The main issue at stake in Zuilen was a combination of physical, economic and social problems. Each increasing the others.

Other problems:

Covered areas are:

Zuilen is a district of Utrecht that is at some distance of the city centre and has both pre-WWII housing and post-WWII houses. It has about 22.000 inhabitants.

In the middle of the nineties of the last century living conditions in Zuilen were deteriorating. Main problems were: nuisance by youths on the streets and squares, delinquency, concentrations of cheap houses, public areas in bad shape.

There was a tendency for people who could afford it to look for housing in other parts of the city or in nearby other cities.

The most outstanding characteristic of the approach in Zuilen was that the city government (or rather the management of the district-bureau of the city government) formed a coalition with 3 commercial property developers and 2 housing associations to counter the negative developments.

The area was selected for intervention because the commercial developers had property in this area. Also because the housing associations had difficulty in maintaining the quality of life for their tenants in this district. At the same time the city government had decided to develop a new district-oriented way of approach and saw that Zuilen was in a deteriorating spiral but had a potential of being a city district with a good mix of poor and rich, housing owners and tenants, inhabitants with Dutch origin and immigrants.

The main strategy of the coalition was to add houses in a more expensive segment of the market. By doing so, it was expected that the district would become more attractive for people with higher education and higher incomes. In that way the district would stop to be more and more exclusively accommodating deprived people.

The building of new houses and the replacement of bad and old houses by new ones produced an atmosphere of optimism in the district. Inhabitants and visitors of the district can see that a lot of investments take place, and can see (and experience!) the by-products of these investments in the sphere of attractiveness of the area in physical and social aspects.

Apart from the production of apartment-buildings and single family houses a new shopping centre was built and a lot of investments have taken place in the public space in the district.

The measures have succeeded in reducing the problems, but for a sustainable continuation of the improved circumstances it proved necessary to extend the measures with more measures in the social and economic spheres.

The project is an integrated project in two aspects: many partners co-operating and measures taken in many areas.
Partners co-operating were (are) the city government (especially the management of the district office), three property developers (market parties) and two (later one) housing associations.
The program consisted mainly of building new houses, but also contained many investments in improvement of public space. Annex to the program itself the police invested in extra personnel in the district and the city government invested in social improvement programs.

The co-operation in the district development plan of Zuilen has been organised in a structure of mutual consultation in a management team wherein all parties are represented. Supervising the management team is a board of directors among whom the alderman of the city council and the general directors of the market parties and the housing associations. The parties have all signed an agreement of co-operation. There has not been any form of institutional combination of capital. Projects are all dealt with separately. Each party invests in own projects only.

Public consultation plays a key roll in Zuilen. Not yet in the formulation of the district development plan, but in the beginning years of the first projects inhabitants of Zuilen demanded more say in all the projects. In this period a practice has been developed whereby from the very first ideas about possible development projects inhabitants are invited to participate in the planning proces. Often large public meetings form the start, followed by designing and consulting sessions with groups of more deeply interested citizens. The result is often that a broad support for the development plans is established.

The experience in Zuilen is that inhabitants of Moroccan origin hardly participate in discussions of this type. Mainly because their mastering of the Dutch language is insufficient. On the other hand the development and building of a new mosque for the Moroccan Muslims in Zuilen had been a project with a lot of moral support from the other inhabitants of Zuilen, partly because the parties in the district development plan have supported and organised various intercultural meetings.

The physical strategies in Zuilen were designed to contribute to the solution of the whole range of problems: to improve the housing stock, to contribute to a better quality of the public space in the district, to generate better opportunities for development of retail shops, and to improve social relations by all kinds of neighbourhood projects like street barbecues.

In a sense it can be remarked that most of the investments in the sphere of the district development plan were in the physical category. It is a result of the partners that came together in the beginning, and also it is a strategy with clear and well predictable and measurable results. Direct investments in the social sector (apart from investments in buildings with social purposes) lack the predictability of measurable results.

Since the beginning of the district development plan in Zuilen some 1300 houses and apartments were built. Most of these under the auspices of the parties of the district development plan. Given a total of about 10.000 habitations 13 % was renewed. There are plans to continue with new building projects.

As a result of the projects in Zuilen, Zuilen is no longer considered as a deprived urban area. It is now considered as a well mixed district in transition with the optimism that attaches to new parts of the city and the characteristic atmosphere of older parts of the city.

Living standards have remained more or less on the level of 10 years ago, whilst a rapid decrease was expected. The average value of the houses in Zuilen has risen compared to the average value of houses in the whole of Utrecht.

The parties of the district development plan are very content about the results. Most importantly it has proved possible to produce a whole range of concrete results without too much delay because of the need for discussions between the partners. Inhabitants of Zuilen stressed that the goals of the district development plan and the methods are all right, but that more has to be done, especially in the social context.

The success of the project was limited because the measures in the social environment have been very limited in scope. It has proven very difficult to g enerate enough means for an accelerated integration process of the Moroccan community (many problems are related with the cultural differences between the inhabitants of Moroccan origin and those of Dutch origin).

Beneficiaries are the inhabitants of Zuilen. Plus the city government and the housing associations, because they have a more sustainable district and a better housing stock. The market parties benefit because of their profits.

Resources were: means of the EU, means of the government of the Netherlands, means of the city of Utrecht and means of the housing associations. Investments of the property developers were largely commercial investments with a good return on investment.

EU involvement was limited, except that a substantial part of the investments in the public space were made possible through EU subsidies.

Gemeente Utrecht
Wijkbureau Noordwest, POBox 8395
3503 RJ Utrecht
Phone: +3130 286 90 20
Herman van 't Spijker (secondary chairperson of the management team of the district development plan), tel. +31 30 2869034

//1996

case

Urban Policy > Urban environment

Urban renewal