This summer I was visiting Kendari, a port city in Sulawesi, Indonesia. Twenty years ago a modest city as big as Groningen, now ten times as big. This city has grown organically. Every initiative that had access to money got the space, every initiative that didn't have that access stayed in the meantime. It was fascinating to see, as pure as the spontaneous city showed itself here. And it hurt, rarely did a visit to a city hurt so much.
I walked along the river, where an ambitious mayor had opened a promenade a few years ago. It was supposed to set in motion a development that never happened: the concrete crumbled under the gentle pressure of rising weeds. In between new shops I saw a woman shyly walking towards the river; her hut behind the shops was never connected to the water and the sewers. On this walk I really felt that organic area development is not much different from opportunistic land grabbing. Here they worked on the face of the city, while her soul was taken from her.
In between
Maybe this is cheap, this comparison with a city without a planning tradition. Still, I couldn't get around it. After years in which the meantime became a celebrated concept, a way to protect areas from further decay and to prevent a decline in value, the mood has changed. Now that increasing value is in sight again, gentrification is also becoming the norm. Plans are being put forward to offer sustainably bad neighbourhoods cheaply to the creative sector in order to later be able to collect the value they create. A creative sector that was just pioneering in another neighbourhood.
Keep me for better: the creative sector is important for a city like Rotterdam. As an economic force, for turnover, as a magnet, for appeal and as a cultural engine, for imagination. It makes the city optimistic, exciting and interesting. And it gives the people in the city space, perspective and skills. And if neighbourhoods become more valuable as a result, that is only to be applauded. The question is, who benefits?
Cynical City Making
Affordable workplaces have meant a lot, good soil has been laid in Rotterdam over the past ten years. But that humus layer is not equally deep everywhere and has been washed away in no time. We see it in Amsterdam. They may be proud of the gentrification and the absurd price increases, but they are pushing everyone who depends on affordable space out of the city. The working-class neighbourhoods become expensive Vinex neighbourhoods, before you know it with the vibrancy of a dormitory city. The success of Amsterdam drives away the creative sector, then the families and finally its soul.
This way of urban making, where the optimistic pioneering of enterprising, creative people paves the way for, turns out to be both opportunistic and cynical. The creative sector is used as a starting engine, and is being driven through the city at an ever-increasing pace. The pioneers can invest, but not collect.
Is there any other way?
Can we improve the city sustainably and in a balanced way with creative rather than opportunistic area development? This means that the city and the creative sector together create a strategy to preserve affordable space, not only on the periphery, but throughout the city. A strategy which makes choices at the urban level: if the innovative manufacturing industry establishes itself in district A, it should not be brought to district B for a while. In short, let us raise our profile culturally.
There's more. The creative sector itself also has an interest in keeping workplaces affordable. Let's work on a way to turn that interest into a share: can the artists and designers become co-owners?
Maybe we can. But investments only make sense if we take the time to do so. If we not only race on spontaneity, but also dare to stick to choices. The art is to develop creatively - the rules of that art have yet to be written.