The Evolving European City - Amsterdam: Amsterdam’s Oostelijk Havengebied

By Giuseppe Marinoni and Giuovanni Chiaramonte

In 'The Evolving European City', renowned urban planner and architect Giuseppe Marinoni and eminent photographer Giovanni Chiaramonte assemble a breathtaking presentation of cities that have undergone profound change in order to combat congestion, pollution, and the unsightliness of industrial wastelands. Marinoni conveys a profound belief that unified urban plans under the direction of one creative vision can bring an enhanced quality of life to city dwellers, provide them with the means to move easily to and from home, work, and at the same time ensure environmental sustainability. Chiaramonte, through his exquisite photographs of sites in the Netherlands, Spain, Germany, France, Portugal, Italy, and the United Kingdom, offers readers visual evidence of the architectural and infrastructure accomplishments of European urban projects over the last two decades. Beautifully presented in eye-opening detail, The Evolving European City is a timely representation of environmental sustainability and social progress in the modern age.

• Language: English
• Publisher: SMOwnPublishing
• Release date: Jun 23, 2024
• ISBN: 9788899165512

Book preview

Amsterdam

Amsterdam’s Oostelijk Havengebied

Location on the map

The current structural layout of Amsterdam’s Oostelijk Havengebied is an obvious consequence of a change of course in contemporary Dutch urban design. The push in the 1970s to coordinate urban planning and public housing construction became weaker and weaker, following the economic crisis that forced an acceleration of welfare state reform. Public housing construction became privatized, ending the long marriage of planning and residential programming that had distinguished Dutch urban policies since the time of the Woningwet, a 1901 law on residential buildings.

In the 1980s, in addition to the economic crisis public housing planning and construction, urban density as an alternative to sprawl became a significant issue. In the great port cities, the necessity of revitalizing the areas of the nineteenth-century docks, which are mostly situated in strategic areas of the urban structure, also became an important issue.

In Amsterdam, in particular, the transformation of the docks, extending through the entire Oostelijk Haven and onto the artificial peninsulas of KNSM, Java, Borneo, and Sporenburg, became not only an occasion of urban development but also an occasion to generally rethink the city, which involved road, railroad,