I have recently returned from a cycling trip from Amsterdam to Rotterdam, writes Sadie Morgan. I went with a group of girlfriends who were keen to have some fun at the same time as learning some Dutch lessons in urban design and housing.
Like the UK, the Netherlands is just emerging from the 2008 recession. As it does, the country’s relentless pursuit of innovative and cutting-edge living continues. By the end of my stay I was sated by beautiful modern homes – perfect brick cubes with huge expanses of glass, oozing health and quality.
One wonders how the Dutch so consistently manage to get it so right.
Much of it is to do with connectivity, both physical and spatial. New developments are well served by good transport links and they have homes of high quality and variety, as well as places to work and sites for recreation and social infrastructure. Playgrounds seamlessly weave into the wide, tree-lined streets, populated with children (not cars!). It’s no surprise that a recent Unicef report states that Dutch children are the happiest in the world.
The Dutch municipalities obviously see it as their responsibility to create good homes and working conditions for their citizens. They lead and set the masterplanning framework and develop design-led spatial plans for extensions. With codes that describe volumes and heights, but not aesthetics, there is flexibility – and a lack of prescription on how people should live and plan their individual spaces.
Spatial plans are not new, of course. The Dutch, French and Danish are all used to providing them, often overseen by a City Architect.
Fit together
I had been searching for something similar as a commissioner on the Thames Estuary 2050 Growth Commission. I wanted to understand how all the new developments “fitted together” with the new transport infrastructure planned. I was able to see a large number of exciting and well-developed masterplans for specific areas, but no one map that showed them all. As I met and talked to developers and architects, it was clear that there is a lack of understanding about what, where and when things outside their own plot are happening.
It made me reflect upon the reticence over the past decade to lay things out, to commit to putting something down in anything other than the written word. We can produce thousands of reports and vision documents, but few contain hard information. They are often generic and open to interpretation. But the minute something is drawn, visualised or laid out on a map, there is no denying it – no potential for misunderstandings or misinterpretations. The beauty of a plan is that it helps you understand what the differing pressures of a project are from the outset. They can prove instrumental in averting potential clashes, but also in unlocking potential investment. With funders able to see an area mapped out as a whole, they are able to understand how developments fit into the existing and future picture.
In my work for the National Infrastructure Commission, I assumed (naively) that this type of information planning would be readily to hand in the UK, either nationally or at least regionally. How can you plan for new infrastructure or development without understanding the impact it has – or, better still, the opportunities it could unlock? How can you hope to collaborate with your neighbouring regions if many of the jigsaw pieces are missing? Why build a new transport link from A to B based on the shortest route, when a slight deviation via C would unlock a huge number of homes?
Strategic thinking
But such basic strategic thinking is surprisingly absent, with short-term and ill-informed decisions being made – often with dire and expensive consequences. More often than not, the missing ingredient is the structure needed in which to operate – and the sticky question of leadership: “governance” (or the lack of it). But as devolution takes hold and different groups fight for a slice of an ever-smaller pie, it will be those regions that are able to collectively make a case for investment that will be the ultimate winners. Putting aside the individual egos and learning to work together to achieve the best outcome would be a good start – that and making sure that decisions are made by a group of people that reflects the wonderful and enriching diversity of our nation.
Who knows, perhaps we can emulate the kind of well-organised, connected and creative solutions the Dutch have put in place? To do so, we will need to give creative thinkers more involvement in the government’s big strategic projects and bring an alternative perspective to increasingly complex problems. In doing so, we can push for less writing and more drawing – to commit to what we can see with our own eyes. Such planning may not be popular, but at least there is a clarity and transparency to it. And I, for one, would welcome it.
Sadie Morgan is a partner at dRMM Architects and design chair for HS2. She is a commissioner for both the National Infrastructure Commission and Thames Estuary 2050 Growth Commission.
