Abandoned Amsterdam. Vacancy as burden and blessing 1965-2015

A B A N D O N E D

A M S T E R D A M

vacancy as blessing and burden 1965-2015

Master thesis History Rozemarijn Stam // 6121284 Supervisor: Moritz Föllmer Second reader: Clé Lesger July 8th, 2016

A B A N D O N E D A M S T E R D A M

vacancy as blessing and burden 1965-2015

Introduction

1.

Vacancy as a phenomenon

1.1 Vacancy in the twentieth-century city 6

1.2 Vacancy in the post-industrial city 9

1.3 Vacancy in the context of space and place 15

2.

‘Leegstand ten tijde van woningnood’

// 1965-1980

2.1 Spatial developments in Amsterdam 21

2.2 Origins of vacancy 24

2.3 Reverberations of vacancy 30

2.4 The visibility of vacancy 43

3.

The fight against vacancy

// 1980-1990

3.1 State of vacancy 47

3.2 Leegstandswet // Vacancy Bill 51

3.3 Vacancy and lettability issues 57

3.4 A new way of adapting 62

3.5 The notable no-show 63

4.

Vacancy in the age of culture

// 1990-2015

4.1 State of vacancy 65

4.2 Culture and vacancy 71

4.3 The potential of vacancy 76

Conclusion

I N T R O D U C T I O N

It is an issue plain as day. Everyone is confronted with the billboards next to highway roads and the signs on buildings in single-use business areas. Newspapers have been clear in recent years. ‘Leegstand van Nederlandse kantoren is de hoogste van Europa’. ‘Leegstand

winkels en kantoren neemt verder toe’. ‘Meer leegstand dan daklozen in Europa’.1 Headlines such as these are giving an alarming message: the problem of office vacancy is a problem and we need to deal with it. Ever since the financial crisis of 2008, there have been more and more offices standing empty, not just in Amsterdam but all across The Netherlands. On the other hand, buildings that had been vacant for years are finally being newly valued, renovated and reused. The examples are ample: big flea markets in former industrial halls, festivals in vacant offices and temporary clubs in abandoned properties that are waiting for renovation or demolition, or are simply in disuse. These places and their instigators have caused many properties that had been neglected for a long period of time to become a lively part of the city again. They restored a sense of place in these locations, putting them on city maps again. In some cases, as can be argued for the NDSM-wharf, these initiatives can be viewed as the driving force behind the regeneration of whole areas.

The issue is not new, however. Vacancy is inherent to society itself, although its degree and therefore its severity have been fluctuating over the years. In the Netherlands, the end of the Second World War marked the stock of empty houses of those who would not return – for the most part this concerned Jews. At the end of the 1950s, part of the housing stock in different parts of the city proved unable to meet the requirements of modern society and needed to be replaced. City officials conceived a modernised Amsterdam, prompted by the rise of the automobile and the leisure society, among others. This vision was to be realised through grand urban renewal schemes, meaning large-scale (infrastructural) projects, demolition of a substantial part of the older city and, in its place, new construction. Accompanied by an exodus of business from the city centre due to limitations in accessibility and parking space, this resulted in a large amount of vacant dwellings as well as office and commercial spaces in anticipation of construction. Moreover, in the course of the 1970s and 1980s, a large part of the industrial basis of the Amsterdam economy was brought to an end,

1

A. Eigenraam, ‘Leegstand van Nederlandse kantoren is de hoogste van Europa’ (2013) NRC Handelsblad, geraadpleegd op 22 januari 2015 via: http://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2013/09/12/leegstand-van-nederlandse-kantoren-is-hoogste-van-europa/; ‘Leegstand winkels en kantoren neemt verder toe’ (2014) Planbureau voor de Leefomgeving, geraadpleegd op 22 januari 2015 via: http://www.pbl.nl/nieuws/nieuwsberichten/2014/leegstand-winkels-en-kantoren-neemt-verder-toe; T.J. van Weezel, ‘Meer leegstand dan daklozen in Europa’ (2014) De Volkskrant, geraadpleegd op 22 januari 2015 via: http://www.volkskrant.nl/dossier-archief/meer-leegstand-dan-daklozen-in-europa~a3602922/.

and with that, the intensive use of a substantial part of the areas that had facilitated the industrial and harbour activities.2

Although the city centre has been rediscovered across the board over the past two decades, a new problem appeared: office vacancy. Although there had been other occurrences of this type of vacancy already in the 1960s and 1970s, the new millennium reinforced the problem, to the point of a twenty percent vacancy rate. Especially the business areas that originated at a time when single-use locations were in vogue have been experiencing massive vacancy. While in 2015 the vacancy rate still rose problematically, in 2016 – for the first time in years – a decrease of office vacancy has taken place. Different groups in society are actively searching for a way to deal with vacancy in all its forms and to give new meanings to old buildings. This, then, is a good time to look back to the history of the issue and review what types of vacancy were occurring, how they were dealt with and how these approaches changed over time. This is what we will focus on in the current study.

The amount of academic research on vacancy increased in the past few years, mainly due to the problematic nature of the current office vacancy. The research, up until now, has mostly been fragmented and focused on specific academic fields – the subject has been mostly studied from a real estate and architectural point of view. Within the historical discipline, however, the subject has been merely touched upon in studies on urban renewal in the 1960s and 1970s and of course, on the squatting movement. By contrast, I would like to emphasise the structural nature of vacancy and contribute to a more complete picture of vacancy in Amsterdam in the past fifty years. On the one hand, this will complement previous research in different academic fields, while on the other hand also laying a basis for future in-depth research on vacancy by historians.

The above leads to three types of vacancy that we will discuss here: vacancy of dwellings, vacancy of industrial sites and buildings, and vacancy of offices. Since there is no clear-cut division between these types of vacancy and the time periods during which they occurred, chronology will form the backbone of our chapters. Within this framework, three parties involved will be discussed: the municipality, neighbourhood residents, and groups of people operating beyond conventions. The latter will refer mostly to squatters, but also includes initiators of (temporary) projects in long-time vacant industrial areas, for example. Our area of interest is, as hinted earlier, Amsterdam. We will take the year of 1965 as a starting point; the year a group of young people led by student Ruud Strietman took matters in their own hands and illegally occupied an empty dwelling in the Schinkelbuurt. This is

2

P. de Rooy et al., Geschiedenis van Amsterdam. Tweestrijd om de hoofdstad 1900-2000 (Amsterdam 2007) 326, 351, 394, 460-462.

widely seen as the first act of squatting – although avant la lettre – that gained a substantial amount of media attention.

The study will commence with a general chapter on the phenomenon of vacancy, sketching the context of its development in the twentieth century and placing it within the scope of post-industrial modes of thinking about the city. This will also include a more abstract section on vacancy in the context of space and place. The actual case study of Amsterdam will be introduced in the second chapter, covering the period of 1965 through 1980, discussing the origins of vacancy and the initial reactions to its radical visibility in the city during this time. Chapter Three will continue the line of reasoning of the previous chapter, while pointing to an intensified, more aggressive dispute between the different parties involved over the period of 1980-1990. However, this period also marks the growing acceptance of alternative uses of buildings and transformations among both municipality and city residents. The final chapter will deal with the period of 1990-2015, placing two issues at the forefront: the rise of office vacancy since the new millennium, and the rise of culture within municipal policy, society, and subsequently in the handling of vacancy.

C H A P T E R O N E:

Vacancy as a phenomenon

The vacant building, as a phenomenon, is certainly not something new. With every city, town, or built community in general come empty buildings. Vacancy belongs to the city, and is in that sense part of its structure. It is inevitable, since society progresses, moving from one form of built environment to another, and a city’s residents constantly moving around within that framework. Buildings lose their original function and sometimes become obsolete. After abandonment, it can take years before a new destination for a certain property is found – either because of the characteristics of the location or by way of legal limitations and zoning plans that have to be altered first. This process can drag on for several years. This chapter will discuss the phenomenon of vacancy in a more general and abstract way, before moving on to an in-depth case study of vacancy in Amsterdam since the 1960s in Chapter Two, Three and Four. First, a general outline on vacancy in the twentieth century city of the Western world will be given, including a distinction between different types of vacancy. Subsequently, the conditions in the post-industrial and post-modern city will be considered, leading to a more abstract section about vacancy in the context of space and place.

1.1 V A C A N C Y I N T H E T W E N T I E T H – C E N T U R Y C I T Y

The city is not what it used to be. Changing societal and human behavioural patterns have caused a shift in both the physical environment itself and the way people think about it. In terms of vacancy, a general outline can be given of the evolution of the building types that experienced vacancy in cities – at least in the western world – in the second half of the twentieth century. These ‘waves’, as they are described in the section below, can be considered as a typology of vacancy, which seems to be lacking in the existing literature. Each development in terms of vacancy will be elaborated on in more detail in our case study of Amsterdam.

After a long period of people moving to urban areas in Western Europe and the United States as a result of industrialisation at the end of the nineteenth century, the growing prosperity of many regions and its inhabitants after the Second World War caused an inverse trend. As the automobile became more and more accessible, a new phenomenon was made possible: people were working in a different place from where they were living. As a result, the process of suburbanisation took off, causing a de-population of inner-city areas in many big cities from the 1950s on.

The first wave of vacancy that will be discussed here concerns residential vacancy in urban areas, which is connected to this suburbanisation on the one hand and continuing economic growth on the other. After a period of housing scarcity after the Second World War, a period of prosperity began. Many people gained the means to leave the city and move to more quiet, spacious, not to mention abundant homes in the suburbs. Additionally, a substantial part of the pre-war buildings that were left behind in cities no longer met the requirements of the time. The growing need for the renovation of these properties combined with suburbanisation resulted in a growing vacancy rate among residential buildings in many cities. In the Netherlands, as in other countries, this brought about a negative image of big city life in the 1960s and 1970s.3

The second wave of vacancy is a direct result of the relocation of many industrial facilities to low-wage countries in other parts of the world, leading to the de-industrialisation of many Western European cities – and countries for that matter – in the 1970s. This international shift rendered many industrial sites obsolete. A new destination was not found easily, which left a large part of the industrial heritage abandoned for years. This type of vacant buildings has experienced a renaissance for approximately a decade, by way of finding new purposes both permanent and temporary.

The third wave of vacancy is still a pressing issue in urban affairs around the globe: the growing number of vacant offices since the 1990s and especially the 2000s. This development does not only connect with a changing work mentality, but is also related to the financial crisis of 2008. Additionally, the specific physical forms of offices have recently come under scrutiny, as a later section will show.

Since the 1950s, vacancy in cities has been considered problematic in two cases, although this paints a somewhat black-and-white picture. On the one hand, the continuing urbanisation of the past twenty years has caused the dilapidation of many smaller cities and towns, which has proved a persistent development in many countries around the globe and continues to attract attention from the press and increasingly also from artists. In the case of photography, a recent phenomenon that has received much attention in the media is ‘ruin porn’ or the capturing of the decline of the built environment.4 Notable cases include Detroit and Berlin. Some of these cities simply seem to have lost both the battle and the war, slowly

3 _{O. Atzema, Stad in, stad uit. Residentiële suburbanisatie in Nederland in de jaren zeventig en tachtig (Utrecht}

1991) 6-7, 231.

4

See for example the well-known photo series ‘The Ruins of Detroit’ (2005-2010) by Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre and Andrew Moore’s book ‘Detroit Disassembled’ (2008-2009). For further information on the influence of photography on the perception of architecture and cities in general, see: I. de Solà-Morales Rubió, ‘Terrain vague’, in: C. Davidson, ed., Anyplace (Cambridge 1995) 118-123.

but surely experiencing a full-fledged exodus from their built environment. The vacant properties and premises concerned include all possible types and all sorts of lots, including the vacancy of homes, offices, industrial sites and shops. This issue has attracted much academic attention over the past years, largely in the context of suggesting a way to regenerate or transform these derelict places. In part, this research focuses on giving back vacant lots to nature, as far as it has not taken over already.

On the other hand, there is vacancy in otherwise bustling cities. These cities are among the few in their respective countries to stay frontrunners in the growing and increasingly international competition in offering attractive living environments for its inhabitants. The city of Amsterdam, subject of this study, can be categorised as such, at least in recent years. Vacancy in these cities tends to concentrate in specific areas, for instance residential vacancy, shop vacancy or office vacancy. Currently, as noted before, societal changes have caused traditional office space to become, for the most part, obsolete, since the requirements for working environments and the attitude towards productivity and its spatial context have shifted. This has turned office vacancy into the most common type of vacancy in these cases since around the turn of the century.

Other than the fact that vacancy can relate to specific types of buildings, a distinction can be made between different categories. Although there is no generally accepted definition of these categories, what is noted below is a combination of what can be found in Dutch and American literature and refers to economic and real estate theory. It is important to note that even though the word ‘vacancy’ usually evokes negative imagery, it would be unjust to consider all vacancy problematic. Two categories of vacancy can be viewed as inevitable elements of a healthy property market. The first, more practical, occurs when a building is first completed and the new occupant has not moved in yet. This type (known in Dutch as ‘aanvangsleegstand’) usually amounts to one or two percent of the total building stock and is, in most cases, fairly short-lived. The second category is frictional vacancy. In any property market, a certain amount of vacant buildings is acceptable, albeit for a short period of time. In fact, it is crucial in order for the market to function decently, since frictional vacancy allows certain relocation trends as buildings stay empty for a time after one party moves out and before the other moves in. The proportion normally fluctuates around four to five percent of the total building stock. Then, thirdly, there is cyclical vacancy, a category that arises as an effect of conjectural changes. In case of an economic upturn, the market will swallow vacant buildings. The final category is structural vacancy, which occurs when a building has been completed for at least three years but has been standing empty for a continuous time. The

minimal number of years that a building has to be vacant to be considered structurally vacant, varies according to several different definitions – but it usually is a period of at least six to twelve months.5 In this study, we will mainly focus on structural vacancy, but other categories will be considered here and there as well. For example, when the high-rise complexes in Amsterdam’s Bijlmermeer were completed, the ‘normal’ type one vacancy changed to a more structural-type vacancy when it became apparent that there was a severe mismatch in supply and demand of this type of housing in Amsterdam. Basically, no one wanted to live there. This will be elaborated on in Chapter Two. Frictional vacancy, however, will not be discussed here, since this is a necessary element in the property market in order to operate efficiently and therefore is not considered actual vacancy.

1.2 V A C A N C Y I N T H E P O S T – I N D U S T R I A L C I T Y

Spatial changes inherent to the deindustrialisation of the western world, taking place in the second half of the twentieth century, had far-reaching consequences the vacancy of buildings and the way it was dealt with. The following section discusses a number of tendencies that were evident in many cities in the past few decades. Again, the different developments will be connected to our case study of Amsterdam in the following chapters.

After the demise of the industrial base of many western cities’ economies, the emphasis has shifted to different areas such as (financial) services, tourism and hospitality. As an effect of the changing nature of the economy, social and spatial constellations of earlier times were restructured, says sociologist Sharon Zukin. In her 1991 book Landscapes of Power she argued that, in the decades after World War II, executives on the one hand and workers on the other generally lived and worked in areas that were either very or hardly diversified. Executives were living in mixed areas with people employed in different industries, while workers tended to congregate on the basis of the individual firms and/or industries in which they were working. As a result, when a certain company or industry was in decline and workers were laid off, there was a much larger chance for working-class communities to be devastated as well – including insufficient maintenance and eventual abandonment of buildings and premises. This was even more so the case if a certain area was wholly dominated by one industry, such as the automobile industry in Detroit or the oil industry in Houston. When that sector was declining, it was bringing down the whole town, so to say. To the contrary, cities harbouring many different industries and people living in it are buffered by

5

C. Hulsman en F. Knoop, Transformatie van kantoorgebouwen. Sturingsmiddelen om herbestemming van

kantoorgebouwen te bevorderen (Delft 1998) 1; J. Rabianski, ‘Vacancy in market analysis and valuation’, The Appraisal Journal (2002) 194-196, 199.

the diversification of their economic base and therefore more resilient to decline of a single industry.6 In the 1970s and 1980s, however, the decline of the industrial sector as a whole, rather than that of an individual industry, was fundamental to such a degree that the spatial set-up of many cities, to a large extent prompted by the rise of industry itself, became disputed. The withdrawing of industrial enterprises entailed its former shelters to fall out of function and lay vacant, in some cases for decades.

Although Zukin’s argument is based on the case of a more traditional industrial economy, part of her theory can be applied to the development of vacancy and abandonment in a later period. In the last decades of the twentieth century, so-called single-purpose strategies came in vogue, in which specific areas and locations were designated to serve a single function. In The Netherlands, as in many places, this process of the separation of purposes took off as early as the 1950s. Notable examples are the dreary business areas outside of many towns and cities across the country, but many suburban neighbourhoods can also be included in this category. (Car) accessibility of these areas was a major factor in the initial popularity of these places, as well as, at least for companies, the possibility to expand their building stock.7 Generally speaking, the degree of mixed purpose construction in a neighbourhood corresponds to the period of construction. This is shown in Figure 1, for which a mix index was developed by the Dutch Planbureau voor de Leefomgeving by dividing the total amount of jobs and housing in a certain area by the amount of jobs (multiplied by 100). Here, a mix index of 50 stands for an optimal mix of functions.8 As can be concluded from Figure 1, the pre-war period constructions are generally largely mixed, with a low point between 1950 and 1970. Since 1970, mixed-purpose areas have been slowly on the rise. The single-purpose areas of earlier times have been criticised for quite some time now, both in the media and by spatial planning practitioners. Principal criticisms are that these areas are stimulating social homogeneity, and are lacking public life, architectural distinction and identity.9

In the case of business areas, recent restructuring economic forces that caused a decline in demand of these spaces form another factor. The combination constitutes an unattractive package for new companies to establish themselves in such an area. In line with Zukin’s theory of the diversification of areas acting as a buffer for decline in separate strands of the economy, this has resulted in an astonishing twenty percent vacancy among these single-purpose business areas in The Netherlands. Additionally, a third of the total is

6 _{S. Zukin, Landscapes of power. From Detroit to Disney World (Berkeley 1991) 9-10, 15.} 7

A. Harbers and L. Pols, ‘Menging van wonen en werken’, Ruimte en Maatschappij 2 (2009) 1, 55-57.

8

Ibidem, 55-57.

9

A. Reijndorp et al., Buitenwijk. Stedelijkheid op afstand (Rotterdam 1998) en H. Lörzing et al., Krachtwijken met

Mix Index

Period of construction Figure 1 (source: PBL 2009)

neglected and is degenerating quickly, as was reported by the research centre for urban and regional development Platform31.10 According to Zukin, the shifting landscape is connected to a shift in economic power. Regarding the United States, she notes: ‘The replicas of smokestack America, their dispersal and eventual abandonment, precede another historical phase, one marked by supermarkets, shopping malls, office towers. This leads in turn to their replication, dispersal, and abandonment.’11 Subsequently, these cycles yield obsolete buildings and vacant space, time and again.

The evolving city, however, is not only subject to these continuing restructuring economic forces, but also to a changed perception of the city by politicians, architects and urban planners, as well as city residents themselves. The mid-twentieth century was characterised by a large-scale movement of modernism and urban renewal in many western cities, often at the expense of the older structures in the city. Key to this large-scale urban renewal scheme were standardised high-rise office buildings, highways, single-use areas, demolition followed by new construction and other radical spatial interventions, without much

10

E. van der Krabben, C.J. Pen and F. de Feijter, De markt voor bedrijventerreinen. Uitkomsten van onderzoek

en beleid (Den Haag 2015).

heed for history. Starting in the early 1960s, there was a growing amount of resistance against these tendencies and the destruction of the local built heritage they often entailed. As opposed to the functional vision of the city makers of that time, the critics of radical urban renewal proposed a more romantic vision of the city, characterised by small-scale development, mixed-use neighbourhoods, diversity, and preservation of the existing urban forms. These would help restore a visual sense of place that was largely diminished in areas affected by urban renewal projects, producing a more abstract, internationalised type of space.12

A major driving force behind the movement of resistance has been journalist and urban activist Jane Jacobs. Although writing in a period before large-scale deindustrialisation took place, she has been very influential in the post-industrial planning discourse. The much-cited Jacobs has long advocated diversity in urban neighbourhoods and buildings alike. She stresses the importance of not only mixed uses in a neighbourhood, but also of a mix of the type of buildings themselves; a ‘good’ neighbourhood in her point of view includes old as well as new buildings. However, she is not only talking about (monumental) built heritage when addressing old buildings – in her hallmark work The death and life of great American cities (1961) she urges the inclusion of a more generic type of buildings as well:

‘Cities need old buildings so badly it is probably impossible for vigorous streets and districts to grow without them. By old buildings I mean not museum-piece old buildings, not old buildings in an excellent and expensive state of rehabilitation – although these make fine ingredients – but also a good lot of plain, ordinary, low-value old buildings, including some run-down old buildings.’13

By stressing that large-scale construction projects built at one time are inherently inefficient for harbouring a diverse climate when it comes to culture, population and business, Jacobs emphasises preservation of the existing urban form and respect for historical structures.14 This by no means signifies a complete aversion against new construction – key here is diversity: of the type of building, of its age, and subsequently, of its use and its users. Additionally, in the spirit of Jacobs, studies by sociologists Herbert Gans and Marc Fried indicated that ‘for its residents, even a physically run-down inner-city community had redeeming social value’.15

12 _{V. Mamadouh, De stad in eigen hand. Provo’s, kabouters en krakers als stedelijke sociale beweging}

(Amsterdam 1992) 182, 218, 221; Zukin, Landscapes of power, 50-51.

13

J. Jacobs, The death and life of great American cities (New York 1961) 200.

14

Ibidem, 204.

Jacobs’ values left a clear legacy, resonating in the actions of the urban regeneration movement also known as gentrification. This has had important consequences in the context of vacancy as well. Beginning in the 1970s, gentrification can be defined as the process of conversion of economically marginal, working-class and in some cases dilapidated areas of the central city to middle-class residential and commercial use. The people involved in this process viewed the city in a new light, with newfound respect for its history. In comparison to the former (re)development schemes, gentrification ‘constituted a transition in both the mode over downtown development – from the public to the private sector, from large to small-scale projects, from new construction to rehabilitation – and the source of investment capital.’16 As for the latter, gentrification relied more on private investments than it did on public programs. Additionally, the process of deindustrialisation and a cyclical decline in property values resulted in a changing political economy. Combined, these factors made for a new mode of urban development from the 1970s onwards. Sharon Zukin marks the legitimisation of ‘loft living’ in Manhattan in the early days of gentrification as a symbolic as well as material change in the landscape. Artists and other cultural producers had set up low-rent living and working quarters in former manufacturing and assembly sites in New York. Many of these buildings were destined to be demolished to make way for new construction. But, aided by historic preservation activists, artists’ organisations successfully campaigned against demolition. These spaces, abandoned for years, were free of no longer needed, ‘obsolete’ uses such as manufacturing and were given a new purpose, instigated by both financial and bottom-up forces. In this sense, space in the centre city demanded a reorientation in a visual, sensual, as well as conceptual ways.17

This was, in a way, revolutionary. For years, demolition and new construction had been almost synonymous to improvement. This view being in vogue for a while caused the destruction of a large part of the architectural heritage in many cities, alarming many critics at the time. This is nicely illustrated by the (photo) books Lost New York (1968) by Nathan Silver, Lost Boston (1980) by Jane Holtz Kay, and Lost Chicago (1975) by David Lowe, among others. The authors all advocated the preservation of their respective subject cities’ built heritage, while a large part of these landmarks had been destroyed already at the time of publication.18 The new gentrifiers, however, rediscovered a local sense of place and the past, respecting the social value and aesthetics of older buildings and stressing small-scale development. At first, gentrification entailed mostly the renovation of old and decayed

16 Ibidem, 180, 187. 17 Ibidem, 188, 190. 18

For further reading, see: N. Silver, Lost New York (Boston 1967); D. Lowe, Lost Chicago (Chicago 1975); and J. Holtz Kay, Lost Boston (Boston 1980).

structures, while from the 1980s onwards there was a growing amount of new construction in gentrifying areas. Although there was a distinct and newly found appreciation for culture, history and its physical relics, it was also put to use in the sense that the historical references of a locality served as a framework for a new purpose.19 In this way, the past started to work more as a visual theme than it did as a driving force for the substantive new uses of vacant buildings.

Since the 1990s, another factor has put a premium on old but characteristic buildings, and local built heritage in particular. Not only was culture moved to the centre stage, proving to be an important influence on the urban economic policies of the next few decades; but in an increasingly mobile and digital world, it also became possible for many people – most prominently, the growing middle class of young professionals and high-tech experts – to choose their own location and work from anywhere on the planet. In western cities, the amount of workers in the traditional industries – bound to a specific location – has long been shrinking. The current economic climate, therefore, requires cities to create favourable locations and environments for companies, and more importantly: to provide their (prospective) residents and visitors with an attractive living environment. Providing economic benefits, investing in a rich ‘soft infrastructure’ – high quality facilities when it comes to culture and leisure – and improving the urban landscape are among the best strategies for local, rather than national, governments in maintaining their position and strengthening their identities.20 In their quest for identity, ‘sometimes new identities are forged, but more often old identities are rediscovered in the form of cultural heritage’, urban planner Joks Janssen argued in the spirit of sociologist Manuel Castells’ landmark publication The power of identity (1996).21 This gave rise to the urban development strategy of culture-based regeneration, which, in many varieties, has dominated urban policy discourse since the 1990s.22 Vacant buildings and their individual histories, especially from the industrial glory days of cities, have proved to play a vital role in these strategies, being very efficient in adding value to a city’s identity, and its cultural and leisurely offerings in particular. Sheltering both temporary and more permanent activities, these places are acting as hubs of culture and diversity. At the same time, the growing emphasis on culture combined with the increased mobility and

19 _{Zukin, Landscapes of power, 192-193.}

20 _{E. Beriatos and A. Gospodini, ‘’Glocalising’ urban landscapes. Athens and the 2004 Olympics’, Cities 21 (2004)}

3, 187-189; A. Gospodini, ‘Portraying, classifying and understanding the emerging landscapes in the post-industrial city’, Cities 23 (2006) 5, 312; A.P. Russo and J. van der Borg, ‘An urban policy framework for culture-oriented economic development. Lessons from The Netherlands’, Urban Geography 31 (2010) 5, 675; E. Hitters and G. Richards, ‘The creation and management of cultural clusters’, Creativity and Innovation Management 11 (2002) 4, 236.

21

J. Janssen et al., ‘Heritage planning and spatial development in The Netherlands. Changing policies and perspectives,’ International Journal of Heritage Studies 20 (2014) 1, 6, 15. For further reading, see: M. Castells,

The power of identity (Oxford 1996).

(hyper) digitalisation noted before have caused a shift in the modes of working and higher requirements with regard to the working environment and office space in particular. As mentioned before, demand for traditional office space – including offices located in single-purpose business areas – has been in decline, resulting in a growing number of vacant offices.

In general it is apparent that demand for specific spaces and buildings varies according to several major societal changes through time. These changes include the aforementioned, but also secularisation, internationalisation, a growing service economy and a tendency towards privatisation. Accordingly, this has its effects on the vacancy of buildings. ‘After the harbour basins, factories and farms from the twentieth century, we will see new groups of buildings and ensembles losing their economic and functional basis’, either to lay empty or readily available for redevelopment.23 The financial crisis of 2008, then, has had severe consequences for spatial planning and property development worldwide.24 Not only did new construction cease to a high degree, a fairly large amount of formerly occupied properties – among which not only offices, but also homes and other spaces – were abandoned by their users due to financial difficulties. As such, vacancy can be considered a very direct and crude confrontation with changes in society. At the same time, however, urbanisation has proved to be a steady force, bringing about a growing densification of many cities and forcing us to take a better look at those buildings that are there but are not being used properly, if at all. This places vacancy high on the agenda of current city makers. However, what constitutes a ‘proper use’ can be disputed – this and the general tendencies outlined above will be discussed more deeply in our case study.

1.3 V A C A N C Y I N T H E C O N T E X T O F S P A C E A N D P L A C E

Since the turn of the century, there has been a growing interest in the more abstract concepts of space and place, among both empirical researchers and philosophers. Place is usually defined as a physical, tangible location, while space mostly refers to a more abstract meaning of the environment. Both can be considered as social constructions that, inversely, influence the social world of its users. Prompted by, among others, philosopher Michel Foucault and geographer Doreen Massey, it is a widely accepted view that space and place, steeped in symbolic value, find their meaning within a wider societal and cultural context and

23

Janssen et al., ‘Heritage planning and spatial development’, 16.

discourse.25 This, however, works both ways, according to human geographer David Harvey: ‘Space – the material form that processes assume ‘on the ground’ as buildings, infrastructure, consumption sites and so on – is both cause and effect in/of social life’.26 For instance, the built environment can act as a geographical constraint or possibility, as a ground of potential conflict or cohesion, or as a commodity.27 In this sense, vacancy, too, is a pressing issue influencing and influenced by a city’s social life. Especially when a city has large amounts of vacant buildings, of whatever kind, this can be of specific interest when considering the urban fabric. Rather than just ‘being there’ with no designated use, a vacant building can be part of the experience of a street or even a neighbourhood – precisely by doing or being exactly nothing.

In the second category of cities mentioned before, namely crowded, bustling cities that experience high vacancy rates mostly among specific types of buildings, vacancy can be regarded in relation to private property, or as philosopher and sociologist Henri Lefebvre coined it: to a privatised notion of space.28 Many Marxist thinkers such as Harvey and Lefebvre, who was one of the most influential theoreticians of space and place, consider the spatial stratification of the Western world to be moulded along capitalist lines – and in turn creating certain modes of thinking and awareness.29 They viewed the advance of capitalism in many parts of the world as a cause of the loss of diversity and local characteristics and in turn the standardisation and privatisation of space, so to speak, in these capitalist parts of the world.30 One can think of routinely built prefab houses, similar suburban neighbourhoods or generic shopping malls that are home to the same stores wherever you go, in the pursuit of saving both time and money.

Currently, however, a different approach is at work: new projects are increasingly being placed in the context of their environment, referring to local attributes and local history – as opposed to the previous isolated designs.31 As was already mentioned, cities are almost forced to do so, since they are reliant on their unique – and hence local – characteristics in their effort to stand out in the interurban competition going on at the moment. This means that a reverse development from the Marxist blueprint is taking place: local peculiarities are

25

R. Kingston, ‘Mind over Matter? History and the spatial turn’, Cultural and Social History 7 (2010) 1, 112.

26 _{P. Hubbard and R. Kitchin, ed., Key thinkers on space and place (London 2011)}

237.

27

Zukin, Landscapes of power, 42.

28

Kingston, ‘Mind over Matter?’, 114; Hubbard and Kitchin, Key thinkers, 282.

29

Kingston, ‘Mind over Matter?’, 111-121; T.F. Gieryn, ‘A space for place in sociology’, Annual Review of

Sociology 26 (2000), 463-496; J. Connolly, ‘Bringing the city back in: space and place in the urban history of the

gilded age and progressive era’, The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 1 (2002) 3, 258-278; Kingston, ‘Mind over Matter?’, 111-121; Hubbard and Kitchin, Key thinkers; H. Lefebvre, The production of space (Oxford 1991).

30

Gieryn, ‘A space for place’, 471.

visibly returning to many cities, in spite or maybe even because of the capitalist nature of our society. The built structures from a more standardised time, by contrast, can be considered as more and more undesirable objects, which brings us back to the issue of vacancy. These generally unremarkable buildings, be it offices, houses or retail space, are among the first to become vacant when there is a downturn in demand for a certain type of space.

In a capitalist society, then, a building or a lot – whether vacant or not – always belongs to someone, as one of the system’s trademarks is private property. A large part of this property is in the hands of a ruling class. In this respect, Sharon Zukin viewed the built environment with regard to the concept of landscape as representing not only social class, gender, and race relations, but also as conjuring up ‘the entire panorama that we see: both the landscape of the powerful – cathedrals, factories, and skyscrapers – and the subordinate, resistant, or expressive vernacular of the powerless – village chapels, shantytowns, and tenements.‘32 This notion of class in relation to the built environment relates to Lefebvre’s much-cited three types of space, which also stresses the socially constructed character of space. In his theory, Lefebvre argues that conceived space, as the first category, is the domain of professional planners and politicians, concerning the urban plan, layout of the city, and the eventual creation of the city. Second, there is the perceived space that concerns the daily life and experience of the ‘little man’, in which a multiplicity of symbols are key.33 The ruling class is in some, and sometimes in many, cases used to doing what they see fit without consulting the middle and working classes – a practice in need of change according to many authors. Or as psychologist Robert Sommer, author of the renowned publication Personal space. The behavioural basis for design (1969), put it with regard to an architectural trend of his time: ‘Formalist buildings were being built without due concern for those who operated inside them. Architects and planners [should] embrace functionalism based on user behaviour as their guiding principle’.34 Later in this study, we will see this issue at work in the case of the Bijlmermeer.

Of a different sort is the third type of space, called lived space or third space. This is mostly an imaginary form of space, existing in the minds of people, which is fed by and thrives through the arts, literature and human imagination in general. This avant-garde lived space has the power to rise up above the first two categories of space, according to Lefebvre, in order to change the balance between them.35 Lived space should also be able to

32 _{Zukin, Landscapes of power, 16.} 33

Connolly, ‘Bringing the city back, 266-267; Hubbard and Kitchin, Key thinkers, 281.

34

Kingston, ‘Mind over Matter?’, 117. For further information, see R. Sommer, Personal space. The behavioral

basis for design (New Jersey 1969).

give people a greater sense of self-satisfaction, hence serving both the system and the individual:

‘In order to become more self-fulfilling, an ‘inhabitant’ must develop his or her own spatial imagination, his or her own ‘lived space’, to resist not only the impositions of cartographers, urban planners and property developers, but also ideas of space that are taken for granted, inherited as ‘common sense’ or ‘daily routine’.36

In this context Lefebvre names, among others, the artworks of the surrealists – most prominently René Magritte – but also more clandestine spatial practices that move beyond generally accepted norms, such as the development of slums and squatting.37

The above is particularly interesting when considering vacancy. Vacant buildings, although owned by the proprietors of conceived space, are a prime example of lived/third space coming to flourish – be it by squatting, by creating artists’ studios or by other types of Lefebvre’s clandestine spatial practices. In a crowded city this seems to be an inevitable paradox: when a privately owned building becomes vacant, most owners will try and find a new tenant for the original purpose of the building, even if it takes years and years before they do – if they do. This is happening in the current vacant office crisis: it seems unacceptable to most owners to comply with the fact that their building will never again be used as an office, and as such, will have to be transformed to serve a new purpose. Exemptions are the flourishing high-profile office areas and financial districts exemplified by London’s City and Amsterdam’s Zuidas. Subsequently, many buildings – not only offices – lay vacant for a long time, which encourages the initiators of many types of lived space to lay claim on them. In the 1970s and 1980s, this was mostly done illegally in the form of squatting, but in more recent years both owners and city governments have become more inviting in providing these parties with long-term vacant space to use on a legal basis. This will be researched in greater depth in the case study of Amsterdam.

In the context of conceived versus lived space, and of the transition of uses of buildings, the space becomes reinterpretable. This is key when it comes to vacancy. One must not hold on to the original function of a building, but be receptive to new purposes and interpretations. ‘So wie es ist, bleibt es nicht,’ German poet Bertolt Brecht famously wrote. The Catalan historian and architect Ignasi de Solà-Morales Rubió coined the term terrain

36

Kingston, ‘Mind over Matter’, 114. For further information, see: Lefebvre, The production of space. For further information on the notion of third space, see: E. Soja, Thirdspace. Journeys to Los Angeles and other

real-and-imagined places (Oxford 1996).

vague, when addressing the issue of vacant space. Although it is difficult to translate the term directly into English, the separate words terrain and vague can be traced back to their Latin and Germanic origins. Terrain can be considered as either an urban lot or building, while the word vague refers to notions of ‘vacant’ and ‘vacuum’, but also ‘free’, ‘available’ and ‘unengaged’. What fascinates De Solà-Morales Rubió when it comes to vacant space, is the relation between ‘the absence of use [and] activity, and the sense of freedom, of expectancy. [This] is fundamental to understanding the evocative potential of the city’s terrains vagues. Void, absence, yet also promise, the space of the possible.’38 Additionally, the French vague is also connected to the English ‘vague’, that is: referring to something indeterminate en uncertain, which also points in the direction of liberty and mobility.39 De Solà-Morales Rubió speaks of vacant space as ‘internal of the city yet external to its everyday use’.40 These empty buildings and vacant lots are places where the present does not seem to have conquered the past, yet the past has largely vanished as well. A few relics remain, be it objects of use or simply (part of) the building structure or foundations, about which nobody seems to care. ‘From the economic point of view, industrial areas, railway stations, ports, unsafe residential neighbourhoods, and contaminated places are where the city is no longer’.41

As noted before, certain categories of vacancy are not always problematic, such as the frictional kind or the kind that arises when a building is just completed. But what we can learn from De Solà-Morales Rubió’s writings is that even in the case of structural vacancy of a certain lot or building there is a positive side to the situation. Of course, from an economic point of view, some of these places are worthless – but vacancy can open a window of opportunity and innovation, and not least: it is subject to change. People can, in theory, create their own place in this vacant space, both mentally and physically. Because of this, vacant space can offer inspiration, either because of its history or because of the way the space is organised, or a combination of the two. However, the lack of interest from an economic perspective that De Solà-Morales Rubió elaborates on does not seem to apply to the current crisis of office space. The high rate of office vacancy that we see today is in part also a result of the economic value of the buildings. Since there is a considerable amount of money invested in these buildings, their owners are reluctant to offer their available square meters to others at a low rate or for free, even if that means that a building stays empty for a long time. Besides being convinced that their real estate is worth more than offered, even in

38

Solà-Morales Rubió, ‘Terrain vague’, 120.

39

Ibidem, 119-120.

40

Ibidem, 120.

a difficult economic climate, owners are hopeful that if only they wait a little longer, their property will be bought or leased anyway.

The interesting thing here is that, seen from an economic, capitalist point of view, it is in fact inevitable for buildings to lose their function. Like everything in life, the purpose for which a building is built is subject to change. The concept of ‘creative destruction’, developed by Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter, is inherent to a capitalist economy, since capitalism is ‘by nature a form of economic change and not only never is but never can be stationary’.42 It is the process of revolutionising the economic process from within, which means that new models are created while old ones are destroyed. In the context of the built environment, this means that some structures become obsolete – at least with regard to what the building was originally used for. When thinking of vacancy, it is likely that there was no need for, or no interest in, redeveloping the space for another purpose. The period of time that a building has been standing empty, whether there is a new use in the offing or not, can be connected to the concept of liminality. The term was coined by anthropologist Victor Turner, and used to depict ‘rites of passage’ and the passing of a certain social group from one category or status to another. And ‘as rites, they carry their own cultural scripts, often reversing people’s roles in a temporary subversion of social values’.43 According to Sharon Zukin this extends to a reorientation of cultural patrons, producers, and consumers.44 This notion can also be applied in the context of vacant space, opening it up for imagination and possibility, corresponding with the views of Lefebvre and De Solà-Morales Rubió.

Vacant space could be considered external to the city, since there is in theory little activity and productivity – but the key here is that this is all a matter of perception. To some, and in the past to many, vacant space is outside of what is ‘normal’ in our society – and to some extent, they may find the people that are attracted to it abnormal as well. Activities taking place there in a clandestine manner, which do not yield regular economic gains, might not even be considered as a productive use of the space. But when perceptions can be altered, when property owners on the one hand and the potential users of these vacant spaces on the other can come closer, the empty premises might be considered as part of the city again. In a crowded city like Amsterdam, it can even be argued that vacant space is of great value, allowing people to take a step back and be newly inspired.

42

J. Schumpeter, Capitalism, socialism and democracy (New York 1942) 82.

43

Zukin, Landscapes of power, 28.

C H A P T E R T W O:

‘Leegstand ten tijde van woningnood’

// 1965-1980

The previous chapter has sketched developments regarding the spatial orientation of cities in a post-industrial era, as well as provided a more abstract discussion of the meaning of vacant space. To get a sense of how these forces work in practice, we will take a closer look at one particular case. Amsterdam will be the subject of our study, taking 1965 as a starting point; the year the first house in Amsterdam was officially and openly squatted.45 Since then, Amsterdam has experienced many forms of vacancy and many ways of dealing with it. In this first chapter of the case study the period 1965-1980 will be discussed, in which the first wave of vacancy as explained in Chapter One was crucial: vacant homes. After an outline of more general developments in Amsterdam regarding spatial planning in this period, the effects of these on vacancy will be discussed and subsequently the reactions this vacancy evoked among both the city government and residents. We will use Lefebvre’s three types of space – conceived space, perceived space, lived space – as a guiding principle. Conceived space, in this sense, is the domain of local officials and urban planners, those who are responsible for the physical creation of the city – often thinking big and aiming to make grand gestures. Perceived space will be addressed as the way in which city residents reacted to (changes in) their built environment. Lived space in this context entails, as mentioned by Lefebvre himself, for the most part the phenomenon of squatting. This chapter will end with a discussion of what caused the righteous anger regarding vacancy among city residents.

2.1 S P A T I A L D E V E L O P M E N T S

The changes that occurred in post-war society required a new way of looking at the city; a vision for the Amsterdam of the future. In the ‘Tweede Nota over de Ruimtelijke Ordening in Nederland’ the Ministry of Public Housing and Spatial Planning warned of steep population growth until 2000, expecting more than twenty million people to inhabit the Netherlands at that point. In that context, there was some concern about the Randstad region. Potentially unable to cope with the advent of so many people, the result could be the development of slums and ghettos.46 In this light, vacancy was the last thing on the minds of municipal governments. In order to physically prepare the city for the expected future developments,

45

E. Duivenvoorden, Een voet tussen de deur. Geschiedenis van de kraakbeweging 1964-1999 (Amsterdam 2000).

the emphasis was on neighbourhood renewal on the one hand and a sound urban infrastructure on the other. Obviously, the outlook of these plans was pre-eminently an example of conceived space, conceptualised by local officials and urban planners. In a way, some of the plans dating from this time were aimed not only at building the Amsterdam of the future, but also a somewhat futuristic Amsterdam. This culminated in the construction of high-rise apartment blocks in the Bijlmermeer on the city’s periphery.

Firstly, the state of many nineteenth- and even twentieth-century neighbourhoods was considered below standard. Urban planner Hugo Priemus identified three waves of urban decay in the Netherlands. The first occurred in the late nineteenth century, when the explosive growth of cities resulted in a sizable expansion of the housing stock. Many developments, however, were rapidly built mostly by private companies and were generally of inferior quality. Coupled with poor maintenance, this soon resulted in large-scale deterioration. This led to the first government intervention in regard to public housing, symbolised by the 1901 Woningwet. The second wave of urban decay occurred in our period of interest, i.e. the 1960s. With urban renewal high on the agenda, Amsterdam’s local officials had their focus more on new construction than on the fixing of the existing housing stock. The future was what counted, not the past.47 This was mostly prompted by the functional vision for the city that was already mentioned in Chapter One, directed mainly towards prestigious projects on a large scale. Additionally, poor maintenance, poor building foundations and demolition during the Second World War caused the deterioration of the inner city, and the nineteenth- and even part of the twentieth-century neighbourhoods. In this context, a 1979 newspaper article shows a striking accordance with the Marxist space and place theory, reporting about the nineteenth-century areas as a ‘schandalige erfenis van het primitieve kapitalisme’.48 Consequently, when the existing urban structure did not fit the plans envisioned, city officials could be quite rigorous and call for demolition. At first, incidental redevelopments were carried out, but in the early seventies it was clear that improvement was needed on a larger scale.49

In 1969 this led to the ‘Eerste Nota Stadsvernieuwing’, concentrating on rehabilitation (new construction and improvements in the inner city, but mostly sustaining the existing infrastructure) and reconstruction (large-scale demolition and new construction in the nineteenth-century neighbourhoods). Amsterdam was projected as a run-down city, in which the existing high building density, poor accessibility and an inefficient layout of city districts

47 _{H. Priemus, ‘Housing and urban management in The Netherlands’, The Netherlands Journal of Housing and}

Environmental Research 3 (1988) 1, 62.

48

Stadsarchief Amsterdam (SAA), arch. nr. 30486: Collectie Stadsarchief Amsterdam: persdocumentatie op onderwerp, inv. nr. 237: article in Haagse Post (July 14, 1979).

prompted demolition. ‘Lange jaren van gebrekkig onderhoud dreigen [ook stadsdelen die tussen 1920 en 1940 zijn gebouwd] tot de saneringsgetto’s van de toekomst te maken. Dit kan de stadsbestuurders van de toekomst voor schier onoverkomelijke problemen stellen’, a 1976 newspaper article stated.50 It was made clear that something had to happen – a grand revision of Amsterdam was required.

The second cornerstone of the urban renewal policies was directed towards an update of the urban infrastructure. On the one hand, the advance of the automobile in every socioeconomic class resulted in the view that the city had to be adapted and made accessible for it. This was connected to the fact that many companies – especially in the manufacturing business – left the city after World War II. The most important motives for this were a lack of space and difficulties regarding accessibility and parking facilities. In order to stimulate the business sector, extensive plans were made to make the city car-friendly – meaning spacious roads and a lot of parking space.51 Additionally, efforts were undertaken to make Schiphol airport more accessible and work commenced to create a subway line in the capital. The so-called Oostlijn had been in the works for decades, but only in 1968 the municipality approved the envisioned Plan Stadsspoor and the project could finally get started.

In addition to the large-scale renewal of neighbourhoods in the existing urban structure, there was a master plan for a newly constructed neighbourhood designed for the future: the Le Corbusier-inspired high-rise apartment blocks in the Bijlmermeer that were constructed in the late sixties and early seventies. This tabula rasa project started out as an ambitious way of creating the qualitatively outstanding ‘homes of the future’, reinterpreting the ideology of the garden city within a modern framework. This meant a radical turn away from the traditional city, without giving much heed to the street level activity that was stressed by Jane Jacobs. The apartment block itself, however, would be housing miscellaneous collective facilities and activities such as children’s day care and homework guidance. A home in one of the high-rise apartment blocks with beautiful views, surrounded by lush greenery, was what the modern city dweller was looking for – or so the city officials thought, in spite of the controversial nature of the Bijlmermeer plans from the very beginning given its modernist, clean slate approach.

50

SAA, arch. nr. 30486: Collectie Stadsarchief Amsterdam, inv. nr. 237: article Handelsblad (July 5, 1976).

51

Liagre Böhl, Amsterdam op de helling, 9; Rooy, Geschiedenis van Amsterdam. Tweestrijd om de hoofdstad, 462; M. Wagenaar, ‘Het paspoort van Amsterdam’, Rooilijn 39 (2006) 6, 273.

2.2 O R I G I N S O F V A C A N C Y

Before full-fledged urban renewal took off, cases of vacancy in Amsterdam mostly had to do with dilapidation of buildings.52 But along the lines brought out above, the developments prompted by the renewal efforts themselves also had a large impact on vacancy in the city. First of all, preparations for demolition and renewal were set in motion. The grand scale upon which many projects were carried out turned Amsterdam into one big construction site. Before new buildings could replace the old ones, they had to be cleared. Similarly, the method of constructing the new subway line mentioned above required a clean slate on the ground level: the structural elements were constructed above ground, after which they were descended to subway level. In effect, this meant that all buildings at the surface had to be cleared and demolished – even if they were in perfect state. Like in many large building projects, however, there was a severe discrepancy between the several stages of the process; the execution of the plans was soon behind schedule. In many cases, buildings were standing empty for long time spans after their clearing, which forced up the number of vacant buildings in the city – most notably dwellings. It was no exception for blocks to stay vacant for three years before renovation or demolition was carried out – in the neighbourhood around the Nieuwmarkt even a vacancy period of four or five years was quite common. In 1978, some 6800 municipal homes were standing empty awaiting renovation. This high number was a result of the radical approach of the city government in the early seventies in actively detecting dilapidated buildings and blocks across the city, instead of awaiting reports of landlords or residents about buildings in need of renovation or renewal. That same year, however, there was still an annual number of 1200 houses that were cleared for these reasons. An additional factor in the duration of vacancy after clearing was the high number of objections by residents when it came to the demolition of their homes. These resulted in delays, followed by the boarding up of houses and then, decay.53

The problem was also related to miscommunications and several municipal departments working in a vacuum. Even employees of the different departments confirmed that there was a severe lack of clarity towards residents. Sometimes officials of several municipal departments paid visits to the same houses, asking their residents for the same information multiple times. And when plans for demolition in certain streets or blocks were announced, the department of Publieke Werken (Public Works) gave notice to its tenants by

52 _{H. de Liagre Böhl, Amsterdam op de helling. De strijd om stadsvernieuwing (Amsterdam 2010) 178.}

53 _{Rooy, Geschiedenis van Amsterdam. Tweestrijd om de hoofdstad, 461; Liagre Böhl, Amsterdam op de helling,}

300; Duivenvoorden, Een voet tussen de deur; Projectmanagementbureau Gemeente Amsterdam, Het gezicht

van Amsterdam. Ruimtelijke ontwikkelingen sinds de Tweede Wereldoorlog. Interviews bij de gelijknamige documentaire (Amsterdam 2000) 71; SAA, arch. nr. 30486: Collectie Stadsarchief Amsterdam, inv. nr. 238: article Haagse Post (January 21, 1978), article Amsterdams Stadsblad (January 25, 1978).

the first of the next month, while the department of Herhuisvesting (Rehousing) assumed a year or so before actual demolition would take place. There was mutual frustration, since one department could not proceed with its work before another department had finished its own. ‘Coördinatie is zoek bij gemeentelijke ‘diensten’,’ De Volkskrant headed at the start of 1977.54 The plans envisioned were simply on too grand a scale, which resulted in a somewhat paradoxical situation: in order to improve and renew the neighbourhood, dwellings were cleared, made uninhabitable and boarded up – but in the process this literally ruined the lives of those left behind in these liminal spaces. In the meantime, vacancy was increasing in both number and duration.

Secondly, in addition to poor quality of the available housing, the urban renewal areas were, according to the municipality, too monotonous regarding the type of apartments. Supposedly there was a need for less small dwellings – which many neighbourhoods mostly consisted of at that point – and more large ones with four rooms or more.55 City residents, however, did not have a say in the municipal plans. Local officials expected their plans to be welcomed with great enthusiasm, but in fact they had no idea what people living in the neighbourhoods that were subject of their conceptions of space wanted. Newspaper articles from the late seventies show that there was a severe mismatch between supply and demand, which resulted in vacancy among the new dwellings in the Nieuwmarkt and Kinker neighbourhoods in particular; there were simply not enough big families to live there.56

‘Uit hoofde van de ‘evenwichtige samenstelling’ van de bevolking van Amsterdam, alsmede de vergroting van het ‘economisch draagvlak’ van de stad, moesten er rond de Nieuwmarkt gezinnen met kinderen komen te wonen, die er nu onvoldoende blijken te zijn. Voorbeeld van technocratische planning’57

The issue of discrepancy between supply and demand of certain types of housing would return in the 1980s in a more problematic manner, which we will elaborate on in Chapter Three.

A third factor, in many cases inspired by the urban renewal efforts, was speculation. In the existing literature, this factor is somewhat overshadowed by the municipal renewal

54

SAA, arch. nr. 30486: Collectie Stadsarchief Amsterdam, inv. nr. 238: article De Volkskrant (June 5, 1976), article De Volkskrant (January 10, 1977); article Nieuws van de Dag (February 19, 1977); article Viva (June 27, 1978).

55 _{Liagre Böhl, Amsterdam op de helling, 83-84, 88; SAA, arch. nr. 30486: Collectie Stadsarchief Amsterdam, inv.}

nr. 237: article Haagse Post (July 14, 1979).

56

Liagre Böhl, Amsterdam op de helling, 88, 91, 227; SAA, arch. nr. 30486: Collectie Stadsarchief Amsterdam, inv. nr. 237.