Antwerp - A city to live in, Patrick Janssens

Exploring new concepts for the city

The Strategic Spatial Structure Plan

Antwerp - a city to live in

Mayor of Antwerp Patrick Janssens explains the city’s approach to maintaining its appeal

Turning Antwerp into the best living environment for people from different walks of life, starts with its physical spaces. The most powerful instruments to create an attractive urban living environment are spatial planning, urban design and architecture, because human behaviour is considerably influenced by its surroundings.

What applies at the micro level (a house) and at the meso level (a school or company), is also applicable at the macro level (a city). But there are differences: families, companies and organisations can move to other dwellings and other locations to change. It is more difficult 
for a city to do anything similar. However a city can change to rebuild itself, and that is what Antwerp is doing. The municipal authority’s role is to steer and maintain this process based on a clear partnership with the city, private investors, and individuals.

City by the River

The municipal authority has had an ambitious vision for the filled-in docks area known as Zuiderdokken and the Scheldt quays for fifteen years; this part of Antwerp’s public realm was the focus of an urban design competition ‘Stad aan de Stroom’ (City by the River) in 1990. The fact that these plans have not materialised is due to a reluctant attitude to change by the municipal authorities during the 1990s.

We know now that the city has a duty to invest in the quality of the municipal public realm – with or without the assistance of other authorities and private partners. Today we need to look at the development and revival of our districts, much as our predecessors did at the end of the nineteenth century, when they started developing the Zuid district. This is based on a global vision for the district and the city by a confident city council, capable of managing this responsibility. Spatial planning and design is so important for the future of a city and this is the reason for the authority to take a more pro-active role - a city council with ‘a plan-based’ approach, creating a clear framework and setting goals. But the public authorities cannot achieve everything alone. Within the framework laid down by the city council, all players can be given the opportunity to work together to create a better city. This is about policies based on city-wide goals, through strategic projects and aims, down to individual dwellings. In recent years the city council has laid the foundations for such a policy in Antwerp, all we need to do in the future is be a little more ambitious about the city’s role.

The structure plan vision

At the end of 2006, Antwerp Council approved the Strategic Spatial Structure Plan -the result of long and intensive work, and it serves as the foundation for many radical choices during the coming decades. This spatial policy determines the vision of the city’s desired development, and is based on careful analysis of the city at various scales, its needs, but also its strengths and opportunities. The structure plan designs tomorrow’s city and translates this into a tangible action plan and projects. Being a spatial plan, the structure plan will determine the city’s future alongside the social-economic vision.

Experts have worked for more than three years putting this plan together under the supervision of the Italian partnership Secchi-Vigano. ‘Antwerpen Ontwerpen’ (Restructuring Antwerp) represents tomorrow’s city on paper, in writing and in drawings. The challenges are known: the city needs more green space; it needs to reconnect with its water; priority should be given to public transport; new inhabitants are required to invigorate the city; and the port and the economy must be strengthened. Antwerp needs to continuously reinforce its positive worldwide image as a fashion city, a port city and a diamond city. The structure plan takes into account how the city has developed over time and the major infrastructure works of recent years. But it also constitutes the beginning of a new design for the city, based on its existing status (port city, water city, and rail city) along with new concepts (an eco-city, a porous city, and metropolis). It explores the relation between the city and its port and, the relation between the city and its river. This will impact on the way that Antwerp looks, but also on how the city and its population function as one. Living together in a contemporary manner is what Antwerp is all about, and is at the core of the structure plan.

The structure plan is also about the interaction between the city and the suburbs - a combination of a pleasant city to live in and a popular city centre. It shows how economic activities go hand-in-hand with living and open space, and where this is not possible. It defines a city with space for entrepreneurs and industry, athletes and culture lovers. It also explains how owners and tenants can live together, with mutual tolerance between people of different backgrounds, ages, origins and cultures; how the complexity of a metropolis should not undermine the secure familiarity of each district; and how to optimise its accessibility and liveability for pedestrians and cyclists.

Urban strategic projects

An equally important aspect of this policy framework is made up of large urban development projects, aimed at improving city life to make it more pleasant. A number of housing projects, which are already in the pipeline, will have the same radical impact on the city as the successive nineteenth century urban developments. Aimed at reinforcing our city’s diversity, thousands of new dwellings will be built and to the highest quality. Today we find ourselves making the same choices as our predecessors did a century ago for the Zuid and other districts throughout the city. Our policy choices need to be determined by a drive for high quality, so that these newly built districts continue to be viable in one hundred years’ time.

By definition, a city like Antwerp is highly suitable for families of every possible composition. More than ever, it needs to make affordable and comfortable housing available to all, but the city will have to invest in one target group in the near future: young double income families with children. It is crucial that we retain these families in the city; or perhaps more ambitiously, that we convince these families to move to the city.

We do not only need to increase the amount of good housing. The urban housing policy will have to cherish a second, bigger ambition in coming years: to counter the increasing social segregation in the city. During the 1950s and 1960s, the gap between owner-occupiers and people who could not easily find housing was closed by the construction of large social housing projects. Today, these districts are characterised by a majority of the more vulnerable sections of our society. Conversely, the upgrading of other districts including the city centre has led to a major concentration of people with higher incomes elsewhere, and people who are financially less secure being pushed out. We need to change this segregation and to strive towards a balanced population structure in districts and thus a more varied housing offer.

If our housing and its surroundings exude contemporary quality, the city has numerous assets at its disposal to convince people who could afford to leave the city, to stay. We want them to prefer the hustle and bustle and creativity of city life to the relative peace and quiet, and the daily traffic queues of the suburbs.

Patrick Janssens is Mayor of Antwerp