How do you get rid of the housing shortage? Build more, faster and higher. That is the political rhetoric in 2022. But it also sounded around 1960, more than sixty years ago.
Urban planning historian Anita Blom sees many similarities between the current assignment for public housing and those from the reconstruction period. Even then there was a lack of skilled workers and construction costs were high, even then fast and efficient construction was seen as the solution. The result: high gallery flats and monotonous construction of lesser quality.
Blom, project leader at the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands, is an expert in post-war urban planning in the Netherlands. “As a historian I see where things went wrong at the time. The government’s focus on quantity – one million homes by 2030 – carries the risk of jeopardizing the quality of architecture and spatial planning, and thus the quality of life in neighbourhoods.”
In her opinion, to prevent this, the government must exercise greater control over project developers and builders. “That way you can keep track of how well it is built. The right homes, with an eye for the environment and the social aspect of living.” As far as she is concerned, this is a task for Hugo de Jonge (CDA), the new Minister for Housing and Spatial Planning.
To illustrate her vision, Blom suggests taking a walk in Alkmaar. It starts in the reconstruction district De Hoef, in the west of the city. At the shopping center of the same name, local residents brave the biting wind to do their weekend shopping.
Blom stops at a gallery flat with nine floors. “Look. That is typical high-rise buildings from the sixties. Very massive and placed in such a way that we can build as many homes as possible in a short time.”
Why did this happen?
“The housing shortage was great after the Second World War. Construction came to a standstill during the war years, and after that, with the baby boom and all those postponed marriages, there was a great demand for housing. But no one had money to build. At that time, the government focused on large-scale housing construction. This was possible with prefab building systems, so made in the factory. That was very suitable for high-rise buildings. The government stimulated this with subsidies and favorable regulations. In the permitted building space, a flat house only made up three quarters of a single-family house. As a result, you saw apartment blocks like this one here in Alkmaar developing all over the country.”
What exactly is wrong with these flats?
“During construction, too little thought was given to the social aspect of housing. The lack of neighborhood feeling and the massiveness were subsequently experienced as negative. Residents felt unsafe, they found the flats impersonal. In the mid-1960s, social criticism grew. The concept of ‘flat neurosis’ was introduced: irritation caused by living in a gallery flat. The human dimension was missing.
“In the early 1970s there was a kind of competition to build more homes every year. The record was 1973, when almost 153,000 homes were added.”
How does this relate to the situation now?
“Even now you see that there is a lot of focus on more and faster, but I don’t come across many ideas about what those neighborhoods will look like. In the building plans of the new cabinet, I believe that the quality of the architecture should remain paramount – with attention to the social aspects and good facilities. A community center or library can enhance the neighborhood feeling of residents.”
What should Minister De Jonge do to prevent these mistakes from happening again?
“The government has largely withdrawn from urban development and housing construction, leaving the initiative mainly to municipalities and project developers. Roughly speaking, lawyers draw up zoning plans and project developers mainly think in numbers: if I build so many homes, I can earn so much.
“The central government must take back control, encourage more diverse construction than just strips of single-family homes – there must also be enough homes for seniors and singles. And don’t just think about what you are building now, but also about how a neighborhood will look in ten or twenty years.
“The government should also consider the possibility of slowing down land price increases. Because municipalities sell their land as dearly as possible, project developers almost have to go up in price to cover the costs.”
But how should it be? We walk through De Vier Squaren, a 1970s neighborhood in Alkmaar-Noord. According to Blom, this is an example of successful urban planning. The wooden houses are low and terraced and have staggered roofs and facades, which makes the street scene more varied and intimate. No house looks the same from the outside. The neighborhood is known as a ‘cauliflower district’. Seen from above, the winding street plan and residential areas are reminiscent of cut cauliflower florets.
These kinds of neighborhoods arose after the program that Minister Wim Schut of Housing (ARP) set up in 1968. The Experimental Housing scheme encouraged urban planners, planners and architects to develop new forms of housing. An important party in this was the Bouwcentrum in Rotterdam. The ideas that were jointly developed here resulted, among other things, on the residential area. The scheme failed due to new budget cuts in 1980.
What’s so good about this neighborhood?
“The human dimension has been reduced, as a response to the massiveness of the apartment buildings. It looks a bit obscure. Urban planners and architectural historians were generally not very enthusiastic about these kinds of neighbourhoods. But residents are actually very happy: you have the feeling of forming a community there.”
Why did this have to be done by the government? Can’t the market figure this out?
Blom points around him, to the wooden houses with their asymmetrical corners. “This type of construction is less easy to realize than straight residential blocks in strips – they simply roll off the assembly line. Sustainability is being innovated, but you cannot expect market parties to experiment on this scale.
“The government could again play a facilitating role in this, for example by breathing new life into the Bouwcentrum. By developing innovative ideas about housing and building materials, you can make them interesting for market parties and housing associations. They can then apply it on a large scale. That was also the idea behind the Experimental Housing scheme.”
Experimenting is fun, but now there is a lot to build.
“Yes, but realize that almost here is not a good counselor. If you hurry, the quality is compromised, both in terms of building materials and housing plans and the layout of the public space.
“You can also ask yourself whether so much has to be demolished because it would be too expensive to renovate. Politicians get too carried away with the construction lobby in that regard. It is too easy to say: just demolish it, so that we can build higher and more.
“I don’t think we really need a million homes. We simply need to do better with housing allocation: making sure that more homes become available for seniors, whose single-family homes that are too large then become available for young families in the area. This way you can also maintain facilities such as shops and schools. And many dated buildings can also be given a new purpose, such as offices and buildings on old industrial sites.”
If you compare this to building in strips, isn’t this much more expensive?
“If you put the houses in clusters like here, you can place more houses on a piece of land and you don’t necessarily have to go up. The construction itself will indeed cost more than building in blocks. But a place where people live comfortably and which does not deteriorate due to decay, that is also worth investing in, isn’t it?”
A version of this article also appeared in NRC on the morning of January 31, 2022