Spatial horror scenario’s

Experienced by driving on 24 March 2015:

Got a phone call of a researcher. She wanted to know my opinion on a campaign Amsterdam Citymarketing is starting to bring tourists to unknown neigborhoods in Amsterdam. They’re aiming at relieving the pressure on the inner city with all its museums, theatres, shops and hotels. People living there are complaining. And yes, tourism is booming business. I told her you don’t have to campaign, because it is already happening spontaneously. Tourists are renting bikes nowadays. Better leave it, because the next problem will be nineteenth century neighborhoods like De Pijp becoming tourist destinations too. With tourists flocking in, all these neighborhoods will lose their creative, gentrified ‘authentic’ character. By campaigning, you will only speed up this process. Moreover, Amsterdam as a total will become even more a tourist destination. Tourists from all over the world will think: it’s such a great city, with so many opportunities in all these neighborhoods, which means they will stay even longer. The result will be that tourism in the inner city will not decrease at all, but will double instead, no triple, will profit from these campaigns anyway. She said she had never thought it that way. I think she was perplexed.

Such an ingenious thinking of those city marketeers. It reminded me of post-war planning in the Netherlands. Planners thought it would be better to distribute housing and business more evenly over the country in order to relieve the pressure on the biggest cities in the Western part of the country (Amsterdam and Rotterdam). The state took the lead and started building new towns and industrial growth poles, favouring peripheral regions, subsidizing culture, companies, infrastructure and municipalities in poor and outlying  provinces. Now let’s see what has come out of it. Drive through this small country and be honest: it has become one big mess, one big traffic jam, congestion everywhere, even in Groningen and Drenthe. And no problem whatsoever has been solved. Policies aiming at dispersing activities always result in the opposite.  In the end they are no less than spatial horror scenario’s. Better concentrate things, better build great cities, focus on great inner cities, add more quality, and enjoy!