EUKN - France - What makes a city? Planning for ‘quality of place’

What makes a city? Planning for ‘quality of place’

Introduction

‘Urban quality’ is considered a key asset for a competitive city. When trying to create a qualitatively outstanding urban environment, many large urban redevelopment projects seem to fail to take into account the user’s perspective. This study uses Richard Florida’s concept of ‘quality of place’ to analyse three large urban redevelopment projects in central city areas – the (re)development of station areas in Amsterdam and Rotterdam in the Netherlands and in Lille in France. The study advocates a more open and flexible planning process, based on a long-term perspective on urban quality.

Description

The study investigates the relationship between urban spatial policy and urban economy in the light of the requirements of the ‘creative’ service economy. It aims to answer the following question:

To what extent, and how, does the concept of quality of place play a role in current large-scale urban redevelopment?

The concept of quality of place is given a lot of attention, as is the criticism that Richard Florida’s research has attracted. Three cases of station redevelopment are analysed:

Amsterdam Zuidas
Euralille
Rotterdam Centraal

In all three cases redevelopment was triggered by the construction of the new high speed train network between France and the Netherlands.

Conclusions

Private developers show a genuine interest in quality of place and are streets ahead of the stereotypical short term money maker. This can be partially explained by the fact that the representatives of the developers have the same educational background as the architects and designers.
Large scale urban redevelopment projects aiming to achieve a certain level of urban quality need to be based upon an elaborate urban design, a masterplan. Implementation of this masterplan should be monitored by a publicly commissioned urban design supervisor.
Despite the above mentioned private interest in quality of place issues, it is advisable to keep the responsibility for the grand design in hands of the local government. Some of the elements that need to be dealt with in the masterplan could conflict with the individual, mostly short term interests of the developers.
When planning a large urban redevelopment project, incrementalism should be balanced with the need to come to a grand urban design. As mentioned above, an elaborate urban design is necessary. But every individual project still needs to be able to absorb all sorts of expected and unexpected changes. The nature of the approach that should be adopted is that of a guided evolution rather than straightforward development.

Contact info

Delft University of Technology - OTB Research Institute for Housing, Urban and Mobility Studies
Mr Jan Jacob Trip (Researcher), tel. j.j.trip@tudelft.nl

Publication date

20/03/2007

Project finished

Article info
ISBN: 9781586037161

Links

Please visit the OTB Research Institute for Housing, Urban and Mobility Studies website To obtain a copy of the publication, please visit the IOS Press website

Document type

research

Themes

Urban Policy > Urban environment > Urban renewal

Keywords

City centre development