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Introduction Startnotitie - the remit Understanding Greenspace Planning 1960s high rise - the problems 1960s high density housing estates - a problem The failure of the 1960s built form
Instructions for use of this website Introduction Startnotitie - the remit Understanding Greenspace Planning 1960s high rise - the problems 1960s high density housing estates - a problem The failure of the 1960s built form
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A Regenerative Greenspace Plan for Overvecht District - Utrecht City copyright 2001, Anne R. Beer High rise housing
estates built in the 1960s - the problems 1960s high density housing estates - a problem The 1960s was a time when demand for housing was very high. Governments throughout Europe became convinced that high density housing, of the type described from the 1920s to the 1950s by le Corbusier and other architects as suitable for the "masses", was the answer to providing new housing. Many of the developments that resulted ( in the main large slab blocks, with some tower blocks interspersed with 3/4 storey housing for the slightly better off) were initially liked by their new inhabitants. However almost without exception, the schemes over time became associated with a range of social problems. This led in many instances to a mass exodus of the more stable families and the better off to what were regarded by them as more appropriate surroundings for their residential life. Overvecht has some social problems - linked in part to a relatively rapid turnover of inhabitants - but it shows less visible signs than many such areas of being rejected by its present inhabitants. There are, however, worrying signs of an increasing alienation from " the place they call home" on the part of many of the older people living in the District. To counter this, the recent surveys of local people's attitudes and opinions have shown that Overvecht's population is in general not totally alienated from its housing environment - many still understand it as a place with the potential to be a good district in which to live. It would appear that there is a real hope among the local people of turning what is recognised as a deteriorating situation round. Changes are being sought by the City which will enhance the quality of life in the district and enable the local people to feel pride in where they live. The City is already investing massively in the buildings, to make them fit for modern life. This study of Overvecht's Greenspaces is to supplement that work - we address the question of what needs to be done with the greenspaces, which are a major component of Overvecht's built form, to enable local people to feel more satisfied with where they live. The 1960s was a time when greenspace was only understood by planners as
Those involved as greenspace designers at that time saw their role as making the area "look good" and as with the architects, who in housing areas like this reproduced the designs of the le Corbusier school (albeit in a modified form), they too tried to reproduce the "Parkland" settings shown in the architects' drawings of the 1920s to 1950s. Even the present "Parkway" road system found in Overvecht comes directly from such images. The designers of Overvecht were indeed spectacularly successful with creating the "Housing in a sea of Parkland" image - the only problem is that this design style is not suitable as a support for ordinary daily human existence (Parkland as a design style was invented as a setting for large buildings, but only for a single large building inhabited by a few of the very rich, their servants and hangers on - for people who led a very "controlled" social life - it was never intended as a style which could create a setting for the daily home life of 30,000 people with all their disparate social needs). It was a landscape style which saw people passing through or looking down on greenspace, not using it, not enjoying being in it. This limited understanding of the role of open spaces (the green and the hard-surfaced) in housing development which existed throughout the 1960s and into the 1970s was exacerbated in its social impacts by being linked to stringent governmental guidance on the quantity of open space to be provided per thousand new inhabitants. The then prevalent idea about appropriate design style linked to these space standards does much to explain the vast hectares of open space in Overvecht. The end result has been that much of this space is hardly used and is often found alienating and sometimes even frightening by the local inhabitants. However, the recent user surveys have shown clearly that those same inhabitants do not want to lose any of the open unbuilt land in Overvecht - they value its presence and "specialness" highly; what they do want is that the space should work better to support what they want to be able to do outside and near their dwellings - hence this study. Research since the 1960s has consistently shown that local people find the "outdoors" of such housing areas as unsatisfactory settings for their daily life. Local greenspace can be seen in the research to influence strongly:
There is an urgent need to rethink the role of this local open space in high density housing in general, not just in relation to Overvecht, because of the EU's guidance on the need to develop all expanding cities as the "Compact City". If we cannot get a site such as Overvecht to work properly as a satisfactory setting for daily life, then what hope is there in the new developments now on the drawing board and being built at similar or greater densities?
The failure of the 1960s built form - no proper consideration given to the experiential aspects of the home environment We now know from an extensive body of research that the missing concept for the planners and designers was that the outdoor spaces needed to provide local people with a range of experiences, not just facilities - that is to provide satisfactory settings for daily life in the home environment. (Summary of relevant research:- Beer,1990 and 2000, Environmental Planning for Site Development, Spon, London, p141-211. You can view that information in an abbreviated format by clicking here: Places to Live, work and play) . By the end of the 1960s and into the early 1970s, at a time when the first research evidence of the failure of many high density housing designs was being published, a new issue came to dominate the site layout and detailed design ideas of architects, landscape architects and planners and determined the decision making behaviour of many of them: - that was the increasing awareness of the need to integrate natural habitats into housing areas. This concept diverted attention from the much more complex problems of the role of the external spaces being thrown up by sociological studies. Instead of addressing the problems of how to design the outdoor spaces holistically in relation to the full range of experiential needs of local people, these designers focused attention on one particular aspect of the human experience - contact with nature - a vitally important element of an individual's experience of daily life, although not the only one. In the Netherlands the "nature in the city" concept grew in strength from the late1960s to the 1980s. It had a major impact on the way the external spaces of high density housing areas were designed and how the landscape that resulted was managed. "Nature" was integrated into high density high rise schemes such as the Bijlmer, Amsterdam and Beethovenlann, Delft -ARB check places and get photos. That this approach also failed to produce residential environments which the inhabitants found satisfactory, we can now see was unsurprising: - the planners and designers still neglected to cater for the ordinary every day human experiences - they did not ask the question "what is it like to live in this house/block and move to it and from it?" By the late 1970s the fashion for high density high rise housing schemes with large areas of open and greenspace was over. Planners and designers efforts were diverted into low rise middle-density housing - family housing with gardens became the vogue. The problem now became one of keeping any open space at all in the new developments - many were produced by private developers who were loathe to take on an "added burden" of providing open space accessible to the general public. The result of this changing agenda was that the problems of the high rise estates were forgotten; they are indeed very different from those associated with the sea of low rise middle-density housing which became the common form of housing until very recent times.
The Compact City - The EU's vision for the future - the lessons to be learnt from the 1960s high density development *On EU advice all countries in Europe are supposed to ensure that all future residential development is laid out in a compact manner . It is proving to be a very difficult policy to implement - for instance in Brussels, a relatively high density city, a survey of the many thousands of people who have left to live elsewhere in the past five years has shown that they have done this because they want to live somewhere "green". Looking at Britain too, there remains a great demand for new housing in suburban style at suburban densities. It is essential, therefore, to investigate whether it is possible to achieve higher densities and yet retain the "green" qualities which inhabitants are demanding. The remaining high rise housing schemes of the 1960s are natural laboratories to try out new approaches. In many instances the apartments and buildings are being improved through the designation of Housing Action Areas. However, only seldom is the "sea of greenspace" so often provided by the original planners being subjected to a similar level of regeneration. Characteristically the greenspace associated with such 1960s high rise is a "grass desert", in a few instances and particularly in the Netherlands supplemented by a mass of standard trees spaced at regular intervals - the whole producing a structureless landscape. Spaces described by the local inhabitants as - "alienating" space, "nothing happens in it" space, "boring/ dull" and too often " frightening" space. These are spaces often with no natural environmental or aesthetic value; notoriously they have have been associated with low quality of life assessments by the public who inhabit them. If such spaces can be changed so that the local people feel they belong to them - to their community - then that sense of "pride" in belonging to and in living in a particular area of a city has some chance to develop. It will not be cheap, but if it works then it will be far, far cheaper for society than demolishing and coping with all the social problems associated with what the local population consider to be substandard housing. |
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