The concept of rhythmanalysis, as coined by Henri Lefebvre in a book that was published after his death in 1992, is intriguing to me and pops up in my head every now and then. Lefebvre writes: 

“In order to understand the city, and its ceaseless contrapuntal rhythms, one must situate oneself simultaneously inside and outside of it.”

In practice, this is what rhythmanalysis is according to Lefebvre (analyzing urban space from his Parisian balcony):

“Towards the right, below, a traffic light. On red, cars at a standstill, the pedestrians cross, feeble murmurings, footsteps, confused voices. One does not chatter while crossing a dangerous junction under the threat of wild cats and elephants ready to charge forward, taxis, buses, lorries, various cars. Hence the relative silence in this crowd. A kind of soft murmuring, sometimes a cry, a call.
Therefore people produce completely different noises when the cars stop: feet and words. From right to left and back again. And on the pavement along the perpendicular street. At the green lights, steps and words stop. A second of silence and then it’s the rush, the starting up of tens of cars, the rhythms of the old bangers speeding up as quickly as possible. At some risk: passersby to the left, buses cutting across, other vehiccles. Whereby a slowing down and restart (state one: starting up - stage two: slowing down for the turn - stage three: brutal restart, foot down, top speed, excluding traffic jams…). The harmony between what one sees and what one hears (from the window) is remarkable.”

The rhythmanalysis is what came to mind when I watched “Berlin. Die Sinfonie der Grosstadt” again. This classic film, that came out in 1927, is a case of rhythmanalysis avant la lettre in my opinion. As a viewer, you are both part of the city but also a passive observer of it, absorbing the urban dynamics that essentially make up the city. Take a look at the clip below to understand what I mean.

On February 21, the film will be screened at TrouwAmsterdam. It will be accompanied by live music and street sounds from 1920s Berlin.
 

The long Lefebvre quote is from the great book Restless Cities (2010) edited by Matthew Beaumont and Gregory Dart.

There’s always more than you see at first sight when you look at a city. There’s always the hidden, the invisible, the stuffed away, and the things that take more effort to get to know.


The possible Between-spaces in Amsterdam’s Unesco-area (by Non-Fiction).

That’s what a group of Amsterdam-based curators and designers thought as well. In the project Between-space (“Tussen-ruimte”), Non-Fiction, Office Jarrik Ouborg, TAAK and Castrum Peregrini Foundation take the less-obvious as their starting point.

For the project, they have identified 30 to 40 un(der)used and mostly closed off spaces within the historic canal ring area, which has been appointed Unesco World Heritage in 2010. 


The alleys between canal houses, potential Between-spaces (by Non-Fiction).

I think the concept is brilliant. It plays with the tension surrounding the fact that a heavily used urban area has been classified as World Heritage. Some people argue it will be impossible to do anything with it other than preservation. Others are afraid that the area will turn into an open-air museum or a ‘Disneyfied’ urban landscape.


Artist’s impression of the canal area turned into a theme park (by Gijs Kast).

“Between-space” however, argues the contrary. It shows that there is still space for interventions, additions, design experiments and artistic interpretations. They want to create ‘micro public spaces’ in the overlooked, invisible and underused pockets of the canal area.

Possible functions for the Between-spaces (by Office Jarrik Ouborg).

A wide range of activities and functions can be thought of for these Between-spaces. The initiators mention that it can go from small space for silent contemplation (which I think would be a wonderful thing, right in the middle of the city) and small stages for performances to sports activities and exhibition spaces. The project is currently being developed.

In the summer, there will be an exhibition at Castrum Peregrini. Simultaneously, interventions will take place, adding small functions to the inner city preservation area. Stay tuned.

There’s a full explanation of the project and the underlying inspirations and motivations on Non-Fiction’s website.

Amsterdam, today.

All cities have a unique story to tell about their spatial history. So does Amsterdam. The layout of the inner city canal ring was even inscribed on the World Heritage List by Unesco in 2010. Lately, I have been doing some research into the Dutch world heritage sites - most of the sites have to do with land design, water engineering and planning - which inspired me to look at Amsterdam’s old and new urban patterns with fresh eyes. Here is a little visual history of the city’s planning.

Amsterdam, 1538 (looking from north to south).

The pre-1600 inner city today.

Above is one of the oldest known painted or mapped cityscapes of Amsterdam, by Cornelisz Antonisz from 1538. The map is basically upside down, with Amsterdam (that evolved from a late 12^th century fishing settlement) looked at from the North. The dam in the centre is now Dam Square. The city is walled (on the left side at Zeedijk and on the right at Singel). The pattern of the old city is still intact, with some of the waterways now paved.

The first big extension plan was formed in the first decade of the 17^th century. Because the city was literally full after the Golden Age started, it was decided to build a canal ring around the old city and move the defence wall outward (over 1km eastwards and almost 1km to the west). The canal ring was built in two phases, one starting in 1610 and one starting in 1660.

A 1657 map showing the large canal ring extension (south side up).

The canal ring today (take a look at how green it actually is).

The first extension of the canal ring (from Brouwersgracht in the west to Leidsegracht) was a huge relief to the city, releasing the pressure on its land. It was filled up quickly with some of the richest Europeans migrating to one of the classy canals. The second extension (completing the concentric half to the east) was finished by the time the city’s immense prosperity had already started to decrease. It took almost two centuries (until around 1900) before all plots laid out were built on. De Jordaan was also part of the first canal ring extension. It was a planned segregation, with the three canals built for the rich (especially Heren- and Keizersgracht), and the Jordaan area built for the poorer workers and industries.

De Jordaan today (it is located on the very right of the 1658 map above).

The city’s economy only really started growing again in the second half of the 19^th century. That is when plans for expansion were made again. The first residential bit outside of the canal 17^th century extension was built in 1870 (as part of an 1866 plan than never was executed except for this part, because it turned out to be too expensive). This was the northern part of the current De Pijp area. The city expanded concentrically in these years after, according to the 1876 Plan-Kalff.

First 19th century expansion of De Pijp

The 1876 Plan-Kalff

Staatsliedenbuurt, part of the 1876 Plan-Kalff.

The next large expansions were undertaken between 1920 and 1940, consisting of Plan Zuid (South), designed by Berlage, and Plan West. These developments included a lot of Amsterdam School architecture.


Plan Zuid.

Plan Zuid today.

Plan West with the respective architects of the building blocks.

Plan West today.

After WWII, several big urban plans have been realized. Much of it, realized between 1951 and 1966 was the execution of the General Extension Plan of 1935. Most of these developments are based on early modernist ideals. 

General Extension Plan.

The functionalist Slotermeer, a result of the General Extension Plan.

The Bijlmermeer was built just before 1970 and is considered one of the most radical post-war plans in The Netherlands. Part of it has already been demolished because it turned out to be not as utopian as planned.

Bijlmermeer plan.

Bijlmermeer today.

Lately, Amsterdam turned to the water, with the KNSM-Island (1990s), Java-Island and IJburg (both 2000s) being the largest expansions. Currently, the second part of IJburg is being built. In the near future, Amsterdam wants to house the increasing population mostly by densifying the existing city.

Java- and KNSM-Islands.

IJburg (a few years ago, GMaps seems to be behind some five years).

Amsterdam, 2040? 

Movies that play with time-space dimensions are always amazing, and make you think about the bigger structures and ideas that shape our world, and our cities. One such movie is Cloud Atlas, with six intertwined worlds across centuries of time (from the 18^th to the 22^nd century). As a systems thinker, I love the themes of societal structure, oppression, revolution and an individual’s impact on the larger constellation of things that come back throughout the film. Despite of the diverse criticisms it received, and maybe because I have not read the book it is based on, I enjoyed the full three hours of Cloud Atlas.

The most dazzling part of the movie has to be Neo-Seoul, a near-future city with a totalitarian system in Korea, built next to the Old-Seoul, which has been largely ruined and submerged by water.

Neo-Seoul is an Orwellian representation of a 22^nd century city in state built on corporatist conformism, with citizens being nothing more than consumers, forced to be as mindless as possible. The stunning visuals both show a utopian and a dystopian city. A dark city with neon lightning, highways being no more than energy paths in the sky, and capitalism everywhere. People in the lower ends of the societal spectrum live in shantytowns built atop the remnants of skyscrapers from Old-Seoul, which are now largely underwater.

In that sense Saskia Sassen was right (or rather the film makers thought along Sassen’s lines), with the world’s global cities becoming more and more polarized. The funny thing here is - analog to ‘our world’ - that the ‘workers’ neighbourhoods’ in Neo Seoul are the most lively parts of the city and not much different from our rougher residential areas. This is where Neo Seoul shows an energetic mixed urban area, with many people in the streets, street food and entertainment, but also crime looming. It somehow seems that these kinds of urban areas haven’t changed much over centuries, from medieval Europe to modern India and future Seoul.

All images by George Hull.

Six books published in 2012 that taught me something about cities

The shops where I spend most of my time are definitely book stores. Especially those with an ‘urban affairs’ section or something similar to that. Amsterdam had two of those (as far as I know) until Stedelijk Museum reopened this year. The museum now houses a bookstore run by the renowned German Walter König Buchhandlung. The other two are Architectura & Natura and Athenaeum.

Here are six books that I bought this year and that I have given me new perspectives on aspects of urban life, politics and design.


1. Hans Ibelings and Powerhouse Company - SHIFTS: Architecture After the 20^th Century (The Architectural Observer)
Architecture is known for not always being very self-critical. That is why this little book came as a great surprise to me. Powerhouse Company, known for some very high-end architecture, teamed up with architectural historian Hans Ibelings. Together they did a great assessment of the current state of architecture and looked at the future of the profession. SHIFTS explores the deep causes of the scars that are starting to become visible in architectural culture. And it is not just the recent financial recession. Structural global trends are having enormous impacts on architecture, which means that we cannot expect the future to be a continuation of the recent past. The West is no longer in charge, with demographic, economic, social and cultural power relations to shift, and the architectural bubble about to burst. The great thing about this exploration, is that Powerhouse has made physical models that represent these pressing world dynamics, which made up an exhibition that was at display at the Architecture Foundation in London and Cityscapes Gallery in Amsterdam. For example, “Sinking and Rising” is a wooden block with the world map on top. Countries are elevated or lowered, according to their ‘trade balance’ – the difference between the monetary value of exports and imports of output in an economy over a certain period.

Sinking and Rising

Another model is “Bubbles”, showing the evolution of economic bubbles and the fact that they only increase in size and frequency, with most of them in the last two decades and the current global crisis being a couple of hundred times as large as the 2000 “Dot Com Bubble” or 1987’s “Black Monday”.

Bubbles


2. Anna Minton – Ground Control (Penguin Books)
Originally published in 2009, an updated version came out this year, including a new chapter about London’s 2012 Olympics. Ground Control is about the privatization, securitization and shinification of urban space in British cities. The book’s subtitle is Fear and Happiness in the Twenty-First Century City. It explains how urban space is increasingly owned by private corporations, watched over by CCTV and designed for profit. In many ways, you can see, feel and smell the fear for disruption, for crime, filth, chaos and – most of all – for capital loss. This results in standardized urban spaces that end up looking and feeling alike, all across the UK. These spaces (that often don’t deserve to be called places) are impersonal, anonymous, hostile and not inclusive.

Cardinal Place, London. An exemplary case, according to Anna Minton


3. David Harvey – Rebel Cities (Verso Books)
There is always struggle in our cities. You can call it a battle for the right to the city, or a struggle for the have-nots to prevent the haves from taking their turf, their status or their amenities. For decades, David Harvey has been writing about the inherent relationship between capital growth and urbanization. Capitalism, requiring perpetual growth, is continually seeking opportunities for profitably investing its surplus and employing excess labour. Capital frequently – and more and more – locates these opportunities for investment in urban development and transformation. In Rebel Cities, Harvey focuses on the revolutionary potential of urban spaces. Drawing on the 1871 Paris Commune and the Occupy movement, but also the Arab Spring and the London Riots, he asks how we can cities can be organized in a different way, not (solely) based on capital accumulation. One of the most striking messages Harvey tries to bring across, is that we should see the power of urban life, and measure social success according to the development of human capacity, instead of the capital growth rate.

Paris’ 1871 rebellion


4. Owen Hatherley – A New Kind of Bleak: Journeys Through Urban Britain (Verso Books)
Similar to Anna Minton’s Ground Control but more angry, Hatherley’s new book basically is a continuation of his previous one, A Guide to the New Ruins of Great Britain. He takes up his arms against the ‘urban disasters’ he runs into on his architectural road trip through many of the UK’s cities. Hatherley sees a painful landscape that is the expression of the social and political state of the country, and he hopes it will rise from its neoliberal ruins, becoming a more equitable society. Although cynical and uncompromisingly Marxist (and therefore perhaps not too constructive), Hatherley’s books are perhaps the best travel companions when visiting urban Britain.

London’s The Shard, according to Hatherley, is “a grotesque imposition, just an enormous slab of city fucked into south London”


5. Neil Brenner, Peter Marcuse and Margit Mayer (eds) - Cities for People, Not for Profit: Critical Urban Theory and the Right to the City (Routledge)
A tougher read, but absolutely crucial material for people who want to understand how our cities work nowadays. Neil Brenner always amazes me, managing to capture and connect structures, dynamics and relationships that make up the city, being one of the greatest geographers. Marcuse is almost a living legend (84 years old), having written much in the field of urban studies. The book critically examines the urban present and future. The possible ways of economic, social and environmental collapse of cities is discussed, most of which within the ‘Right to the City’-framework. It deals with subjects such as urban protest, neoliberalization, gentrification, colonization, architecture and political dynamics. One of the articles I like most is the one written by Stefan Krätke, in which he deconstructs the “creative class”, the group of people seen as the magic potion for our cities to flourish. Also Justus Uitermark’s piece is great, assessing the ‘Just City’ concept. Mentioning just these two almost feels disrespectful to the authors of all the other great articles, so I urge you to go and get the book if you are into the socio-spatial-political dynamics of the world that we call the city.

A cricital take on the ‘creative city’ by Creative Class Struggle. A topic also tackled in “Cities for People, Not for Profit”


6. Zadie Smith – NW (Penguin Books)
Yes, fiction. This book beautifully illustrates that cities, or places, consist of people. Cities are people. Different people with different thoughts, varying personalities and perceptions are the main reason for cities to be dynamic and to never be the same. Moreover, there is no such thing as the city. One city is many cities to many people, all using and experiencing the city differently, in a very personal way. By writing about the daily lives, thoughts and behaviours of four main characters of different race, class, and ideals in north west (NW) London, Zadie Smith perfectly illustrates the diversity and fluidity of cities. If you want to learn something about cities, but don’t feel like going through any theoretical reads, this book should be on your list.

Camden, part of London’s NW, where Smith’s book is situated

Happy reading.

In this interview, recently broadcasted on Dutch television, Saskia Sassen explains why she thinks the middle class is about to disappear and there will only be two classes left: the rich and the poor. Moreover, she discusses the demise of the nation state, social exclusion, and democracy, all within the context of globalisation.

Note: Never mind the first minute of introduction in Dutch. The entire interview is in English (however Sassen speaks some Dutch - being superwoman). If the video somehow isn’t working for you, you might want to try circumventing the geo-block.

How citizens and communities taking control of their neighbourhoods are outlining hopeful urban futures

Cardinal Place, London. A great example of not so great urban development

Ah, Britain. I had the privilege to visit London for two days, as a result of the kind invite by Philips’ Livable Cities programme to participate in a round table discussion and help select the winner of the #pinyourcity contest.

The great UK cities
A quick count tells me that I have been to eight British cities in the past two years. It keeps fascinating me how privatization is perceptible in these cities. Privatization has resulted in the securitization, shinification and standardization of the British inner city. Securitization is wonderfully described in Anna Minton’s Ground Control. Initially from 2009, an updated version was published this year – with an extra chapter about the impact of the Olympics on London in terms of the ‘suburbanization of the inner city’ (as I like to call it) – the book explains how British cities are now owned by private corporations, designed for profit and watched over by CCTV. The shinification is illustrated by the clustering of corporate offices in the city centers, most of them built since the 1990s after the market had been severely deregulated. Cities wanted to show that their city centres were back in the global game of finance, business and consumption. This great article by Rowan Moore shows how the sky scrapers that have been popping up over the past decade and will continue to be built over the next few years, do not meet planning guidelines, community needs and architectural standards. Still, politics seems to encourage the ongoing shinification. Often, these shiny towers do not contribute to their surroundings, producing anonymous and even hostile public space and hardly offering public facilities. And there’s the standardization, which has to do with urban environments becoming as safe, clean, and predictable (similar to other places) as possible.
The privatization has also resulted in a sharp divide. Both in society (after a dismantling and marketization of the welfare state), and in cities. Spatial segregation is increasing, just as the pressure on low-income residents of neighbourhoods that are the new frontiers of gentrification. The always great Polis just published a great article on new developments in Stratford, where UCL is planning to build a new campus, the protests against it (by the local community, but also by groups from within UCL), and the role and responsibility of the university in urban renewal.

Civic response
But a relatively polarized society also seems to encourage grassroots action with a social and sustainable agenda in cities. In Western cities, these seem to become the next popular urban thing, both for policy makers and for creative urbanites, as a sort of follow-up to creative cities policies and only symbolic creative production. I think that’s great, because there is much more ‘use value’ in it, compared to ‘sign value’. I visited three of those projects founded on such principles in London. Being on a tight schedule, I could only visit three of them in Dalston.

Dalston Eastern Curve Garden

First I visited Dalston Eastern Curve Garden. Created on the former Eastern Curve railway line running from Dalstion Junction Station in 2010, the Garden grows stuff but also has a great wooden construction under which you can meet, eat and drink. More recently, a glass house was added. Regular events and workshops are organized there, working together with local communities and youth groups. I was only there briefly, but it felt like a great place run by a great bunch of people.

Arcola Theatre’s bar

After that I checked out Arcola Theatre, which is amazing. In a converted paint factory the studio theatre is now providing high-end performances and plays, but is also delivering community engagement and creative learning. Moreover – and even more exceptional – it has set up an energy business, Arcola Energy. This added sustainability to its social agenda. The theatre became a testing and demonstration ground for energy-efficient methods, cutting its standard energy consumption by 60%, and Arcola Energy now does consultancy and provides sustainable energy solutions to theatres and other organizations. The theatre works with local volunteers and other organizations. It also runs a fantastic eco-café, now open all day and offering organic and handmade food and drinks from local gastronomes. One of the things about Arcola Theatre that I like most is Pay What You Can Tuesdays, which lowers the threshold for local people to visit the theatre.

FARM:shop

My last stop before heading for the airport was FARM:shop. This is the third inspiring place I visited within not much more than a square mile. The name FARM:shop basically explains what it is. A farm in a shop. It is a café where you can have coffees and sandwiches. It is also an urban farming space, where different growing typologies are demonstrated – aquaponics, polytunnel, indoor allotment and a rooftop chicken coop. The produce is also sold in the shop and used in the food they sell. Their aim is to have shops like these all over the UK, connect peripheral farms to urban communities and inspire people to grow their own food. And it is inspirational. Especially because it has a DIY feel and the people are very nice. It makes you feel like doing the same stuff at home. And the sandwiches are incredibly good.

FARM:shop

These projects are just three of them that I visited in a rush There’s a great publication, Compendium for a Civic Economy, which features more inspiring examples of communities and citizens taking control of themselves and each other in social enterprises. You can buy it in hard copy, but the first edition can also be read online:

At first, coming to London to discuss livability, I couldn’t help but thinking about the city’s livability as also being segregated: to the rich, London is highly livable because high-end lifestyles are perfectly catered. The less well-off, however, are being more and more marginalized, and much of the city’s amenities are not affordable or suitable for them. According to Saskia Sassen, an inherent ‘quality’ of global cities is social polarization. But some kind of countermovement is taking place and I cannot wait to see it crystallize in the near future.

Images by duncluk, Preoccupations, Arcola Theatre, me. 

Note 1: I am always very much trying to decypher the ‘dark matter’ in urban development. But not all of the institutions’ agendas are solely driven by economic and financial growth in urban renewal. The Guardian published a great story about a housing corporation in chic North-London is building for low-income tenants in Islington.

Note 2: While the UK government is often characterized as only having acted from a privatization and deregulation mantra over the past decades, it is remarkable that all of the UK’s national museums have free admission (since 2001, actually), which is a great gesture to the country’s residents and tourists. This is something the Dutch government could definitely learn from.

Soweto, from the winning Pinyourcity board (source: iseeadifferentyou)

The winners of the #pinyourcity contest, hosted by Philips Livable Cities, have been announced. Earlier this week, I helped judging the boards in London. The way Pinterest was used as a tool for mapping livability impressions is innovative, both by the organizers (Pinterest is usually only about lifestyle & consumption) as by the people who created the boards.
The contestants were encouraged to show why the city of their choice was the most livable (and lovable) and to tell this story through a set of images on Pinterest. 

A video impression of the judging

We (other judges included people from The Pop-Up City, Polis, CITIES, Urban Times, Fast Company, Monocle, SmartPlanet, It’s Nice That and The Mobile City) picked 10 winners and runners up from 25 shortlisted boards.

Jammin’ in Johannesburg, the overall winning board

The big winner was Jammin’ in Johannesburg, a board by Stephanie Kramer. It was definitely my favourite, especially because it represented different kinds of livability. I believe that livability is a plural thing: everybody has their own indicators of livability: for some it’s mostly about nice bars and theatres or bicycle lanes, for others it’s primarily about being able to make a living or crime-free neighbourhoods. Therefore it is difficult to point out exactly what livability is, but the winning board shows this diversity very well: from arts, education and great food to festivals, beautiful cityscapes and improved safety.

The 10xAmsterdam board, a good runner up

Another favourite of mine was the 10xAmsterdam board by Christina Franken, because she goes beyond the iconic and picturesque city, and because there are some personal connections. I like the fact that she mentions Amsterdam’s fertile startup culture, something I researched (in Dutch). Moreover, she also recognizes the city’s canals as extra public space, something I pointed out earlier this year. She didn’t win, but I thought she deserved an honorable mention.

Read all about the #pinyourcity contest.

“Is London’s skyline going down the tube?” Illustration by Nick Brown

The always sharp Rowan Moore wrote a great piece about London’s incoherently exploding skyline for The Guardian, saying that most large towers currently being built or recently built are of inferior quality, not connected to their environment and creating one-dimensional urban spaces. He wonders how the city’s planning system has become so unbalanced, who is paying for all this, and who is making money out of it.

Do read the full article, “How a high-rise craze is ruining London’s skyline”.  

There’s also a gallery with images of skycrapers recently built and soon to be completed. The pictures do not really illustrate a positive development.

Vauxhall Cross, due 2015. Image: PR.


Thanks Jeroen Pool for pointing out this article to me.

The tunnel, seen from station Vijzelgracht

Today, the last 7,5 meters of Amsterdam’s new subway line, the Noord/Zuidlijn, have been drilled after 32 months of digging. The new line is nowhere near finished, however, being planned to open in 2017. Nevertheless, it is a milestone at a time public opinion seems to change for the better, after a difficult decade.

Headaches
The fact that the drilling is finished is quite a relief for the city. It has been a huge and hugely problematic project for over a decade. The plan was approved by the city council in 1996, at a budget of 1,5 billion euro’s and scheduled to be finished in 2005. That didn’t work. There were a lot of protests, some dystopian reports were published, a referendum followed and the plans were changed. Construction started in 2003. In 2008, several historic buildings along Vijzelgracht subsided and were damaged because of the construction works. The estimated total costs now are at 3,1 billion, and the line will open 12 years later that planned initially planned.

Rokin station

How PR changed perceptions
After thisextremely difficult start, Amsterdammers, and people all over The Netherlands were sceptical. Noord/Zuidlijn was a running joke for quite some years. There was hardly anyone to be found who was positive about the project. This has changed over the past years. Not that people are hailing the project as the best thing that could happen to Amsterdam, but here is less cynicism and sarcasm. I dare to say that Amsterdammers are slowly starting to feel some pride and are looking forward to start using the new metro line, especially because it connects the upcoming Noord district (according to the New York Times and Wall Street Journal) to the rest of the city.

Tunnel boring machine “Molly” at Vijzelgracht station

The way of communication seems to have contributed to the change in opinion. In 2009, the PR team of the project took on a new approach: tell the entire story, make sure people are up-to-date about the progress of Noord/Zuidlijn. An information centre was opened at Central Station and a social media campaign started, with the protagonists being the construction workers, explaining in detail what they were doing. The complexity was demonstrated and every milestone (a new station reached by the tunnel boring machine, a new tunnel lowered into the IJ river) was publicly celebrated. There’s a website where you could live follow the location of the drilling, with accompanying explanations by the workers on site. Every new station and it’s project leader got a Facebook page and YouTube, Flickr and Twitter were used to make the project as transparent as possible.

The Facebook page of Rokin station and project leader Ries

Underground sci-fi
My favorite element of the campaign was the viewpoint that was created at Rokin station, where you can get it during the day and watch the construction works in the station, a 26,5-metres deep and hundreds of metres long space full with workers and machinery, beautifully lit and very ‘underground’. Very sci-fi, very smart PR.
The viewpoint is open Tuesday to Sunday, 13:00h to 18:00h. If you happen to be in Amsterdam anytime soon, this has to be on your top five visits list. It is right at Spui stop on Rokin, look out for the big red ‘M’ on the sidewalk. That is where you go down. It is free of charge.

Rokin station, where you can go and have a look

It is interesting to see public opinion is slowly changing, after a changing attitude of the city’s Noord/Zuidlijn project towards media and citizens. If the construction will continue without any major problems, the story might just get an unexpected happy end.

All pictures are from the Noord/Zuidlijn Flickr page.

Related Post:
Amsterdam is Smartening Up

If you happen to be in Amsterdam today or tomorrow, you should definitely check out Kunstvlaai 2012, a Festival of Independents, and a “platform for over 70 local and international artist-led initiatives, art schools and nomadic organizations of the contemporary visual arts”.

A lot of interesting, experimental and spot-on installations and artworks are shown. One of them is this project by the New Sculpture Department, featuring a post-apocalyptic Amsterdam. Different iconic buildings (such as Central Station and Scheepvaartmuseum) are portrayed in a decayed condition and in a desolate landscape. Next to that, excavated projects from the future’s past (such as razor blades and a cheese slicer) are exhibited in a fossil condition. All in a gloomy room. 

It makes you aware of the fact that in a couple of thousand years, our cities as we know it won’t be here anymore. Quite a neutralizing thought.

Infrastructure Man, a mascot of sorts, created to spread hope and development in BRIC countries. 

by Toby Melville Brown.