Re-imagining a new town: the architecture of
empowerment and segregation in a Dutch
post-war neighbourhood
LEEKE REINDERS
Introduction
Architects meet a practical need for places to dwell, work, rest or play, but they tend to operate on the premises of an artist. There is, however, something irrevocable behind architecture. Architects put an ineradicable stamp on the environment. In contrast with a painting or a play, one cannot alter an architectonic work of art other than by blowing it up or pulling it down. Streets, squares, buildings and parks form the physical structure within which social life takes place. Yet the hard city as it is designed, built and managed, is not only guided by aesthetic or artistic ideas. Architects, designers and town planners also play a crucial role in translating conflicting claims on urban space. The urban landscape in this sense has been understood as materialized discourse, be it an expression, reflection or reproduction of political ideals and ideologies. This paper explores this social production of space through an examination of two design projects in Hoogvliet, a post-war neighbourhood in southwest Rotterdam, undergoing radical restructuring. This paper argues that questions of symbolism, discourse, imagery and representation, which have come to the foreground of urban studies, are tied up with the political and economic processes of social and spatial transformation. Striking a middle ground between culturalist and political economic approach to urban space (Eade & Mele 2002), this paper shows how architectural designs in hoogvliet are linked to shifts in the ideological foundations of urban renewal policy and the emergence of an entrepreneurial discourse in public sector planning. Our focus here is thus not so much on the design itself or its materialization into physical space, but on the discursive framing of
place by architects, designers and branding strategists, involved in the regeneration of Hoogvliet. This paper, which is a first step to detailed discourse analysis, is based on an ongoing ethnographic study on identity strategies and the social production and construction of space in a Dutch post-war neighbourhood.
Hoogvliet revisited: community, space, ideology and representation
In the 1950s and 1960s a new town rose up on the southwest edge of the Rotterdam. Hoogvliet was built for the new post-war age and was intended to make a radical break with history. Standardized production methods ensured rapid and cheap construction, necessary to fulfil an acute housing shortage. The city had wide open spaces and straight streets, by which a strict separation of functions was achieved. The buildings that rose up were made from modern materials such as steel and concrete, and designed according to the principles of modernistic architecture. And the rational design of the neighbourhoods was meant to mould the residents into a community. Although originally planned as a satellite town for sixty thousand people, mainly workers in the nearby petrochemical industry, the Hoogvliet plan was never finished. At the end of the 1960s building construction hampered as a consequence of an automation of the industrial sector. Six thousand people left and the northern part of the city developed into an area of concentrated social problems, ripe with criminality, poverty, social isolation, unemployment and xenophobia. Since that time Hoogvliet had to contend with a territorial stigma. The popular imagination of the city has been dominated by two discourses. On the one hand popular conceptions are guided by the image of a cheerless, anonymous and peripheral location. Hoogvliet, located in a landscape of highways, industrial complexes, dockland and polders, for many outsiders is known as a dead-end place, geographically and mentally far removed from its mother town. The discourse on environmental monotony coexists with a discourse on the loss of community. From the 1970s onwards, with the exodus of middle-class families and the influx of different ethnic groups, post-war neighborhoods are marked as places where different and sometimes conflicting life worlds live side by side. Post-war neighbourhoods like Hoogvliet are thus generally seen as monotonous or ‘decontextualised’ urban places, and a source of dissociation and social disintegration (Jacobs 1994, Blake 1974, Boomkens 1993).
In an effort to counteract these collective representations, Hoogvliet is entering a phase of radical and large-scale reconstruction, in which one third of the housing stock is replaced by new construction. This restructuring forms a drastic intervention into the physical and social texture of the neighborhood. By breaking out of the monotony of the environment through demolition and new construction an effort is made to transform a low-income and ethnically diverse neighborhood into an area attractive to the tastes of middle class segments of society. “Differences make for quality”, as a national advisory board
prescribed on the eve of the restructuring. Or, as a housing corporation described it in a brochure: “choices make a difference”. These mottos fit into the rhetoric on diversity, which has recently been called a new doctrine in urban planning (Fainstein 2005). One of the key themes emerging within the restructuring of post-war neighborhoods, and Dutch urban and spatial policy in general, is that of place identity. Within Hoogvliet, for example, a range of strategies is employed for the re-profiling and repositioning of the place in a regional housing market. This search for identity marks a heightened consciousness of the meaning of the neighborhood and community as a social and mental entity. In several ways the identity strategies, as they are currently used as a tool of urban regeneration, turn against the ‘narrative of loss’ (Arefi 1999) mentioned above. They make up an attempt to redefine a specific location by searching for its distinguishing features. For example, the methods of branding and historical research, to be discussed below, are explicitly focused on tracing and digging up the core features or genius loci of a specific place. Such spatial identity strategies are not only an attempt to redefine the spatial identity of a particular neighborhood but also try to accommodate the social and cultural diversity of contemporary urban society in space (Mommaas 2001).
The design strategies used in the urban renewal of post-war housing thus touch upon changing conceptions of the community as a social and spatial entity. But how do contemporary conceptions of community take shape in a physical and spatial sense? The two design projects described below show how the question of the designed community is closely related to the above mentioned shift in the ideological foundations of urban renewal policy. Housing corporations hereby increasingly turn away from supplying standard environments and towards a customer-oriented policy, in which individual or group specific housing preferences are attended to. The current discourse on identity in this sense has a hard material base, closely related to political and economic processes of socio-spatial transformation. From the start the concept of community has played a central role in urban renewal policies with regard to the management of post-war neighborhoods. The concept of the ‘wijkgedachte’ (neighborhood idea), for example, already provided a framework for the building up of society. During the urban renewal period in the 1970s and 1980s, the emancipation of low-income groups was a central goal of social policy. In the 1990s, however, a setting of tasks took place, in which housing corporations, the leading party in urban renewal, were converted from non-profit organizations and providers of social housing into commercial enterprises. The increased market-oriented approach of both local governments and corporations signals a transition from managerialism to entrepreneurialism, in which government control gives way to market oriented approaches (Young & Lever 1997, Haworth & Manzi 1999). Exemplary for this transition is the introduction of ‘brand managers’ (Greenberg 2000) or ‘reputational entrepreneurs’ (Hannigan 2003), who are discussed in section 5 of this paper. During this shift towards a
‘managerialist discourse’ (Jacobs & Manzi 1996) notions of community are given new meaning and interpretation.
Welcome into my back yard: the design of empowerment and emancipation The regeneration of the post-war housing stock is a large scale process of physical destruction and reconstruction. In translating esthetics and ideologies into sketches or concrete forms, architects, planners and designers therefore play a crucial role in the transformation and reordering of public space. Within current urban renewal programs, however, contemporary architects and designers are confronted with a fundamental dilemma (Kaliski 1999). In contrast with the post-war construction period, during which different parties were brought under supervision by the state, urban designers nowadays are situated in complex field of political and economic interests (Hereijgers & Van Velzen 2001). Moreover, the architectural task in the current restructuring program is largely focused on an intervention into and adjustment of the existing physical structure. An illuminating example of the changing position and role of urban design in urban renewal processes is provided by WiMBY!, a recently formed collective of designers, artists and architectural historians in Hoogvliet.
The group results from a International Building Exposition and operates under the device of ‘Welcome Into My Back Yard!’. Hinting at the ‘Not In My Back Yard’-syndrome, this slogan refers to a contemporary urban ethic as well as a design- and organization culture. At the start WiMBY! claimed the position of a virtual city builder, that would guide and stimulate the upcoming transformation of Hoogvliet. In a manifest, published at the start of the International Exhibition in 2000, the urban transformation of Hoogvliet is described as a task to provide a new and coherent form to a location overtaken by political, economic and ecological developments. In the course of four years, however, the organization, financed by the municipality and two housing corporations, increasingly came to function as a hybrid network, in which on the base of joint ventures small scale interventions into the physical structure of Hoogvliet were made. WiMBY! now sees itself occupying a relative marginal position, in which it literally and figurative operates on the sideline of the regular organization of the urban renewal program. Characterizing its position is its small office building, a formal tram shelter located at the edge of the center of the city, which even as a nearby seventeenth century church is one of the few architectural remnants of pre-war Hoogvliet. Although home based in the locale itself, the WiMBY! designers are situated within a national and international community of urban planners, architects and urban designers (see also Van Deusen 2002:150).
Figure 1. Life-sized photographs of local inhabitants on display on a apartment building in Hoogvliet.
In the work of WiMBY! visual media play a prominent part. The collective hereby alludes to the economy and ecology of signs, images and meanings, which, according to WiMBY!, distinguishes the contemporary city. By way of transforming public space into a “modern medium for visual communication and ornamental art” the “complex reality” and “identity” of Hoogvliet is revealed. Since the start in 2001 several visual projects were launched, which can be regarded as interventions into the existing physical structure of the city. Setting Hoogvliet within a ‘family’ of planning concepts, like the new towns, Tabantstädte, garden cities and villes nouvelles, a town-planning design was drawn up. Tracing the ‘soul’ and ‘emotional grammar’ of the city, the plan described Hoogvliet as a layered structure, in which a natural landscape, remnants of the old dike village and modern planning structures coexist. The current redevelopment of the area was considered to be a work of building upon the existing spatial and phyisical structure and adding another layer. Hence, partly based on research among the residents of Hoogvliet, the plan highlights and preserves the existing structure in which buffer zones mark the boundaries of neighborhoods. The spatial identity of Hoogvliet is found in the physical layout of the city, in which traffic circulation, public spaces and the neighborhood concept play a key role, the nearby industrial and petrochemical complexes, and the natural landscape.
WiMBY! also makes intensive use of so-called ‘functional objects’, used to hide construction activity from public view, such as sound-deadening screens and fences used for covering building façades. For example, life sized portraits of residents and the interior of housing apartments were placed on the façade of apartment blocks. These screens not only were meant to hide the physical consequences of the redevelopment from public view, but also acted as ‘skins of a visual impression democracy’ (Miller 2002:145), which publicly displayed private worlds and transformed individual residents into public figures. WiMBY! also uses urban design to symbolize the history of Hoogvliet. At a crossroad a symbolic object was erected, called ‘post Elemans’, names after the ex-chairman of the municipality, a popular figure among the local population. Furthermore, a lightning plan for public locations was meant to “unfold” and accentuate in a “panoramic fashion” the “historical and future identity” of the city, which is marked by a “continuous process of construction and reconstruction”. WiMBY! also launched several ideas for temporary architectural objects, such as a ‘parasites’-project for flexible school buildings, and an extravagant but never realized plan for a ‘pilot plant’ as part of a future ‘highway city’, a petrochemical installation, supported by large elephant legs and designed as an amphitheatre, and to be located between the residential area and an industrial complex. Recently a plan for a summer camp was realized, which ought to enliven the quiet streetscape of Hoogvliet and provide local residents with a meeting place. The design included a large-sized billboard, which, inspired by the iconography of the famous Hollywood sign, showed the letters of ‘HOOGVLIET’ above a nearby highway. In the façade of the building tree silhouettes were cut out, the rooftop showed the skyline of an industrial landscape, and on top of the
building two large placards were placed of a rising and setting sun. Projects like these emphasized Hoogvliet as a city never finished; a place of “lost ambitions’ and “undeveloped possibilities”.
Figure 2. Picture in co-housing design of the Puttersflat in Hoogvliet.
Figure 3. Image campaign ‘Totally Hoogvliet’.
These visual and symbolic projects thus signal a design strategy, in which architecture is used to highlight the physical uniqueness and disclose the social and ethnic diversity of a particular place. Exemplary for this emancipatory objective of WiMBY! is a rough draft for the redevelopment of four maisonnette flats, located in the rundown neighborhood of Oudeland, into new collective living spaces, in which the borders between public, parochial and private places are being redefined. The galleries are designed as whereabouts, glass panels facilitate social control in communal places, so-called ‘cluster zones’ make room for casual encounters and avoidances, and sliding walls make it possible for residents to “manage” their privacy. The future residents of the project are being recruited from so-called ‘search groups’, each of them are allocated a separate compartment. Older people live next to young ones, single Antillian teenage mothers live above ‘free spirits’ (or artists), and ‘pre-Yuppies’ (young, urban, but not very professional) live below ‘short stayers’, who are temporarily sent on secondment. Although the project had to be launched from the start as an optimistic and self-respective community, its realization was seriously delayed. The housing corporation suffered from a personnel shortage, and at the beginning of this year the borough decided to allocate part of the complex to prostitutes from the inner city of Rotterdam. Possibilities for incorporating the brothel into the original plan met with resistance. The wish of the foundation, responsible for the relocation, to place the prostitutes into isolated floors didn’t fit the ‘high tolerance grade’ of the project, which was meant to stimulate communication and interaction between its residents.
Not in my back yard: dreaming a middle-class community
At the end of the 1990s the largest housing corporation in the area initiated a programme under the title of ‘Neighbourhood Identity and Branding’, a threefold search to the ‘emotional logic’ of Hoogvliet. Two historians traced the historical roots of the city, an external entrepreneur organized a three day branding session to unearth the unique selling points of the area, and a marketing agency put the new brand name to the test by using marketing sessions in which lifestyle arrangements were mapped out. The program, just like the design strategy of WiMBY!, is a search for the genius loci of a place and its people. However, the branding strategists had a different objective in mind. Following earlier forms of place marketing strategies, the program initially attempted to reposition and re-profile a neighborhood as a brand name; a credible and appealing new profile, replacing the negative stigma and attracting middle class segments from the wider region (Gold & Ward 1994). However, as used in the semi-public sector of urban renewal, branding is worked out in a remarkable fashion.
During the first phase two historians traced the historical roots of Hoogvliet. Using a model derived from the French Annales School, in which three layers are identified
(territorial soil, undercurrent, current situation), Hoogvliet is described as a fragmented location or “crumbled being”. According to the model, the soil and undercurrent of an area make up the identity of a place, in which the “experiences, facts and circumstances from the past” consciously or unconsciously are being “transmitted into the collective consciousness of an area and its people” (Van den Brink 2003:11). The report sketches a mental topography, in which the identity of Hoogvliet is traced back to three sorts of “fault planes”. One of the most cited dividing lines is the one between the northern and southern part of Hoogvliet. The north of Hoogvliet is seen as a heterogeneous urban milieu, peopled by socially and economically marginal groups. One of the eight quarters of Hoogvliet, for example, is described as a place of “closed windows”, “desert gardens” full of shopping bags, and peopled by “many confused looking men and women”. Other quarters are described as areas of “unsafe streets”, characterized by a “dull” streetscape, “chilly atmosphere” and a “moderate social cohesion”. The southern part of Hoogvliet, on the other hand, is known for its “quiet” and “green” atmosphere, peopled by a mono cultural community of “suburbians”. Boomgaardshoek, an area developed in the 1980s, is described as a “cozy” and “snug” “sitting room” for “white well-to-do working men”. The quarter of Middengebied, which houses mainly two income families, is displayed as “organically grown”, “quiet” and “good-natured”. A second dividing line characterising Hoogvliet relates to the mental and geographical distance between satellite town of Hoogvliet and its mother town, the city of Rotterdam. Compared with more recent urban developments, such as the newly developed VINEX-areas, Hoogvliet is portrayed as featuring “spirited” and “community minded” residents, “simple”, “docile” and “inwardly orientated”. The third dividing line points to Hoogvliet as an area in which a pastoral and pre-industrial landscape of polders, dikes and villages, and a regional industrial infrastructure of docklands, industry, highways and railroad tracks coexist. After completion, the historical report was kept silent. The report painted a less appealing portrait of Hoogvliet than the client was looking for. The image of Hoogvliet as having a “fragile” territorial soil didn’t fit with the good spirited and forward looking appeal of the regeneration program.
Following the historical research an external entrepreneur organized a three day branding session, in which the unique selling points of the area were identified. The branding strategy used in Hoogvliet was aimed at the collection, visualization and communication of ideas and values local residents and professionals attach to the neighborhood. The entrepreneurs referred to branding as a ‘pressure cooker’, in which in a relatively short and intensive period of time an appealing and credible ‘linking concept’ was drawn up. During three days a group of eighty people living or working in the area, varying from residents to social workers, police officers and municipal officials, answered questions about the wishes, values and associations they attach to their current and ideal living environment. A “creative team” of artists translated the given answers into cartoonist images. This use of visual material was meant to eradicate differences in social status or
communication skills among participants. The sessions eventually led to the identification of five core values, each one supposedly covering the existing or lurking social and physical characteristics of the neighborhood. The genius loci of Hoogvliet are found, just as in the work of WiMBY!, in a conception of the emancipatory community. For example, values like ‘self-respect’ (explained in terms such as ‘equality’, ‘self-willed’ and ‘tolerant’)’, ‘determined’ (‘be a captain of one’s soul’) and ‘adventure’ (‘doing things special, ‘pioneering’, ‘moving up’) are used as encouraging and activating slogans, making an appeal to residents and professionals to make a new start, to begin with fresh courage, and to set a new constructive and pragmatic course. The other two core values, such as ‘home base’ and ‘joining’ accentuate Hoogvliet as a close social community.
The results of the branding session were put to the test by a series of sessions in which a marketing and research bureau, Smart Agent, mapped out potential lifestyles and living milieus. The bureau works with a Brand Strategy Research-model, by which segments of the Dutch population are distinguished on the base of normative qualifications, such as degree of group orientation and association with the ‘dominant values’ of Dutch society. Searching for potential residents in the regional market, the ‘new Hoogvlieter’ was found mainly in lifestyle types, such as ‘co-habitans’ en ‘embedded ones’, people or households who, in accordance with the brand values, are strongly oriented towards group and community. The core values and lifestyle segments were then reworked into six ‘living arrangements’. For example, the Private Community is designed for people, who don’t want their neighbors around all the time and who don’t want to be disturbed in their private back garden. The Living Square is a design for dwellings with private back yards, grouped around a “comfortable square”, where people “are willing to help each other out”. For the future residents of the Free State freedom is seen as crucial; they “do want they want to”. Next to these exclusive environments, the plan incorporates also a ‘basic assortment’ of living arrangements. Within the Protected Collectivity, for example, children are free to play and neighbors may strike up a conversation in the back garden “once in a while”. The dwelling concept of Convenience affords comfortable apartments on the edge of the city. And Home in the City is the most urban inspired milieu, where “people are not the same”. These six sketches are stored as ‘dream images’ in a booklet with a limited edition, which, together with the core values of the ‘branding’-sessions, are meant as a guide and inspiration for architects.
The further implementation of the new brand name, however, caused several problems. According to several staff members of the municipality, branding contributed to a ‘refreshment’ of the administrative system. Announced by the branding strategists as a ‘rafting trip’, breaking with the ‘soporific’, ‘tardy’ and ‘syrupy’ municipal decision processes, participants also described branding as a ‘vitalizing’ en ‘prosperous’ process, taking away mutual distrust. Furthermore, branding, especially the use of visual material, was considered to energize and stimulate solidarity. People working in the front office of the
local housing corporation, however, were sceptical about the core values, which according to them were too broadly formulated. The brand until now also did not directly materialize into a building program, since the core values, as the most tangible symbols of the new neighborhood profile, are difficult to translate into the hard, physical structure and architecture of the neighborhood. Nevertheless, the sketch plans for new construction do reflect an ideology, which, other than in the work of WiMBY!, is more based on a homogenous conception of ‘mainstream’ society. Recently, the municipality and two housing corporations started a marketing campaign under the heading of ‘Totally Hoogvliet’, by which the first new constructions are put into the market (see figure). The first sprout is an exclusive apartment complex, called Northern Beacon. The promotional material expressly positions the project within an oasis of rivers and village green. The pictures show the most desired buyers of these apartments: relaxed looking older couples and double-income couples with small children. Turning its back on Hoogvliet itself, the potential buyer finds himself far removed from the nearby petrochemical industry or the activity of home based prostitutes.
Conclusion
The current regeneration of post-war housing estates is aimed at the transformation of a, according to popular stereotypes, monotonous cityscape into a differentiated area, appealing to middle class segments of society. The above described design strategies in different ways are a discursive construction of the community as a social and spatial entity. In each case an attempt is made to highlight the identity and collective consciousness of a place and its people, as well as to anchor social groupings in space and to accommodate differences in income, tastes, norms and life styles. These identity strategies are, to quote Doreen Massey, “an attempt to fix the meaning of places, to enclose and defend them” (Massey, 1994:168). However, the ideological foundation of both projects differs. Behind the co-housing-strategy of WiMBY! lies an urban ethos, in a strong sense focused on participation in the public or parochial sphere, as well a social-democratic ideal of emancipation and integration. The dream images of SmartAgent, on the other hand, are guided by an neo-liberal ideology, almost suburban in character, mainly directed at the dominant values of mainstream society. The community concept here comes close to what Richard Sennett calls a puritan ethic, a strong belief in the emotional cohesion and shared values of a community (Sennett 1970). Although social-democratic principles of emancipation and participation are firmly rooted in the politics of urban renewal, the entrepreneuralist discourse of branding and lifestyle conceptions points towards the coming of age of a hybrid policy, in which emphasis is shifted from an ideology of mixing and integration to one of dividing and segregation. Metaphors like the patchwork and mosaic,
which are often found in architectural outlets, hereby replace conceptions of cultural mixing, such as the ‘melting pot’, which for a long time dominated the discourse on urban renewal. The post-war housing project is being regenerated into a differentiated place, a patchwork of neighborhoods so to say, stitched together with milled edges, but still in search for its underlying pattern.
References
Arefi, M. 1999. ‘Non-place and placelessness as narratives of loss: rethinking the notion of place’. Journal of urban design, 4(2):179-193.
Ashworth, G.J. en H. Voogd. 1990. Selling the city. Marketing approaches in public sector urban planning. London: Belhaven Press.
Barnes, T.J. & J.S. Duncan (eds.). 1992. Writing worlds. Discourse, text and metaphor in the representation of landscape. London: Routledge.
Blake, P. 1974. Form follows fiasco. Why modern architecture hasn't worked. Boston: Little, Brown and Company.
Boomkens, R. (ed.). 1993. Ontwerpen voor de onmogelijke stad. Amsterdam: De Balie.
Brink, J. v.d.. 2003. Hoogvliet. Bloem zonder wortels (Hoogvliet: flower without roots). Huizen: The History Store.
Casey, E.S. 1998. The fate of place. A philosophical history. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Choay, F. 1965. L’urbanisme, utopies et réalités. Une anthologie. Paris: Editions du Seuil. Deusen Jr., R. v. 2002. ‘Public space design as class warfare: urban design, the ‘right to the
city’ and the production of Clinton Square, Syracuse, NY.’ GeoJournal, 58:149-158. Eade, J. & C. Mele (eds.). 2002. Understanding the city. Contemporary and future perspectives.
Oxford and Malden: Blackwell.
Easthope, H. 2004. ‘A place called home.’ Housing, theory and society, 20(3):128-138.
English, P.W. & R.C. Mayfield (eds.). 1972. Man, space and environment. Concepts in contemporary human geography. New York: Oxford University Press.
Fainstein, S.S. 2005. ‘Cities and diversity: should we want it? Can we plan for it?’. Urban affairs review, 41(1):3-19.
Gold, J.R. & S.V. Ward (eds.). 1994. Place promotion. The use of publicity and marketing to sell towns and regions. Chichester: Wiley.
Greenberg, M. 2000. ‘Branding cities: a social history of the urban lifestyle magazine’. Urban affairs review, 36(2):228-263.
Hannigan, J. 2003. ‘Symposium on branding, the entertainment economy and urban place building’. International journal of urban and regional research, 27(2):352-360.
Haworth, A. & T. Manzi. 1999. ‘Managing the ‘underclass’: interpreting the moral discourse of housing management’. Urban studies, 36(1):153-165.
Hillier, J. 2001. ‘Imagined value: the poetics and politics of place.’ In A. Madanipour, P. Healey & A. Hill (eds.), The governance of place. Space and planning processes, pp. 69-101. Aldershot: Ashgate.
Imrie, R., S. Pinch & M. Boyle. 1996. ‘Identities, citizenship and power in the cities.’ Urban studies, 33(8):1255-1261.
International Building Exhibition Rotterdam-Hoogvliet. 2000. Wimby! Welcome into my backyard! Rotterdam: Nai Uitgevers.
Jacobs, J. 1994 (1961). The death and life of great American cities. London: Penguin.
Jacobs, K. 2002. ‘Subjectivity and the transformation of urban spatial experience.’ Housing, theory and society, 19:102-111.
Jacobs, K. & T. Manzi. 1996. ‘Discourse and policy change: the significance of language for housing research’. Housing studies, 11(4):543-560.
Jivén, G. & P.J. Larkham. 2003. ‘Sense of place, authenticity and character: a commentary.’ Journal of urban design, 8(1):67-81.
Julier, G. 2005. ‘Urban designscapes and the production of aesthetic consent’. Urban studies, 42(5/6):869-887.
Kaliski, J. 1999. ‘The present city and the practice of city design.’ In: J. Chase, M. Crawford & J. Kaliski (eds.), Everyday urbanism, pp. 88-109. New York: The Monacelli Press. King, A.D. (ed.). 1996. Re-presenting the city. Ethnicity, capital and culture in the 21st century.
London: MacMillan.
Kruythoff, H. 2003. “Dutch urban restructuring policy in action against socio-spatial segregation: sense or nonsense?” European journal of housing policy.
Lefebvre, H. 1984 (1974). The social production of space. Oxford and London: Blackwell. Löw, M. 2001. Raumsoziologie. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.
Low, S.M. 1996. ‘Spatializing culture: the social production and social construction of public space in Costa Rica.’ American ethnologist, 23(4):861-879.
Madanipour, A. 1996. Design of urban space. An inquiry into a socio-spatial process. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons.
Mandelker, A. 2000. ‘Writing urban spaces: ‘street graphics and the law’ as postmodern design and ordinance.’ Journal of law and policy, 3:403-414.
Massey, D. 1994. Space, place and gender. Cambridge: Polity Press.
McCarthy, J. 1998. ‘Reconstruction, regeneration and re-imaging: the case of Rotterdam.’ Cities, 15(5):337-344.
Miller, K. 2002. ‘Condemning the public: design and New York’s new 42nd Street.’ GeoJournal, 58:139-148.
Mommaas, H. 2001. ‘Over de culturele dimensie van ruimte: of hoe die te begrijpen en wat daarmee te doen.’ In: Levende stad. Tien essays over netwerkverstedelijking. Deel 3: lagen en dimensies: pijlers voor netwerkverstedelijking, pp. 142-199. The Hague: Ministerie van VROM.
Oswald, L.R. 1996. ‘The place and space of consumption in a material world.’ Design issues, 12(1):48-62.
Paddison, R. 1993. ‘City marketing, image reconstruction and urban regeneration.’ Urban studies, 30(2):339-350.
Reinders, L. 2004. ‘Baby Bronks: place and identity in a Parisian banlieue.’ In Frank Eckardt & Dieter Hassenpflug (eds.), The European city in transition. Urbanism and globalization, pp. 151-173. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.
Reinders, L. 2005. ‘De verbeelding van een nieuwe stad: identiteitstrategieën en de transformatie van naoorlogse wijken’. In: Huib Ernste & Frans Boekema (ed.), De
cultuur van de lokale economie, de economie van de lokale cultuur, pp. 179-201. Assen: Van Gorcum.
Rooney, J.A. 1995. ‘Branding: a trend for today and tomorrow.’ Journal of product and brand management, 4(4):48-55.
Sennett, Richard. 1970. The uses of disorder. Personal identity and city life. London: Allen Lane. Veldboer, L., R. Kleinhans & J.W. Duyvendak. 2002. “The diversified neighbourhood in
western Europe and the United States.” Journal of international migration and integration, 3(1):41-64.
Wal, Harmen van de, Duzan Doepel & Machiel van Dorst. 2004. Putterflats. Een studie naar nieuwe wooncollectieven. Rotterdam: ADD / Krill to your WiMBY!
Westwood, S. & J. Williams (eds.). 1997. Imagining cities. Scripts, signs, memory. London and New York: Routledge.
Wirth-Nesher, H. 2001. ‘Impartial maps: reading and writing cities.’ In: R. Paddison (ed.), Handbook of urban studies, pp. 52-66, London, Thousand Oaks and New Delhi: Sage. Young, C. & J. Lever. 1997. ‘Place promotion, economic location and the consumption of city
image.’ Tijdschrift voor economische en sociale geografie, 88(4):332-341. Zukin, S. 1995. The cultures of cities. Cambridge, Mass. And Oxford: Blackwell.
