“I started all the way from zero,” says Kroon, one of the creators of the ‘Wijkerduin’ plan, as was called Tata Steel-Stad. He noticed that the discussions about the greening, change and the survival of Tata Steel ‘get stuck’ and he finds that unnecessary.
“It is now like: whether Tata Steel will continue to exist, or it must disappear completely. But of course you don’t have to“, says Kroon, who worked as a consultant in the Netherlands and the US. After a year full of conversations with stakeholders from the region, remediators, construction companies and more, he came out with his companion Busscher with the Plan for Wijkerduin.
Kroon: “The plan is actually a kind of menu. There can be up to forty thousand homes and nature. We must determine what it will look like, we must determine with municipalities, local residents and the government.”
Too early for this plan? No
The Village Council of Wijk aan Zee has been able to get rid of the plan for a while and is happy with it. “It is good that another scenario has been added,” says director Hans Dellevoet. “If the black scenario that Tata Steel does not make it, become truth, then this plan is still there.”
Isn’t it a bit too early to speak of a city after Tata Steel? In the coming period, it must become more clear about any subsidies for Tata Steel and what the future of the company should look like.
“No,” says Dellevoet. “The plan is already a bit late. It should certainly not have come later: then might have already been a decision about Tata Steel.”
Text continues under the impressions of Wijkerduin, in which factory elements must be preserved.