Bijlmermeer neighbourhood, the south-east suburb
of Amsterdam, which today houses almost 50,000 people of over 150
nationalities, was designed as a single project as part of the modernist
approach to urban development. Its first few buildings were completed towards
the end of 1960s, after which some residents begun to move in what was
advertised as ‘paradise with modern towers’. The original neighbourhood was
designed as a series of nearly identical high-rise buildings in a hexagonal
grid and has been called honeycomb housing. The urban planning principles were influenced
by CIAM, the International Congress for Modern Architecture, set up by Le
Corbusier, the master of modern Architecture and his contemporaries.
Le Corbusier’s idea of urban planning was
the concept of ‘Radiant City’, wherein, the people were to be put in
multi-storey housing so as to allow for large open spaces for recreation and
green cover. The circulation was to be at two levels, the elevated roads to
reduce traffic congestion and hence pollution and lower level for pedestrians
and bicyclists. Upwardly rising residential towers would provide residents with
the views as also clean air and sunlight. The original honeycomb housing can be
seen in Photo 1.
Photo 1: Aerial view of Bijlmermeer,
Amsterdam
This location of Bijlmermeer was selected
as it was then outside the city of Amsterdam and land costs were low. However,
it took a long time before the public infrastructure such as good roads and
metro line were constructed to provide good connectivity to the place. The
residents of Amsterdam lost interest in the project and subsequently, it was
used as a social housing which came to be occupied by the immigrant community
of the city. The Surinamese immigrants were located here by the government, in
what then became social housing. It became essentially a low-income
neighbourhood. Low-income neighbourhood with concentration of immigrant
community also meant high levels of unemployment among the youth of the
neighbourhood. Eventually, it came to be known as a neighbourhood with high
crime rates. The grade separation of roads provided automobiles to move fast on
the elevated roads but the spaces below when the roads crossed the pedestrian
walkways created potential negative spaces wherein crime thrived. In an endeavour
to reduce crime in this neighbourhood, the city of Amsterdam decided to convert
this into mixed-income neighbourhood, that is, to gentrify the neighbourhood by
attracting middle-income families to it.
However, high rise living is not conducive
to the living style of middle-income groups, who prefer to live in low-rise condominium
housing so that the children can play outside and parents can keep a watch on
them. The new concerns such as of safe cities and climate change mitigation
efforts such as promoting cycling, has led to flattening of the roads wherein
the mixed traffic, motorised as well as non-motorised and pedestrians can move together.
In all, many of the high rises have been torn down to create a safe and liveable
neighbourhood. The neighbourhood has now good public transport connections and
a commercial centre with multifarious activities. There has been conscious
efforts to convert unsafe spaces into safe spaces.
Photo 2: Renewal of Bijlmermeer, with low rise apartments
We shift to another continent, another
country, China, another era, twenty first century. China, in its rapid pace of urbanisation and strides towards
modernisation has also adopted vertical urban form. The cities, central parts
as well as the peripheries are transforming into high-rise complexes. Within
the city, the former low-rise housing with lower per capita living area have
given way to multi-storey buildings, about 25 to 30 storey high having modern
facilities and higher dwelling unit size. The per capita living area on an
average has increased from 5.3 sq m per person to 36.6 square per person in
2016 (Source: http://www.chinabankingnews.com/2017/07/07/chinas-per-capita-residential-space-rose-40-8-square-metres-2016/).
To keep lands free for green spaces and other public goods such as roads,
gardens, education and health facilities, convention centres and sports
complexes, the housing form has taken to be multi-storey.
On the urban periphery, in the rural areas
and peri-urban areas, the high-rises house the rural population. The rural
residents, some out of choice (mainly the young generation) and some by mandate
(mainly the elderly who prefer rural housing type for social reasons) have been
shifted to multi-storey buildings to release rural lands. In some villages, the
village committees, which are the local governance units, have sold surplus
lands through long term leases. The profits from such land-sales have been
invested in improving the rural conditions and constructing public amenities of
the urban areas. Such profits have also been used to cross subsidize new
housing construction.
Photo 3: A Village near Suzhou City in South China
Photo 4: New High Rises on Suzhou City’s Periphery, China
There has been a push in the recent years in China for increasing urbanisation, which is seen as a way to improve the living conditions of the rural population. The proportion of employment in agriculture in 2017 has come down to 17.5% in China from 55.3% in 1991 (Source: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.AGR.EMPL.ZS?locations=CN). Large number of rural residents are employed in non-farm work and a large proportion of agriculture is in the green houses with the application of modern technology. There is a shift towards industrialised agriculture, an aspect which is being promoted by the national government. Industrialised agriculture requires large land parcels. Further, the Chinese government is paying the farmers to grow trees, which will contribute towards carbon sequestration to meet its commitment under the Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) after the Paris Agreement on Climate Change Mitigation. This also requires that lands be released.
A village in Suzhou City’s periphery in South China – Suzhou is a tourist town with traditional Chinese gardens of the former elites – where the residents were either engaged in some business (See Photo 3) or the males working in the city, was to be transformed into high rise living. Clearly, many had shifted out of agriculture to non-agriculture occupations and were unmindful of moving into modern housing. The type of modern housing that is coming up in this village’s periphery and likely for also this village can be seen in Photo 4. Photo 5 shows that general landscape of cities in China, which is of Suzhou city. Photo 6 is the landscape of peripheral areas of Tianjin City, which is an industrial city and this road is towards the Tianjin Free Trade Area.
Photo 5: From the internal city highway, Suzhou City, China
Photo 6: In Tianjin City Free Trade Area, China
Thus, we see very much the modernist transformation of China’s cities and its peripheral rural areas. This is very much the idea of New Urbanization, which is managed and is focussed on releasing lands for private and public transportation, green spaces and other public amenities. It is Le Corbusier ideas in practice in the twenty first century!
