense of moderation’ anymore (Geldof, 2012). The critique on the uniform ‘dollhouses’ of ‘VINEX’ were a sign of this sentiment. The long standing Dutch planning tradition became a subject of debate and there was a growing sympathy for Belgian spatial phenomena like self-build. The demand for quality and with that the demand for expanded influence for the housing consumer was increasing significantly during the 1990s (RIGO, 1999). Also important was the fact that alongside the corporations, the housing market had increasingly become dominated by large private investors and developers claiming large plots of land for ‘VINEX’-locations, for instance (Boelens and Visser, 2011). Their focus on profitable, large scale developments as opposed to plot based development that is distinctive for self-build resulted in a decrease in individual self-build (Lloyd, Peel and Janssen-Jansen, 2015).

Despite years of extremely efficient reconstruction and housing construction and a strong social democratic ideology of “you can’t live in balderdash” (“in geouwehoer kan je niet wonen”) it was eventually during the 1990s that general signs of critique emerged. Even though, years earlier there

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had been more signs of opposition on the state regulated building regime (Boelens et al., 2010). In an interview between Bruno de Meulder and Ed Taverne (de Meulder, 2006), Taverne points to three moments of Dutch opposition against the regulated society; first in 1956 when Constant van Nieuwenhuys initiated New Babylon which was almost an utopian artists plea for disinhibition. It was also mainly a critique on the disappearance of self-determination. Secondly, there was the

‘invulhuis’ of the Architectural Research Society (‘SAR’). This concept focused on bare frame

dwellings that would be filled in by the eventual residents, and followed the line of Le Corbusier’s Algiers projects and Archigram’s Plug-In City (Boelens et al., 2010). This was according to Taverne one of the only substantial initiatives to achieve a break-through from the system, from the side of the architecture community. Finally there was architect Carel Weeber’s concept of ‘Het Wilde

Wonen’ (‘The Wild Living’) in the 1990s, which was basically a plea for what later would become

the self-build efforts in the Netherlands. It was a strong critique on the regulated housing sector and

‘VINEX’-locations and promoted a large-scale do-it-yourself housing sector and a higher sense of

influence for residents but also focused on low densities. Belgium was the ultimate example. Although it firstly received criticism from all directions, it slowly gained positive interest and turned into a hype (Geldof, 2012).

3.4 The turn to self-build

Against this backdrop, on November 7th 2000 the motion by Van Gent and Duivesteijn was accepted by the Dutch parliament’s ‘Tweede Kamer’ (‘House of Representatives’), which insisted the government in promoting private commissioning of housing, self-build, for all income groups in society. In the VROM-ministry’s (Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment) report ‘Mensen,

Wensen, Wonen’ (‘People, Wishes, Living’) (VROM, 2001) this motion was extended and gave an

explicit push for self-build, or ‘private commissioning’ (P.O.) as it was labelled, up until then consisting of only 15% of the housing production. The regional differences of self-build up until then where significant as well; from almost 45% in Friesland to less then 5% in the Randstad. The document called for ‘quality over quantity’; now the quantitative demand for housing was solved the shift towards policy focused on higher quality living environments could be set out: “This is not

only because of economic growth and the corresponding demand for space and quality, but the increasing individualisation and emancipation of the citizen in the housing market as well. The citizen wants a larger influence

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on where and how he or she choices to live and have a voice in his or her living environment. The traditional confection-style approach of the Dutch housing provision cannot meet that demand. The citizen wants a custom-made suite”

(VROM, 2001). This report essentially summarised the trends and critiques targeting the sector during the decade before and was the governments answer. It formulated the ambition to make sure that at least a third of the housing production in the period 2005-2010 would be realised by self-build. This was later moved down to 20%, but this goal was eventually never met. Self-build was named one of the ‘Grote Projecten’ (‘large projects’) by the national government and the position of then secretary of Housing, Remkes (VVD, liberal party), was clear: “People should be able to live

wherever they want (…) A more differentiatied supply needs to be created, including larger and more beautiful houses for whoever is willing to pay for it and for those who are willing to build their own house we need need to create the space where that is possible” (Geldof, 2012, p. 38). These developments could be considered to be quite

revolutionary in the Dutch context. One of the main motivations of the Dutch government to bring self-build back on the agenda was trying to limit the dominant practices of large scale housing developers and the influence of housing corporations (Lloyd, Peel and Janssen-Jansen, 2015). Also, unlike in other countries, for instance Belgium, Germany and Scandinavian countries where governments and the housing sector seem to be more in tune with individual housing preferences, and unlike in the past when housing corporations seemed to have a much more direct link with their residents, such interaction seems to have largely disappeared during the recent post-war reconstruction period in the Netherlands (Boelens and Visser, 2011) and self-build can be seen as a reaction to this.

3.5 The end of an era

At the end of the twentieth century the Dutch national government was systematically retreating from the housing sector and later also spatial planning. The end of the planning paradise-era (Bontje, 2003) and luxury for Dutch planner’s was coming to an end, relatively speaking. The fifth spatial planning ‘Nota’, succeeding ‘VINEX’, was painting an image of confusion over what vision for national spatial planning should be taken (Geldof, 2012). The ‘attack on the Dutch planning doctrine’ continued in 2002 when the ‘Rijksplanologische Dienst’ (‘National Planning Agency’) was dismantled (Faludi, 2011), and with it the spatial planning community that had made sure the doctrine had existed for as long as it did. At the start of the new century, the directed and regulated

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society asked for some much needed spontaneity (Geldof, 2012).

Luuk Boelens (in Geldof, 2012) joins Faludi (2011) in the argument of a systematic retrieving government, that with the new ‘Structuurvisie Infrastructuur en Ruimte’ (‘SVIR’, ‘Vision on Infrastructure and Space’) (Ministry of Infrastructure & Environment, 2011) restructured the ministries, dismantled ‘VROM’ and shifted its spatial section in a leaner form into the new ministry of ‘Infrastructure and Environment’, ‘I&M’. The ‘SVIR’ also made it possible for lower tiers of government to set up their own spatial policies, but without being compensated financially. Boelens (in Geldof, 2012) stated that it looked like the national government was simply handing over its former planning tasks to other government agencies and hoping they would pick it up without the financial incentives. He continued to say that the current trend to a more ‘actor-relational’ and self-organising type of planning needs an active, cooperating government, a facilitator. In his opinion, the Dutch government was not fulfilling that role.

The ‘SVIR’ has also contributed to a new wave of interest and recent increased focus on self-build as it ended the Dutch spatial planning traditions around the Randstad and Groene Hart (‘Green Hart’). But also the most recent global financial crisis has contributed tremendously to the renewed wave of self-build, as it has ended the reign of the powerful developers. Rodermond (2009) asks herself if the profound individualisation of self-build is indeed the solution for the needed transformation of the housing sector, as the recent most successful housing project have predominantly been located in redeveloped (inner) urban areas under the responsibility of ambitious and professional developers and corporations. She believes that the fact that self-build keeps showing up on the agenda is part of the larger scale European quest for a redefined relationship between the individual and society as a whole.

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The (New) Self-Build City

This chapter will shed a light on the existing literature on self-build. As mentioned before, the concept of self-build is quite broadly understood so this chapter will try to distil the relevant literature and research and connect it to the current trend in Amsterdam. Over two decades ago, in 1993, Duncan and Rowe argued that self-build housing was the First World’s ‘hidden housing arm’, quantitatively significant but neglected by planners and policymakers (Schulist & Harris, 2002). In their article they stated that self-build housing, up until then, had held an utterly minor place within housing research, at least in Anglo-Saxon literature, and had even been deleted from the academic memory (Duncan & Rowe, 1993, p. 1351). They found out that in the British context self-provision in housing was associated with backwardness, peripherality, or lack of market development. And mostly with informal settlements in third world economies. Their disapproval of this positioning is clear in the overall article: “Whatever the interpretation, however, the received wisdom is completely wrong, as this article shows, and the neglect of self-provided housing is quite unwarranted” (Duncan & Rowe, 1993, p. 1351). In 1999, Richard Harris mentioned that self-help, how he called it, was still viewed patronisingly, as a prominent feature of the housing sectors only in less-developed economies and, elsewhere, as a marginal or temporary occurrence, to be condemned for its inefficiencies or even simply ignored.

Up until 1993, and continuing today, self-build housing has been a major form of housing provision in nearly all developed countries of Western Europe, North America and Oceania. In many, Belgium being the most relevant for the Dutch perspective, it accounted even for the major part of housing output during the 1980s, as Duncan and Rowe (1993) point out. Although, speculative volume building has become dominant in many housing markets internationally since then, there are still countries in which self-build housing remains the rule rather than the exception, like Belgium, still, and Germany (Hamiduddin & Gallent, 2015). The UK and The Netherlands have been the major exceptions, where self-build housing was deemed unimportant and played no role

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in the housing market (Duncan & Rowe, 1993). Paris, Stockholm and Frankfurt are given as examples of large cities where self-build housing production was often a major element in the expansion of these metropolitan areas and where highly developed markets in kits and components sometimes reach the heights of post-fordist product development (Duncan & Rowe, 1993, p. 1351).

4.1 Revival

When Duncan and Rowe (1993) were writing over twenty years ago, they probably could not have guessed how the idea of self-build would regain attention. Lloyd, Peel and Janssen-Jansen (2015) state how an explicit turn to self-build in the UK happening at the moment is potentially a radical departure from traditional spatial planning and that it is an evident expression of changing ideas, attitudes and practices in housing and planning. Tummers (2011) says that self-provided housing is reappearing in many European countries and she speaks of a new “‘infrastructure’ that is emerging, a

new network that is promoting self-build and self-managed projects as ‘a third way of housing’” (Tummers, 2011).

This revival is not only visible in the cities but in rural settings as well, and both in countries who have a long-standing self-build tradition and countries that don’t. Tummers (2011), as well as Lloyd, Peel and Janssen-Jansen (2015), both confirm the statement by Duncan and Rowe (1993) that building one’s own home is not a new occurrence in developed countries. Citizens have taken initiatives to create alternatives for standardised housing at all times in history (Tummers, 2011, p. 156). So the question remains: what is so different now?

Since 2001, when the ‘Mensen, Wensen, Wonen’ report (VROM, 2001) explicitly stated the Dutch government’s ambition to create a viable self-build sector and local government and municipalities have tried to stimulate self-build through the provision of infrastructure and allocating land specifically for self-build (Lloyd, Peel & Janssen-Jansen, 2015). Despite their stimulation in the form of congresses, exemplar studies, information centres, financial incentives and research, the percentage of self-build housing production in the Netherlands was falling since the 1990s, from around 17% in 1995 to about 10% in the period 2005-2009 (Boelens et al., 2010). The decline was coinciding with the economic decline at the end of the 2000s and the global financial crisis. Especially in the highest income groups the share of self-build had been falling, traditionally the most dominant group in the sector as self-build in the Netherlands has always been thought of as

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more expensive and only reserved for the higher income class. Geldof (2012) gives the argument that the characterisation of the ‘wild living’ was to blame; in Belgium it is in the nature of the people, but in the Netherlands you need primitive wildlings to make it a success, so was the idea. Others pointed mostly to the supply side and the lack of available plots of land - especially in the urban areas -, rising land prices, as still overly regulating government body and finally a conservative culture in the Dutch building sector (Keers & Scheele Goedhart, 2008 in Boelens et al., 2010). The first decade after the set ambitions to stimulate self-build, a lot of paradoxical policy was in place. Paradoxes between goals and practice, between different levels of government and between urban and regional spatial planning (Geldof, 2012).‘Mensen, Wensen, Wonen’ (2001) explicitly encouraged self-provision in housing as an alternative type of housing production, ending a monopoly of government, real estate developers, housing corporations and the construction sector.

4.2 European context

Germany’s self-build sector has a number of features which have attracted international interest, and then mainly the experimentation and innovation in ‘sustainable’ urbanism. Particularly the emergence of an ‘intelligent trial and error’ (ITE) approach (Dotson, 2015, in Hamiduddin & Gallent, 2015) linking novel means of housing production to innovative residential design, featuring mostly the collective self-build model. One particularly striking aspect has been the physical scale of some of these projects in Germany, including the 2500-home Vauban and 4200-home Rieselfeld ‘eco-neighbourhoods’ in Freiburg im Breisgau and Tübingen’s 2700-home French Quarter. In the UK, projects of this type – that experiments with new forms of urbanism and self-build housing production – have been far more modest in scale and can be found in Edinburgh, London and Bristol (Hamiduddin & Gallent, 2015). In both Freiburg and Tübingen, the delivery of more affordable housing has been a primary goal of local government support for self-build, as graduating students from the city’s universities were struggling to find housing. Also, local community groups in Freiburg actively lobbied against developer housing, arguing instead for greater community involvement in shaping of new urban spaces (Hamiduddin & Gallent, 2015). Tummers (2015) in her recent research on German ‘Baugruppen’, the German term for collective self-build, argues that a younger generation in Germany has revived the tradition of ‘Baugruppen’, which implies a shift in the economic and cultural background of residents involved, while creating new overtures in urban development policies relying on self-development.

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Just across the border in France, they are witnessing an explosion of grassroots initiatives after re-installing the legal possibilities for cooperative property in 2003 (Tummers, 2015). Among the group of alternative housing projects that have emerged since 2000, the initiatives in Strasbourg have received the most attention (Debarre & Steinmetz, 2012). It was in Strasbourg that the French term ‘autopromotion’ (literally ‘self-build’) has taken root, inspired by the ‘Baugruppen’. Self-build projects have, since 2009, benefited from Strasbourg city council’s (Socialist–Green coalition) policy of setting aside land for innovative housing projects (Debarre & Steinmetz, 2012). Environmental innovation and civic participation have been described as main goals. “It is, however, a delicate matter

for local councillors to be seen supporting developments whose social dimension is not obvious, as all the residents involved – without exception – come from middle-class or affluent backgrounds” (Debarre & Steinmetz, 2012,

p.-).

4.3 Presumed benefits and motivations of self-build

Before continuing, it is perhaps worth looking across the presumed motivations for, and benefits of, this form of housing production. The policy shift in the Dutch context, following the ‘Mensen,

Wensen, Wonen’ report (VROM, 2001), was specifically promoting individual and collective self-build

housing in urban areas, as opposed to the traditional (upper) middle-class rural setting of Dutch self-build. Arguments in favour of the policy often included neoliberal reasoning, stressing individual self-determination, self-expression, private initiative and responsibility for the urban environment (Qu & Hasselaar, 2011). These forms of active citizenship would give people back a say in how and where they wanted to live. Argumentation also included financial grounds, as self-build would result in cheaper housing solutions and a faster production process, and in that way stimulate the stagnating Dutch housing sector (Noorman, 2006 in Qu & Hasselaar, 2011). Duncan and Rowe (1993) already stated that self-build lowers the financial costs of housing and in many cases results in higher qualities. They also mentioned that a large self-build housing sector would, in their perspective, lead to a decline in speculative behaviour and a concentration on longer-term efficiency. This cost-savings argument has more recently been confirmed by Lloyd et al. (2015) and Hamiduddin and Gallent (2015). The latter emphasising the economies of scale that collective forms deliver relative to individual self-build projects. They also put forward a study by Brown