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The Ten‐Year Plan for the port of Antwerp (1956–1965): a linear city along the river

2010; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 25; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/02665433.2010.481179

1466-4518

Michaël Ryckewaert,

Urbanization and City Planning

Abstract The Ten‐Year Plan for the port of Antwerp (1956–1965) funded the expansion of the port’s infrastructure over a 10‐year period. Strictly, a national government‐funded infrastructure programme for the construction of a set of canal docks, the programme laid the basis for a broader urbanization of the north‐eastern Antwerp metropolitan region. The importance of the operation lies primarily in its role as an instrument of urbanization rather than in the improvement of the transport and transshipment capacity of the port because it opened up a large territory to industrial settlement. The linear layout of the project along the Scheldt River led planners to conceive the further urbanization of the adjacent region on a linear city model, with satellite communities attached to the industrial and infrastructural strip. Compared with the contemporary Europoort plan for the port of Rotterdam, where several planning agencies implemented conflicting plans for functionally distinct infrastructures and the construction of a new town, the success of the Antwerp approach resides in the flexible and strategic implementation of the project as a co‐production between various authorities and private parties. Keywords: port cityinfrastructureeconomic developmentgrowth polelinear citysatellite townneighbourhood unitzoning Notes 1. Bernardo Secchi, La città del ventesimo secolo (Roma: Laterza, 2005). 2. David Harvey, Social Justice and the City (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973); Manuel Castells, The Informational City. Information Technology, Economic Restructuring and the Urban Regional Process (Oxford: Blackwell, 1989); Rem Koolhaas, ‘The Generic City’, in Small, Medium, Large, Extra‐Large, ed. Rem Koolhaas and Bruce Mau (Rotterdam: 010, 1995), 1239–64. 3. Bernardo Secchi, ‘Descrizioni/interpretazioni’, in Le forme del territorio italiano. i. temi e immagini del mutamento, ed. Alberto Clementi, Giuseppe Dematteis, and Pier Carlo Palermo (Bari: Laterza, 1996), 83–92. According to Secchi, the accumulation of individual decisions by citizens, businesses and public authorities, each answering to their own rationality, results in complex urban landscapes that neither architecture nor planning can steer in the right direction. 4. Philippe Panerai et al., Eléments d’analyse urbaine (Bruxelles: Archives d’architecture moderne, 1980); Kevin Lynch, The Image of the City (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1960); Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour, Learning from Las Vegas (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1972); John Brinckerhoff Jackson, A Sense of Place, a Sense of Time (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994). Boeri has proposed the concept of the ‘eclectic atlas’ to frame the variety of analytical approaches suitable for the analysis of the contemporary city, pleading for an expansion of the cartographic approach or the ‘zenithal’ gaze, with other viewpoints such as interviews, photography, historical and biographical accounts. Stefano Boeri, Arturo Lanzani, and Edoardo Marini, Il territorio che cambia. Ambienti, paessagi e imagine della regione milanese (Milano: Abitare, 1993); Stefano Boeri, ‘Eclectic Atlases. Four Possible Ways of Seeing the City’, Daidalos 69–70 (1998): 102–13. 5. Geneviève Dubois‐Taine and Yves Chalas, La ville émergente (Paris: Editions de l’Aube, 1997); Thomas Sieverts, Zwischenstadt. Zwischen Ort und Welt, Raum und Zeit, Stadt und Land (Wiesbaden: Vieweg verlag, 1997). The Dutch term ‘nevelstad’ (nebular city) is used to refer to the nature of the present‐day built environment, mainly in Flanders. André Loeckx compared a map of built‐up spaces in Flanders with a nebula. André Loeckx, ‘Het ruimtelijk structuurplan Vlaanderen als kader en inzet voor architectuur’, in Jaarboek architectuur Vlaanderen 1994–1995 (Brussel: Ministerie van de Vlaamse Gemeenschap, 1996), 26–37. Subsequently, various publications have focussed on unravelling the logics of the ‘nevelstad’ in Belgium. Bruno De Meulder et al., ‘Sleutelen aan het Belgisch stadslandschap’, Oase 52 (1999): 78–113; Michael Ryckewaert, ‘The Minimal Rationality of Dwelling Patterns in Flanders’ Nevelstad’, Oase 60 (2002): 49–60; Geert Bekaert and Lieven De Boeck, After‐Sprawl. Research for the Contemporary City (Rotterdam: NAi, 2002). 6. Mark Gottdiener, Planned Sprawl. Private and Public Interests in Suburbia (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1977); David Mangin, La ville franchisée. Formes et structures de la ville contemporaine (Paris: Ed. de la Villette, 2004). 7. Antoine Picon, Architectes et ingénieurs au siècle des Lumières (Marseille: Parenthèses, 2004). 8. Jean Louis Cohen, ‘L’oncle Sam au pays des Soviets. Le temps des avant‐gardes’, in Américanisme et modernité, ed. Jean Louis Cohen and Hubert Damisch (Paris: Flammarion, 1993), 403–35; Jean Louis Cohen, Scenes of the World to Come. European Architecture and the American Challenge 1893–1960 (Paris: Flammarion, 1995). 9. Nikolaï Milioutine and Jean Louis Cohen, Sotsgorod. Le problème de la construction des villes socialistes, Tranches de villes (Besançon: Editions de l’Imprimeur, 2002). 10. François Perroux, La coexistence pacifique. 2: Pôles de développement ou Nations? (Paris: PUF, 1958); Olivier Vanneste and Guido Declercq, Structurele werkloosheid in West‐vlaanderen. Een regionaal‐economische studie (Roeselare: Bank van Roeselare, 1954); Olivier Vanneste, Het groeipoolconcept en de regionaal‐economische politiek. Toepassing op de Westvlaamse economie (Brussel: Standaard Wetenschappelijke uitgeverij, 1967). 11. Reginald Loyen, ‘Throughput in the Port of Antwerp (1901–2000). An Integrated Functional Approach’, in Struggling for Leadership. Antwerp‐Rotterdam Port Competition between 1870–2000, ed. Reginald Loyen, Eric Buyst, and Greta De Vos (Heidelberg: Physica‐Verlag, 2003), 29–61. 12. Reginald Loyen, Erik Buyst, and Greta De Vos, Struggling for Leadership. Antwerp‐Rotterdam Port Competition between 1870–2000 (Heidelberg: Physica‐Verlag, 2003). 13. Greta Devos, ‘De ruimtelijke structuur van de Antwerpse haven tussen traditie en vernieuwing (1870–1994)’, in Stroomversnelling. De Antwerpse haven tussen 1880 en nu, ed. Jan Blomme (Antwerpen: Pandora, 2002), 79–96, 82. 14. Willy Winkelmans, De moderne havenindustrialisatie (Rijswijk: Nederlands vervoerswetenschappelijk instituut, 1973); Jacques Meuris, ‘L’industrie belge de l’assemblage automobile’, Industrie 10 (1954): 573–80. 15. Devos, ‘De ruimtelijke structuur’. 16. Van Cauwelaert as cited in Devos, ‘De ruimtelijke structuur’, 83. 17. The Marshall dock was built with funding of the European Recovery Fund (or Marshall Plan) of 1947. The facilities of the new petrochemical companies were published in a theme issue of the architectural magazine Bouwen en Wonen on the Antwerp port expansion. Walter Bresseleers, ‘De industriele uitbreiding van Antwerpen’, Bouwen en Wonen 4 (April 1, 1956): 135–42. 18. Peter Van der Hallen, ‘Onbevredigde wensen (1951–1956). Antwerpse havenproblematiek voorafgaand aan het Tienjarenplan’ (master’s diss., K.U. Leuven, 2004). 19. L. De Kesel, ‘Havenproblemen. Toekomstbekommernissen’, Antwerpen 1 (1955): 42–59, 53. 20. Ibid. 21. Van der Hallen, Onbevredigde wensen (1951–1956). 22. Ibid. 23. Ibid. 24. Ferry De Goey, Ruimte voor industrie. Rotterdam en de vestiging van industrie in de haven 1945–1975 (Delft: Eburon, 1990). 25. Van der Hallen, Onbevredigde wensen (1951–1956). 26. Parliamentary discussions of the Belgian Senate, session June 26, 1956. 27. L. De Kesel, Het Tienjarenplan 1956–1965. De havenuitbreiding van Antwerpen in de realiteit, Havenstudies, vol. 2 (Antwerpen: Stad Antwerpen. Technische dienst van het havenbedrijf, 1967). 28. Parliamentary discussions, session June 26, 1956. 29. Ambtenaren Commissie voor de Uitbreiding van Stad en Haven – Commission of City Officials for the Extension of City and Port. Records of the ACUSH for the period of 1958–1959 are held in the Antwerp City Archive (collection no. 27 ‘Noordergronden en zuiderdokken – aangehechte gemeenten’ folder 1) ‘ACUSH’, box ‘44.956 D8 Aangehechte gemeenten ‐ Lillo ‐ Zandvliet ‐ Berendrecht: ambtenarencommissie voor Uitbreiding van Stad en Haven’ (henceforth ACUSH records). 30. Parliamentary discussions, session June 26, 1956. The local communities from the remaining polder villages to the north of Antwerp strongly opposed the harbour extension, remembering the earlier experience of the first post‐war harbour extension, in which villagers were faced with 20 years of uncertainty between the formal expropriation of their homes in the 1930s and their ultimate eviction in 1950s. 31. Arguing that it ‘cut through a dock designed by our services’ (my translation). L. Craeybeckx and J. Crahay, Protestbrief van Stad Antwerpen tegen het tracé van de snelweg Antwerpen – Bergen‐op‐zoom dat een dok door hen ontworpen doorkruist, Beglian State Archives in Bruges, Achilles Van Acker records (henceforth Van Acker records), no. 1702, January 24, 1958. 32. L. De Kesel, ‘Havenuitbreiding. Reden en vormgeving’, Antwerpen 4 (1965): 1–19. 33. ‘The municipal service for urbanization has conducted informal discussions with an officer of the national planning administration, Mr Hendrickx. In order to follow an expedited expropriation procedure, it would no longer be possible to point to the Convention of 1927. Nor would it suffice, as the municipal public works service thought, to consider re‐allotment as an argument … In order to expropriate the area in question through an expedited procedure the argument should rely on the investment act (i.e. the Ten‐Year Plan) and an urban plan covering the entire area should be presented’ (my translation). Report of ACUSH meeting no. 6, August 21, 1958, ACUSH records; De Kesel, Het Tienjarenplan 1956–1965, 116. 34. H. Cooreman, ‘Stedebouwkundige problemen, woningbouw en hernieuwing van stadswijken’, Wonen 10 (October 1960): 29–56. 35. Renaat Braem, ‘De 2de revolutie’, Bouwen en Wonen 12 (December 1955): 418–427. 36. Francis Strauven, Renaat Braem. De dialectische avonturen van een Vlaams functionalist (Brussel: AAM, 1983). 37. Renaat Braem, Alles of niets, Mededelingen van de koninklijke Vlaamse academie voor wetenschappen, letteren en schone kunsten van België – Klasse der Schone Kunsten, 1, vol. XXXIII (Brussel: Paleis der academiën, 1971), 45; G.R. Collins, ‘Linear Planning’, Forum 20, no. 5 (1968): 14–15. The linear city was a planning concept that had received a great deal of attention in Belgian planning circles since the early twentieth century. Belgian variants of Sorio y Mata Ciudad Lineal were proposed, and near Ghent, a small neighbourhood was built in the 1920s as an intended first step in the development of a linear industrial city along the Ghent sea canal. See Collins, ‘Linear Planning’. 38. Strauven, Renaat Braem. 39. Le Corbusier and Ascoral, Les trois établissements humains (Boulogne: Editions de l’architecture d’aujourd’hui, 1945). 40. Documents concerning this project are held in the Vlaams Instituut voor het Onroerend Erfgoed in Brussels, Renaat Braem Records (henceforth VIOE Braem Records) as project no. 114 – Lillo, Stad België. 41. Reginald Loyen, Functieverschuivingen in de Antwerpse haven. Een macro‐economische benadering (1901–2000) (Diss., K.U. Leuven, 2003). 42. Due to the oil crisis and the construction of the Rotterdam Antwerp Pipeline in 1970. Jan Blomme, ‘The Antwerp Port. Elements of Spatial Planning’, in Struggling for Leadership. Antwerp‐rotterdam Port Competition between 1870–2000, ed. Reginald Loyen, Erik Buyst, and Greta Devos (Heidelberg: Physica‐verlag, 2003), 161–8. 43. My translation. Loyen, Functieverschuivingen in de Antwerpse haven, 266. 44. ‘Advies over de vraagstukken inzake de waterwegen en havenproblemen, uitgebracht aan de regering van België en Nederland door de Heer F. Van Cauwelaert en M.P.L. Steenberghe’, Van Acker Records, no. 1718. 45. Peter Hall, Urban and Regional Planning (London: Routledge, 1992). 46. De Goey, Ruimte voor industrie. 47. Ibid. 48. Ibid. 49. The Canal Docks would only take on this function at the end of the 1980s when the Rhine link and the Delwaide dock (for container transport) were finished. 50. Perroux, La coexistence pacifique. 51. J. Gaack, ‘Het woningvraagstuk in verband met de havenuitbreiding’, Antwerpen 4 (December 1956): 159–60. 52. ‘The designed annexation of Zandvliet, Lillo and Berendrecht, first and foremost goal of the Antwerp municipal council’ (my translation); Gaack, ‘Het woningvraagstuk in verband met de havenuitbreiding’, 160. 53. ‘In addition to the technical harbor elements (lock, tunnel, etc.) … attention was also paid to the question of dwelling, especially as the construction of the B2 Canal Dock led to the removal of the agglomeration of Lillo, except (for the time being) for the Lillo Fort. A first proposal pointed to locating the replacement residential unit on the site called “Hoge Maai”, near Stabroek, to the south of the Stabroek‐Blauwhoef road. Further talks however, also on the urbanism level, showed that … it would be very difficult to build the dock as designed on the border between Berendrecht and Zandvliet. This was taken in account in the further development of the plan … For Berendrecht and Zandvliet the only remaining option was to limit the existing agglomerations of both municipalities and develop them into a harmonious unit. A similar approach should be followed for the municipalities of Hoevenen and Stabroek, whose territories would possibly be annexed as well in the future … All this led to a new General Plan that was adopted by the city council on December 8, 1961 … Within the city’s territory on the terrain called Het Viswater in the 4th district, space would be found to build a similar residential area, connected to the existing residential agglomeration’ (my translation); De Kesel, Het Tienjarenplan 1956–1965, 119. 54. My translation. Leopold Hendrickx, ‘Ruimtelijke ordening. Het Belgisch standpunt’, Bouwen en Wonen 3 (March 1962): 100–2 as part of Stichting Lodewijk De Raet, ‘De uitbreiding der grote agglomeraties. Verslagen van de conferentie nov. 61’, Bouwen en Wonen 3 (March 1, 1962): 89–107. 55. J.F. Gravier, ‘Frankrijk. L’aménagement de Paris’, Bouwen en Wonen 3 (March 1962): 93–6. 56. Robert Shaw, ‘Engeland. New Towns in Great Britain’, Bouwen en Wonen 3 (March 1962): 90–3. 57. Groupe Alpha, Les centres satellites, Les cahiers d’urbanisme, no. hors série (Bruxelles: Art et technique, 1958). Clearly inspired by the British proposals for New Towns, the satellite town was a specific interpretation of the concept of decentralized residential development, adapted to the particularities of the Belgian context. Rather than being true towns, the satellite towns imagined by Group Alpha were merely residential centres, very often projected as extensions to existing villages or hamlets. 58. According to Francis Strauven, Hendrickx was part of the ‘moderate modernists’ of Braem’s class at the Academy, while Braem was one of the ‘raging modernists’. See Strauven, Renaat Braem, 20–22. 59. A plan of the Hoogvliet satellite town was published in J. Rutgers, ‘Gemeentelijke grondpolitiek in Nederland’, Wonen 3 (March 1960): 469–80. Wonen was the influential magazine of the Belgian National Housing Institute. 60. M. Van Naelten, Suburbanisatie. Een onderzoek in het Noord‐oosten van Antwerpen (Brussel: Ministerie van openbare werken. Hoofdbestuur van de stedebouw en de ruimtelijke ordening. Dienst Algemeen beleid van de ruimtelijke ordening, 1974). 61. Crimson and Felix Rottenberg, Wimby! Hoogvliet. The Future, Past and Present of a New Town (Rotterdam: NAi, 2007).