Samenvatting

‘Dreaming of Modernism, a strategic vision for Amsterdam Southeast’ is a reflection and a looking forward in the tradition of urban planning, starting from a fascination for the Bijlmer, as Amsterdam Southeast is commonly known, as the most extensive and youngest urban expansion of the last century. The focus is on the framework, the segregated whole grown out of functional zoning and a graded traffic network with raised driveways and separate routes for walking, cycling and slow traffic. To accommodate further growth in ways that meet the needs and wishes of the inhabitants, the compartments that now make up the spatial layout need to become more flexible inward and outward. The infrastructural borders must become places of transition and unifiers in an urban sense, also with the larger city of Amsterdam. This vision is built on a thorough study of the ‘dreven’, as the driveways and main roads in Amsterdam Southeast are called. By reshaping and replanning the profiles of these space-consuming corridors room is created for urban zones of a varied nature, a possible mix of scales, functions, and programs, free from forced planning or regulated design, so open for desired inclusive developments. The zones of transition thereby contribute to a transformation of present-day compartments, but also to change of larger sectors like the H-Buurt in Bijlmer West or the Gaasperplas area. In the green zones the routes for walking and cycling will become safer and more embedded through better defined edges of the open spaces. By acting on different scales this strategic vision discloses a framework for urban dynamics that seemed lost or only hard-won for Amsterdam Southeast for a long time.