The retro English voices are ai generated. The quote from the mayor is also ai generated. The rest of the Dutch retro voices are not* I do have to admit that I’ve been procrastinating on making this video for a while, and I still don’t feel entirely confident with the script, but i felt like I had to get it done. Hope that y’all enjoy the video nonetheless Thank you to GŁOWA for the intro and outro song: twitter.com/_GLOWA_ Sources: docs.google.com/document/d/1YvHtJdQv3kdoU3MOm68-Ept5aMi-MPkVJiA6f74JqiQ/edit
I had my suspicion that this building project was going to have the same outcome as Pruitt-Igoe. At the end I was like 'Is this it'? lol. I am lost on 'Dystopia' but I am assuming it is related to modulating buildings and in consequence people's lives also become uniform and monotone. I think during this time up until the late 80's there was this fantasy world of modernists that was heavily related on foot traffic and public transport that many designs look what is no known as Brutalist, much like the UIC campus was originally designed with large concrete elevated corridors connected to the train. Still an awesome video even if it felt rushed I learned something, first time watcher. I hit the like button and subscribed :D
Hi Hoog ... Great video thank you for posting; deeply insightful and moving...please can you tell me the name or even link for the background music from around 2:00- 4:00. I'd be v grateful :)
@@rsBrad Yes, I was a bit disappointed that it stopped when I expected the "feel good" story to begin. As far as I understand, the area has now improved a lot, and it never hurts to show people that bad things can and often do get better. (It seems the average Dutch person nowadays believes the 1980s were a paradise, when in reality there were massive problems with hard drugs in places that are now 100% safe, massive unemployment that seemed unsolvable, etc.).
Seperation of zoning almost always leads to disaster. Basically all well designed living spaces mix commercial and residential areas. The Bijlmer is now a much better neighborhood, and that's exactly what they did, they added commercial activities everywhere. You needs shops, bars and restaurants if you want a livable space. The high rise itself is not even the big issue here, it's the fact that these high-rises are completely seperated from commercial activity.
I wonder why it wasn't a thing back then. Most condominium towers in my country reserves at least the first few floors for commercial space accessible to non-residents.
@@nunyabiznes33 Top down stratified thinking. Categorisation and separation of those categories has appealed to many people all over history. Zoning is still a big deal in the US for example. The Bijlmer was very much a product of its time, when people thought that commercial activity would crowd a place too much, but without it you clearly get the opposite problem, an empty street, which isn't nice and calm, but dirty and dangerous. People stick together for a reason, even in rural areas people tend to live relatively close together and at least in the Netherlands even the smallest of villages almost always have a bar and a restaurant, a sense of community is super important and it was heavily undervalued in these kinds of projects. But as they say, hindsight is 20/20.
@@nunyabiznes33My guess is that back then, commerical and industrial space was a lot dirtier and louder than nowadays. In the 1900s the east side of cities was often poorer than the Westside just because the wind blew eastward. Nowadays you have less manufacturing and more office space. You also can't dump your trash into the streets as easily
@@tobene My neighborhood has furniture makers, shoemakers, and bakers, all small scale. Even fifty years ago, not all factories were dirty. A number of US towns had textile mills in small town as well as cities, so workers didn't need to own a car.
11 месяцев назад+4842
I lived in the Bijlmeer from 2008 to 2009. Let me tell you that compared to other “ghetto” neighborhoods in Europe (I’m from Spain) it looked like an utopia. Collective gardens and farm animals, schools and kindergartens, very good public transport and connections, peaceful streets in which cars are not a threat. I even remember moving my stuff from one unit to the other side of Amsterdam by bike, and it was snowing. I lived in a building in which a drug addict help association had it’s offices, I had never felt insecure. From the video I understand that it took years to get to this point (thanks for your work) but it would be fair to narrate the current situation as well.
I've lived in the Bijlmer for over 5 years now and honestly it's amazing. I know it used to be bad, and it still has a reputation, but these days that just means they still have the most affordable prices in Amsterdam, and for the largest apartments at that. I can walk 5 minutes to get to a grocery store, pharmacy, GP, Gym, a Metro that takes me directly to the center of Amsterdam in less than half an hour, and I'm surrounded by nature (and limited/calm car traffic on the sparse roads). All my neighbors are either elderly, students or nice immigrant families and even though there isn't much neighborhood cohesion in my experience, people still greet each other when walking their dog or just passing each other in the hallways :) And the rats make nice pets (okay that last point is sarcasm, the rats are sub-optimal for some but they don't bother me) Of course, that was all made possible by changes like mixing the commercial and residential zoning
It seems urban planners consistently miss the value of being able to walk to restaurants, shops, cafes, pharmacies, gyms and other facilities. Good transport links to work areas and large shopping centres are great, but being able to simply walk 5 mins to get most of your day to day needs is also such a great thing to have.
it seems urban planners develop all of their ideas from the modern conception of man as nothing but a money making machine. Everything is thought out of efficiency and economics. This thinking dehumanizes designs and kills the spirit of spontaneous and genuine human culture. For modern men, culture and folklore are obstacles, wastes of time. The only goal worth pursuing is profit.
@@cienfu_egos Yes. Governments and corporations see people as numbers on a spreadsheet devoid of personal style, opinions, culture, hopes, dreams, hobbies, etc. Just eat, shit, work, consume and sleep.
@@cienfu_egos "For modern men, culture and folklore are obstacles, wastes of time." Holy, I just got shivers. It's so true and explains so much of what's going on today
@mechupaunhuevon7662 Exactly this. If it weren't for stratas, my ideal living situation would be in buildings like this with ground floors reserved for commercial use. Like imagine this same hexagon design, but lined with small restaurants and bars and a communal area in the center to actually enjoy the company of your neighbors. Also don't plan such a large project just assuming people will be interested... Fill a building before you start building the next one.
can you tell more about the experience of living there? cause I fell like while the video gave a great insight on how the things were, there are not enough information on the things are now.
@@malal4726 I've been living in the heart of the Bijlmer, Kraaiennest, for the last five years. It's been an incredible journey, giving me the opportunity to explore a part of Amsterdam that was previously unknown to me. Despite the enduring stigma associated with this area, my experience has been overwhelmingly positive. One might be surprised to find that, contrary to some expectations, the Bijlmer is quite peaceful. Yes, the area is often stereotyped, and the initial shock for newcomers might still be there, but the reality is different. The Bijlmer maintains its unique character, blending 'culture' and modest living conditions in a way that's distinct yet harmonious. In comparison, areas like Nieuw West might be facing more significant challenges. A highlight of living here is definitely the food. The culinary scene is vibrant and offers an amazing variety. Although the area still has a long way to go in terms of development, there are promising signs of progress. For now, the benefits of living here include affordable rent, spacious living conditions, efficient public transport, and the added bonus of beautiful green spaces. It's a corner of Amsterdam that's slowly but surely making strides, and perhaps one day it will receive the recognition it deserves. For the moment, I'm enjoying the unique blend of tranquility and culture that the Bijlmer offers.
One of the saddest stories in my family history - my uncle sold his beautiful old appartment in Amsterdam's city center to move to a fancy new Bijlmermeer appartment in ca. 1974. He fell for the idealistic concept and lost tons of money/value from it. I cannot imagine how much his previous place would be worth today.
To me it looks like they tried to make a big village but sell it as a fancy thing. I don't see what problems this kind of innovation would solve, trees don't eat up pollution, don't even make half of the world's oxygen much less that of a park, and if this was about burning less fuel, cars aren't even close to the main reason for pollution in the first place. The buildings look ugly even though they're arranged in a fancy futuristic shape, they just picked a few trees that don't even give fruit and told people to figure it out if they wanna plant something better. Even if there has been as many residents as expected, the dispersion of responsibility makes people less likely to take initiative for anything because there's enough others who would do it, so often times nothing gets done in the first place. This is true so much so that you will most likely get killed in a heavily populated area at night even if people hear you scream because everyone assumes someone else will save you (it has happened quite a few times). This kind of thing could only work if you already have a bunch of residents requesting something like this so you build according to the demand. If there's no demand, this is what happens.
@@toxihex876 "trees don't eat up pollution" Not all pollution for sure but they do eat up CO2. They certainly help. "don't even make half of the world's oxygen " Half of the world's oxygen comes from plankton in the seas. Unfortunately you can't bl**dy well plant a large lake in the middle of a neighborhood so trees are the second best thing, pardon my sarcasm. "and if this was about burning less fuel, cars aren't even close to the main reason for pollution in the first place." Back when these were built reduced pollution from cars wasn't on anybody's mind and not even cathalytic converters had been mandated yet or unleaded fuel. The main reason for pullution is from production of electricity and heat. And I'm afraid the 2nd worst reason for pollution comes from road transport. To put it in perspective aviation and shipping comes nowhere near the global emissions of cars, trucks and buses. Now picture this you're facing an alternative between stripping people of their electricity and heat which they take for granted 24/7 OR their cars which they don't utilize for transport more than a fraction of that time. For people living in large urban centers with the possibility of fast and convenient fast public transport *even less* . Well, it's obvious those well-off enough to afford cars can afford the taxes and the high-tech required for lower emissions. Today forward-thinking countries which think long-term are shifting to becoming fossil-fuel free and pay extra now to reap the dividends in the future. The countries still thinking it's the 1960's will have a nasty wake-up call in the future when prices go through the roof for what little there is left. Alas there's this still quite some way to go, but you've got to *start* somewhere right? Not just state facts without any perspective or important circumstances which paint a more accure and complete picture. Long story short you're saying:"This isn't the worst reason for pollution so nothing should be done." Whether that is indeed your intention or not that's how it will be interpreted. Especially in the light of the rest of your comment. " Even if there has been as many residents as expected, the dispersion of responsibility makes people less likely to take initiative for anything because there's enough others who would do it" Do what exactly? Plant apple trees? Start shops? Pick up the garbage? "so often times nothing gets done in the first place. This is true so much so that you will most likely get killed in a heavily populated area at night even if people hear you scream because everyone assumes someone else will save you (it has happened quite a few times)." And you have a cynical and misanthropic view of human beings. Any *actual studies* you can post the link to here to back up that rather crude assertion? Not helping people in peril? Where do you live?? " This kind of thing could only work if you already have a bunch of residents requesting something like this so you build according to the demand" There is *always* a demand for cheap housing no matter where and when. The only mistake they did it asking for insane prices. Young people living on their own or people working part-time jobs aren't so picky about aesthetic qualities of a place as long as they are sheltered. " If there's no demand, this is what happens." But there *was* a demand. They just got the target demographic wrong. As for *demand* hate to inform you of this but there is PLENTY of demand for cheap housing in the large and middle-sized cities. For some reason that's rarely if EVER offered. Wonder why? Perhaps because you can raise market prices and force people to wait in line for YEARS before they finally get their apartment. In your borderline autistic view of the whole thing you assume it's purely an aesthetic question whereas in reality the whole thing is a socioeconomic question. "Bad architecture" doesn't give rise to criminal behavior - poverty does. When you get out of your sheltered la la land reality where everything can be interpreted retroactively to fit your own myopic perspective of a fairly complex problem maybe you can learn something.
@@McLarenMercedes I have a bachelor's in psychology and we were taught the "misanthropic" views through actual studies that aren't hard to find. The case I was referring to was cited to us by a professor. You seem to be really confused on a lot of things, and you spent way too much time and effort writing out this entire thing, most of which I'm not even gonna read because of this. Long story short, the buildings look depressingly ugly, the greenery was just that - a depressing shade of green, they tried to lump up way too many people in ugly apartments nobody asked for. We could go in depth, but it really is as simple as that for the most part.
I live just past the Bijlmer and can say that the area has changed a lot. This video shows it at it's worst - but a large number of the flats have since been removed and the entire area has been rebuilt. Right now there are several areas that still being built up and it is quite a pleasant place these days. :)
I moved to Diemen in 2004. It was only this year (2023) that I realized that the Bijlmer looked radically different in the past. During a tour of Gouden Leeuw & Groenhoven; renown architects mentioned that the Bijlmermeer had been in development for more than 200 years(!). After hearing this fact; I decided to further investigate the Bijlmer its past developments and architecture. I literally did not know that there were so many honey-comb flats, concrete parking garages, and raised roads. When I saw video-footage of the old "Nassuth" Bijlmer; my mind was literally blown(!). 1. Firstly because of the surreal and "un-Dutch" magnitude of the Bijlmer its colossal concrete garages and high-rise flats. 2. Secondly because of the thought that so much of the old "Nassuth" Bijlmer had been demolished. 3. Thirdly because the sheer scale of the Bijlmer its demolition and redevelopment, simply does not seem to make sense to me. Like the Bijlmer; other housing projects for workers have had similar social problems in the past. As far as I know; these historical problem areas were most notably; De Jordaan and De Pijp in regards to the Amsterdam area. Despite their initial social problems; most of these areas their housing and original architecture have withstood the test of time. So much so; that these areas currently host some of Amsterdam its most expensive houses after thorough renovations. To this very day; I am therefore very surprised that many of the original honeycomb flats have NOT been preserved for renovation and/or gentrification to preserve and upgrade the BIjlmer its original and unique architectural heritage. The renovation of Kleiburg has after all proven that this approach is feasible and much more desirable: 1. Renovation is much less expensive than demolition and redevelopment 2. Preserving the Bijlmer its high-rise buildings would have provided much more housing opportunities in comparison to terraced houses. 3. Many of the Bijlmer inhabitants their social problems have remained. Frankly speaking; the Bijlmer its poorer residents have been subtly, yet forcible relocated. It could therefore be argued that the city-council offloaded their Bijlmer woes, by "deporting" their poor to anywhere else. Finally; I still do not understand why mostly the honeycomb flats were demolished, whereas the high-rise buildings of the H-buurt, Gouden Leeuw & Groenhoven have remained unscathed. On the one had; I suspect that home-ownership gentrified De Gouden Leeuw & Groenhoven. I can nevertheless still not comprehend why the flats of the H-buurt had remained unscathed by demolitions. Original Bijlmer footage: Ergens ben ik nergens - Dagelijks leven in de Amsterdamse Bijlmermeer (VPRO 30-4-1989) ruclips.net/video/S4ncfUYpPgA/видео.html Antillianen in de Bijlmer (E-Paraiso is geen paradijs) ruclips.net/video/Rj1946Tem2M/видео.html
But as a white head dutch kaaskop, i don't see much real dutch people there still. It's like going on vacation, but with ugly high rise. :) I rather then just visit the tropical places where the people originated from. Don't understand they love to trade that in for bijlmer lol
@@HermanWillems'tropical people'. Well I'm sorry to burst your bubble but you will be seeing my tropical self anywhere BUT the tropics. I am Dutch. Born and bred. Too bad my skincolour upsets you and that you would rather see the likes of me in some tropical country but...I am Dutch, black and not going anywhere. Deal with it. Think about that when you fake smile to the dark-skinned person who prepared your take-away meal. We can see that the PVV has won: dutchies aren't afraid to show their xenophobia, anymore. *sigh* guess I'm back to being called a 'foreigner'. It's okay to be xenophobic, again.....
@@Adam-326 the design is a fucking mess. Car centric. Separates work areas from residential making it a sea of houses with nothing interesting other than the park. It's horrid.
As someone who relies on captions, I sort of wanted some kind of visual representation of that change. Maybe some kind of "glitching" effect to the captions that made it clear that the tone was changing, but that's a stylistic thing, not due to the tonal shift being unclear. I just think it would have looked cool.
I grew up in former USSR. Huge share of people there lived in high rises build in 70-80 and many do still prefer it. I think those neighborhoods were very well designed and some of it was simmilar to Bijlmer but many things differ: 1) no pasage/ground floor storage/garages. Most of the buildings had 2 sides - one facing the steet and the other facing inner garden. Inner garden side had the enterance, with benches and gardens 'belomging' to the block. Benches were always field with grandmas chatting and gardening. 2) inner gardens had playgrounds for kids, a bit of greenery and/or a little footbal field. All was relatively open and quite compact 3) loads of schools, daycares, grocery stores, pharmacies, swimming pools, doctor offices etc scattered around. Also huge market places. All in walking distance from whatever point. That made for loads of foot traffic 4) after soviet collapse these neighborhoods are still very popular. One thing that changed - they added more comersial properties by basically converting almost all ground floor appartments to small buisnesses and fitting more malls here and there. Shows how much it is important to have a bakery, barber, nail salon and shit load of other staff in walking distance. All of it proves that creating foot traffic is very important. Most people I know that came to live to western europe or US are just puzzled by whole story of driving to the store or taking a train or a bike to get your hair done. 10 min walk is what they are used to
Thanks for a great reality checkpoint. I get fed up with Westerners who think their life is so much better than other people's without having lived their lives.
@@oliveryt7168 to be fair in a lot of Western Europe has similar close proximity stuff. Particularly in the Netherlands it is hard to find your typical zoned neighborhood that you often see in the US. One of the main reasons the Bijlmer failed so much is because it didn't have this, and was the exception to the rule (now it has tons of commercial/social activity, and it's a very lively neighborhood). So nobody wanted to live in a neighborhood that didn't have all this stuff, and a half empty neighborhood only made things worse.
1:00 “The Netherlands is not known for high rise buildings. It’s people are tall enough, so there’s not much need for compensation.” I had to rewind to make sure I heard that right lol
Yeah, they are the second-tallest people after the Montenegrins. As a Dinaric person myself they have my respect. I wish Herzegovina was independent because they would blow everyone out of the water. There are towns were most males are >2.0m
“In a time where the Netherlands urban planning is borderline fetishized…” someone send this to “Not just Bikes” dude legitimately creams in every video about it.
I've lived in the Netherlands my whole life, but I can imagine his perspective and appreciation for the urban planning here compared to Canada and the US. Must've been a huge change to where he used to live.
To be fair: The Netherlands was half destroyed back in the sixties and seventies because they fetishized American infrastructure. If it wasn’t for grass roots protest even Amsterdam city would have been demolished and turned into a highway, just like almost every Brabant city, and Utrecht, and Groningen, and parts of Amsterdam anyway. It wasn’t until the late nineties when the real change started to occur and that fetish turned around as they started to see the bad sides (pollution, crime, ghettoization et cetera). I think you can say that they learned their lesson from their little American adventure.
I definitely think it can go too far as urban planning should be suited to the region, transportation and work culture, existing infrastructure, etc. Every country and city needs its own urban planning philosophies in a way. But, having grown up in Canadian suburbia, I know it's poorly fit for purpose. All the best aspects of my neighborhood, I now realize, were remnants of much older walkable neighbourhoods. I still loved to walk, though, and despised our mediocre bus system, so I became used to taking an hour to walk home from high school
Fun fact:... I study urban planning in a new building called "Jakoba Mulder House". After looking up more information about this woman (Jakoba Mulder), it turned out that she was also involved in Bijlmermeer. She submitted an alternative plan with far fewer high-rise buildings, but more mid- and low-rise buildings. This was because mothers could not keep an eye on their children from the high-rise flats (on a sports field, playground, etc.). That alternative plan unfortunately was discarded, so please let this be a lesson for the future!
Or we could instead address the root causes of crime so parents don't have to worry about seeing their kid 100% of the time. Inequality and harmful policy like drug prohibition is the producer of crime. The future of cities is in denser mixed use zoning. It just doesn't make any sense having single family homes in cities. The fact that anyone can spin the idea of having everything you need and want withing a brief fifteen minute walk as a bad thing is insane, and often is done through misinformation and a drastic warping of the concept. Also, it ignores the fact that in the current system, more disadvantaged people often already live in a situation where they are effectively trapped in a fairly small region as a result of economic factors, often keeping people from being able to find gainful employment, simply as a result of the needless urban sprawl and degradation and ignoring of public transit, sustenance, and habitable shelter as fundamental human rights.
@@MelGibsonFan Yeah there's literally no way to frame the fifteen minute city movement as anything bad without gross misinformation. It's literally the same concept that y'all find so attractive about "small town america" just moved to an urban setting. No variants of it include controls on movement, and are often coupled with investments in public transit to BETTER facilitate movement of people and INCREASE freedom. The concept also typically includes resurgent investments in community experience and cohesion. All that said though, not every disagreement is "misinformation", just the ones utilizing misinformation.
The idea of mixing greenery through highrises for efficient yet pleasant housing is not a bad idea. The problems happen if you do not mix other things through that, such as recreation and workplaces. This is the issue that US suburbia also has. You need places to be truly livable and that means mixing all bits of living together. Edit: While I love attention this post is getting I would like to request 2 things: 1. If you are going to reply to me; make your reply on topic. Replying to things I did not say makes you look a bit daft. (Also: I will not bother responding). 2. Be courteous to each other.
More people means more land is needed for food, too. You can stack all you want, but ultimately you didn't actually free up land for anything, you just made it more "efficient". Kind of like a people factory.
Not mixing recreation and work places is part of the design - recreation and work generates noise and pollution, homes should be quiet and private. Efficient public transport allows people to easily get from one zone to the other, while each zone is ideal for its purpose. You really don't want to live near a polluting factory or a loud nightclub - it's a nightmare.
@@Flyingdutchy33 This is unrelated issue because you can't control the population growth (unless you are CCP). How the housing arranged is unrelated to how much food you need but the total population is.
We had (and still have) neighbourhoods like this all over Eastern Europe. Though they are stigmatized somewhat as "low income" the infrastructure always was and still is phenomenal in every regard (stores, community centers, restaurants, schools, even local hospitals, my neighourhood even having a college) and this makes them still desirable. Worth mentioning that the infrasturcture was very deliberate by the planners, it wasn't an afterthought.
Yep, the Amsterdam example is basically a showcase of bad planing, execution and leaving a grand housing project in hands of private sector. In my country (Poland) they are great, especially after renovations.
They got some of the ideas right, but only some. Definitely poor planning. The shapes alone could tell you as much, a lot of straight lines that won't even break the wind, huge empty spaces with no thoughts put into them, reliance on cars and trains for everything... It might look nice from above, but humans aren't birds.
@@LutraLovegood You use trees for breaking the wind. And the "empty" spaces were parks. I see no issue with relying on trains. Do you have any idea how many cities rely on public transport? All of them.
I spent a year studying CIAM as a historical architect at university - I came away with a vehement disagreement with plenty of their ideologies, and their executions. A group of aristocratic, privleged people experimenting with their social ideologies and built environment theories on those who had no voice to say otherwise, ultimately leading to expensive and failed mega project constructions and insane amounts of impoverished neighbourhoods across Europe. Post war Europe was an incredibly dangerous place for utopian planning, and for every success story there is a bleak and tragic failure.
Yes, my thinking was along the same lines as yours. It's begging for problems to undertake a massive development such as this with nothing more than a hope that it will be well recieved. A little at a time so as to accurately assess demand is the right formula for development. This project falls in the category of social engineering which never ends well
Thank you for sharing. This is a common pattern among people who think they are the smartest people in the room and should be granted the power to make decisions for everyone.
That's gotta be one of the most beaten tropes of idealist utopian urban planners: "let's build a city for the people", then they start drawing some very neat plans and interesting looking buildings that are horribly expensive for their capacity and end up making worse every single problem they wanted to solve. Cities don't have to look good on maps and drawings, they have to be somewhere you want to live in reality. Brasilia, comes to mind: look at the master plan. Wow! It's a city shaped like an airplane! So modern! Well, they separated residential, commercial, hospitality, industry and government so well, everything is far apart and everyone needs a car to move the huge distances between everything. Plans had to be adapted and more services had to be built near where people live over time, but it had to be shoehorned into the original plan without disturbing it too much. Public transit is a huge mess and horribly inefficient, sidewalks are undersized or completely missing and you'd have to be either brave or suicidal to try using a bicycle to get to work. Then the city's population outgrew what it was planned for, housing prices soared and people had to move out even farther away from where they work... who would have guessed that in a country with a long tradition of a bloated government, it would keep growing and getting even more centralized, needing ever more people to rubber stamp all those important papers that have to be shuffled around?
please don't forget that such city planning paradigms are a reflection of US ones. notice the disparaging comments about "the city" and such - that's straight from US city planners who created suburbs (for the sake of white flight) as well as car dependency (per the ripping out of streetcar tracks around the country so that cars dominate). also, the concept of privileged folks mandating ideologies for folks who have no say is from the US, too.
@@cocoaswann2095 it's interesting that here in Brazil, things are pretty much the reverse of this. Living near the city center is usually considered a privilege for the rich and upper middle class and "the suburbs" have a strong connotation of being poverty stricken places with barely any infrastructure and lots of violence. There are exceptions, of course... lots of older cities had issues with inner city urban decay, especially in cities that had severe drug issues early on. Coastal cities also had very early this pattern of richer people moving near beaches and away from ports and the old city center. But overall, "suburban" here is used as a substitute for "poor".
I was a child in Amsterdam when this was built. At that time, intelligent people already knew that it would become a ghetto quickly. It has never become clear to me why city planners did not create versions of Plan Zuid or Watergraafsmeer elsewhere, instead of the phenomenal mess they created in Noord, West and Zuidoost. The dedication to colossal failure was phenomenal.
@@DonGivani What's worse is that even back then they were already aware that they weren't building enough. So they didn't even achieve their goal of building sufficient housing.
@@bramvanduijn8086 They would , they definitely would ( Almere), but developers, politics were so slow !!! There was more than enough space in Almere, Amsterdam KNSM, Amsterdam IJburg. By now there should have already been a subway going to Almere Pampus and nobody should wait so long for a house.
"At that time, intelligent people already knew that it would become a ghetto quickly." At this time, anyone who can use their brain to foresee obvious deferred issues is referred to as a "boomer".
@@channul4887 the point it is NOT a ghetto, ghetto you may see in other countries, not in Amsterdam.. The rents in Gaasperdam, Bijlmer are high. We have a perfect mix of public housing and free rentals..it is far from a Ghetto..I know because I live here
I lived in one of the original blocks 2017-2018, Kleiburg Klust - this video perfectly sums up everything I was told about the place when I lived there, the funny looks I would get when I told colleagues I loved it! After the Biljmerramp, the plane crash, this area went through huge renewal. The neighbourhood I lived in still held a shadow of the stigmas from the times mentioned in this video, but it was a vibrant, beautiful place; I lived in a cultural crossroads. Hundreds of nationalities intermingled and living together. It still had its rough edges, but it was one of the most significant, and I dare say happiest periods of my life. I returned to live in the Netherlands in 2021 because of my experiences in the Bijlmer, not in spite of them! Beautifully put together video; I would love to have seen a bit more to the epilogue about how the neighbourhood exists today, but also understand that the points made here are on responsible urban planning. I am now a subscriber :)
Let's zone all the stuff people need to get to 30+ miles away. It'll surely be a utopia if we make getting to places you need to be as time consuming, difficult and expensive as possible. Pure genius.
The Netherlands is a small country though. It wouldn't be 30+ miles away. More like 5 miles at most. Our cities are pretty compact and small compared to stuff in America. But it's still an issue. Us Dutchies like to be able to walk to the store in like 10~15 min. Or at least bike to the store in 10 min. We like everything we'd need in daily life pretty much next door (relative to how far apart stuff is in America at least. :P) So separating housing and the commercial areas completely was still an issue for us.
@@Purplesquigglystripe LA did not need to be like this, LA is the opposite case in city planning. LA is what happens when you privatize your city transport, and then the auto companies buy out that private company and shut it down so that everyone in this huge state is reliant on automobiles. That is what happened after WW2 in California. CA used to have 100s of Trolley and Street Car Companies in every city, LA had the LA streetcar Co, they operated trolleys up and down most of LA's streets, getting around wasn't so bad. But then the government privatized all these companies. and General Motors bought them out, because at the time a MASSIVE investment in the auto industry and Highways was going on at the time. So if GM could convince the government that street cars were not worth it, they would be better off investing in HIGHWAYS and FREEWAYS, then they would sell more CARS. And that is exactly what they did. One of the only cities in CA that kept its street car program govt owned was San Diego, and they converted it into the San Diego Trolley. California could have had a wonderful public transit system, but the auto companies literally fucked it all up so they could force the government to invest in highways to sell cars.
I really like the dynamic you've created between the Hoog narration and the old tv/radio narration. The lil whiplash of an out of character line followed by the glitching to show the character wasn't as established as it had seemed up to that point was really nice. The "that's a nice video essay way of saying..." had me laughing out loud 👌👌
Also, the graphics get better and better. Prime example, that shot of low rise Amsterdam next to billionaires row is really neat. the 3D environments and tvs to set the vibe and the maps are really nicely done too
Yeah that’s was fantastic that’s sarcastic tone. Btw I am an architect and yes we should lay to rest fail modernist theories that’s still have an impact today unfortunately
I've live in Bijlmer for a year when I moved to NL, and always wondered where the stigma around it came from. Each time someone from Cetral Amsterdam asked me where I lived they were very suprised and worried when I said Bijlmer. This was a fascinating watch, and definitely gave me a new perspective!
The area has improved a lot in the past 15~20 years. The thing is that once an area gains a certain image in the eyes of the surrounding people, it takes a very long time for that image to change.
Great video summarizing the history of Bijlmer, however things have changed. I lived and studied there for four years, and had an awesome time. There is still a stigma, especially from Dutch people, about the region but most foreigners love it. There is easy access to all big chain supermarkets, metro, bike lanes and parks. Many companies and shops have opened up in the area creating a feeling of more safety. I understand the ongoing issues of the neighborhood but I guarantee that it is not as bad as depicted on this video. If you are ever on the region go on a walk around Gaasperplas or Nelson Mandela park. The shopping district around Bijmer ArenA is also decent full of shops and restaurants. Perhaps you can also vist Brouwerij Kleiburg which a very cozy local brewery.
My cousin who has a good job at a bank in Amsterdam also decided to buy his house in the Bijlmer some 6-7 years ago. So while it has a bad rep nationwide as a bad neighborhood I figured must have improved a lot
I recently had a class on this in my architecture course and one of the things that stuck with me was the plane crash. Nobody even knew how many people in that building died that day because nobody knew how many people lived there. There was absolutely no control whatsoever, which is indeed what happens when you build things that are disconnected from the streets. Think of all the small alleyways, dark corners and quiet garages, except they decided to apply this is on a monstrous scale. It's really sad to see all these failures in city planning, and I'm kind of reminded of Pruitt Igo now too, because of the devastating effect it can have on people's lives. I do want to say that I really appreciate how you convey both information and emotions through your videos, I really felt something here.
I live here, in one of the hexagon flats on the top floor. Interestingly in my eyes nowadays it's actually the utopia it was meant to be. I've been living in Amsterdam for 7 years, of which the last 4.5 here. Before that I lived in Oost and Oud zuid, and this is my favorite neighbourhood by far.
@@cinnamonstar808 well both definitely have their points. it is the uptopia it’s meant to be now but only to them, some people might not like it there even now, but the video is talking about the past of it and the effects it had on the people and society that lived there and its change over time. both can be true my friend
Where did you live in oud zuid that you like the bijlmer more? Just out of curiosity. I could not wait to get out of the bijlmer tbh. Now I live in zuid and it is much better here except the airplane noise.
@@ythelldoineedahandle I lived right next to gerrit van der veenstraat tram stop. I'm a biologist and in bijlmer I now live 10 mins walking from diemerbos, 10 min biking from gaasperplas so I love that, and also bijlmer has a much stronger sense of community, everyone greets eachother nicely and i have lots of interesting small conversations with strangers, while in parts like oud zuid everyone lives their separate lives.
@@mau19Y1 The area around G.vd Veenstraat is really posh so if you are not into that sort of thing I can understand that you felt out of place. The park around Gaasperplas is lovely, I used to to run there on a daily basis like 7-8 yrs ago, so I can understand why you like it there.
To this day many architectural schools around the world still tout the work of Le Corbusier and the horrible blight that places like Bijlmer represent. It is about time that the modernist movement admit that most of their theories were a complete disaster for our cities. It's about time that we lay these design monsters to rest!
Honesty, it was a good idea but the timing was bad, mixed with a few bad events and full of stigma. It could have been a sucess case with a few minor changes.
@@fernandotaveira7573No, People need proper housing, gardens, low builds. Highrises deprive huge areas of light. Especially in a place like the Netherlands where the sun never climbs high. People need privacy, nature and peace. None of which are available in these buildings. If you have 2 neighbours you have a small community. If you have 100 neighbours you have a chicken roost with too much mess for a proper community. A small apartment building by itself can be decent for traffic and social system. A massive cluster of apartment buildings is always a problem for traffic and social systems. An ethnically homogenous area of native Europeans is functional and harmonious. A human landfill of irreconcilable racial, cultural aliens thrown into a European nation can never be funvtional or harmonious. So no, not a good idea by any measure. And I'm sure that was the whole point. Malice
I personally lived in the Bijlmer Area for 12 months in 2021-2022 and loved my time there. It is so incredibly green, while still having access to good shopping areas like in my case Amsterdamse Poort. I believe that this city development is actually really pretty good and liveable. The fact that the initial goals were still missed simply shows that very successful city planning is incredibly hard and that planning and developing a HUGE new region with radically new ideas is just not quite the right approach. Nevertheless I think the Bijlmer Area was an incredible step into the right direction when it comes to city planning. Our goal is to analyse the mistakes in the process and planning and do better in the future!
Yeah 2021-2022 was long after the initial failings of the neighborhood, until the 00's it definitely had a strong reputation of a ghetto (by Dutch standards). Since then it has improved a lot.
Yes there were many good things about the plan, they missed some very important things (lack of commercial activity) and overbuilt too much at once but we can learn things from them. The housing crisis in the Netherlands is appalling right now and housing is desperately needed so some ambition is in order with a good amount of learning from past mistakes.
It is amazing how this concept is almost the exact opposite to most of the modern ideas of ideal neighborhood planning. One of the most interesting schools of thought now is that now smaller buildings of differing design surrounding a central yard is better for community building. Having a pocket of community gardens and meeting places in this central space as small islands of isolation and peace. The buildings stand to segment the neighborhood from the outside and face inward. Their back entrance and utilitarian side facing the streets. Then you connect these buildings with smaller roads and pathways, explicitly trying to add curves, distinctive differences and features to each street surround. And then using commercial spaces as separators and insulation between residential areas and larger roadways.
This is a great video.....BUT....I feel like it's a part 1. There needs to be a part 2 where we see what's happened to it now. What are the areas like that they rebuilt differently after the demolision, and what are the original parts like today? What changes have they made and has that improved things? Was it able to be adapted and improved or is it still a horrible place to live now? Are they going to demolish the rest or keep it, and why? My other thought is that you made out that the lack of density is what caused a lack of eyes on the street, and therefore crime, but I don't think that's correct because there are many low density places that are very safe. Think wealthy neighbourhoods with expensive single family homes. There's definitely more to it than that. It's more to do with the layout and design than density alone. Perhaps you could delve into that a bit more in a part 2 also. Or maybe a part 3.
Nowadays it's a regular "clean" suburb. Nothing money can't fix. It's no longer a government owned place, private investors fixed the place up,it's quiet, there are some shops here and there, but it's still very much an alienating space due to it's architecture. People just live there and via metro they are in the centre in 15 min.
Well, going by the same "revitalization" projects in Europe, it means the apartments now belong to investors who milk the shit out of those needing a place to live, and poor or even not so poor people have to live in places with precarious public transport or share a house despite being adults with stable jobs.
@@fresagrus4490 The state (without own money) and the privat investors made the same. Credits to build houses and blocks to get new credits. Some paid the credit, had a good time, they made crisis.
I appreciate the aesthetic choice of using AI voices. It makes the turn at 8:33 with the line "there you can find a stray junkie who is illegally occupying one of the apartments" really make the entire dystopian vibe come alive. I would love to know which model you used for that. It worked particularly well. Your videos amaze me. I never thought I would subscribe to a channel about urban planning and design, but here I am.
The "AI" voice seemed suspect at first but I was open to considering it but as we got more of it I started questioning the veracity of what made the video.
They probably have semi commie rules if a squatter squats on someones property long enough they get to keep it. The Lefties love this kind of insanity.
They did something similar in my home city of Turku, Finland back in the 70's i believe it was. They built this separate satellite town called Varissuo full of high-rise buildings close together, surrounded by natural forests and having a shopping centre with a school, healthcare center, and library in the middle of it all. It was really innovative at the time, but then the city bought many of the apartments and started housing people with um... "Social problems". Today it's like a timeslip back to the early 90's recession where everyone's depressed and just drinking and doing drugs out in the open. They tried to give the place a new image by renovating the outsides of the buildings with modern colorful prefabs, but you still have the dilapidated dank stairwell and that barely functional elevator with a flickering light waiting for you when you step inside one of the buildings.
It also sounds like there aren't enough jobs around there. Here's a tip: Set up a well finded social worker station in the area where you move most of the people who need social workers. Or, you know, don't solve your problem in place A by moving it to place B.
@@bramvanduijn8086 There was/is a social worker station as well. It is virtually a separate city with all the services imaginable except a police station. I think the problem is that the city just placed too many people in need of social housing into one place instead of spreading them across the city as they've done in more recent times. And you are right about the job situation, but Turku is a small city of 250,000 people in total with an above average public transit network so you can go anywhere within the city in less than 1h no matter where you started from. What i mean is that the job situation affects the whole city, not just the "Hoods" like Varissuo.
I prefer the concrete color. If all you do, is paint concrete Brady Bunch colors (for some relief), it looks even more depressing. See: University of Illinois at Chicago, by Skidmore
10 месяцев назад+6
Nothing spells coming home like out of order elevators and using piss covered stairwells. Soothing, almost like a warm bath.
Amazing how those drugs make it to 250k towns in finland, considering how far away it is from the traditional producer countries. Assuming you're not talking about dutch mdma, or estonian (russian LOL) 3-methyl-fentanyl
dude these graphics are absolutely beautiful. wow. good coverage of the subject in the title. cant wait to see more of your videos (im less than 10 min in to this one)
My biggest surprise was a lot of parks and a family focus, but no mentions of a school, or even amenities. I’m also surprised by the sheer scale they seemed to plan at. I would’ve thought they would have done it in sections. High density housing is… well dense and needs a lot of people. Making a cities worth all at once and trying to fill them all seems like a pipe dream.
Great Video! Today sociology also knows that these semi public spaces (like the lawns arround apartment blocks) are poison for people to taking responsibilty and for feeling at home. They neither feel public nor private, thus they aren't used or cared for. Many redevelopments therefore include a stronger division. Small hedges and fences, but also communal gardens run by small groups, etc.
10 месяцев назад+1
"They neither feel public or private, ..." Tom Zwitser:"Public space is not neutral."
1. Convince yourself that strict zoning creates a utopia. 2. Build a cool table sized model to impress everyone. 3. Spend obscene amounts of money building it in real life. 4. Living there absolutely sucks. 5. Repeat.
I’ve been following your channel since the beginning and your production keeps getting better. The Secret Base/Summoning Salt style synth music is nice. The AI voice was also a nice touch. Great video!
“All of the positives of rural living without any of the negatives” Except, the wide open spaces, the lack of neighbors, the quiet, having a unique home, or any of the things you enjoy about rural living.
We still have to respect them trying something new and many lessons have been learned. My lasting personal memory (as someone living in Utrecht) was from when the airplane crashed i just left a party with friends (who later started a isp called xs4all) we had every month in one of flats closeby. The crash happened about 20min after i left and i was nearing central station to get on the train going back to Utrecht. Having lived my whole life in the inner city of utrecht i had to move to new 'massive' building area called 'leidsche rijn' the new part of Utrecht and some of the same dangers where felt for a while (like not enough shops) but overal people seem to be happy with how its evolved.
@@tavernburner3066 ehmm yes that was kind of my point really still i can see where they came from and why they felt it might have worked. It looks to me that the projects of that size after it where done more in stages to the new parts could be filled and evolve into a community before moving forward. And they have a totally different design and variation.
@@scb2scb2 I see a miscommunication. the problem with your statement is that this new city cost a lot of money that the state will never get back. Trying new things is not a virtue in it of itself.
@@tavernburner3066 Not really they tried something that we now know (40 years later) that doesn't work and we know why. Should they have tried it at that scale? no but it was a different time we have to account for that. The ideas behind why they wanted to build the bijlmer and even some of the concept where not random and they really wanted to solve a few issues. Given that it was a few decades after WW2 and 20 years after the country got rich this massive building concept made sense to many people. Its easy to see now why it failed but we have to see it in the context from when most of the planning was done and what they knew then. Clearly newer building projects in this country took the lessons and moved way more careful and step by step. Not sure what you mean with money from new parts will not being able to support themselves as far as i know most of them do thats why the bijlmer project stand out so much.
I've lived in both the inner city of Utrecht and in Leidsche Rijn and they both have big positives. I work at the Utrecht University Science Park so it's very far from Leidsche Rijn and as an autistic person with high noise sensitivity traveling by rail to work is very uncomfortable and exhausting, but living in Leidsche Rijn itself is quite pleasant. There is shopping, nice restaurants, and beautiful places to walk around. It is also very easy to get around there by bike, and the layout of neighbourhoods doesn't feel monotonous.
There is an uncanniness to this video that makes me question how much of this is footage and story is true, and how much of it is AI generated. Its so subtle and wonderful
This is a real story, nothing made up. Just an immaculate editing of existing old footage, narration and 3D modelling. It’s a very well documented story, the neighbourhood is a lot nicer now as well, with a well established Surinamese community and culture. All but one of the honeycomb high rises have been demolished by now.
All he did was generate ai voice overs for real quotes im pretty sure. If you have watched his other video's you can tell the script is not AI generated.
The main problems with these types of constructions are, in my opinion, the failure to obtain full funding so that projects do not get completed as planned; the use of materials unsuited to the climate (Northern Europe is just not suited to bare concrete); the failure to effectively deal with issues of access (people do not generally like windswept balconies and a plethora of stairs); and, perhaps, the most important, a failure to maintain developments. A development like this could have worked. They are not intrinsically bad. The ideas such as open space and zoning industry away (though not all places of employment), do improve quality of life. In my opinion, there were many things that could have been done to improve this place. Lower building heights and more variety in the height, even with a loss of open space, would have given a more human scale to the project. The use of other materials, such as brick, wood, and even plastic to clad the concrete, would have given it a less dystopian look. Grey skies do not need grey buildings. Better access ways would have given people a greater sense of security as they moved around the site and also given people a private space outside their front door, however small. A lowered expectation that people will use public open space, given the choice, many people would like a larger private space, a large terrace rather than a small balcony. None of these ideas would have been out of place at the time. Unfortunately, brutalist monoliths were preferred, structures in which people were filed away rather than given a chance to thrive. It's hardly surprising that the target middle-class showed little interest.
@@bismuth7730 I think the difference is that they tried it out, failed, but took what they learned and the things they DID get right and reapplied it elsewhere. In any lesser country, they'd either repeat the mistakes for profit or discard everything because "the investors are scared of even seeing anything related to the disaster". The Netherlands isn't perfect, but they are still minimally reasonable on how they build their cities (even modern ones), while The Line is just... happening?
The canals in Amsterdam barely survived the 50s and 60s. In some other cities they did mostly disappear. There were serious proposals for constructing a 6-lane highway right through the old city center.
I moved to the Netherlands last year and i was genuinely surprised by how low density is in most places. In Eindhoven which is not a small city public transport is also terrible unless you have to go directly to the centre and roads are huge barriers... In the beginning of the video the word fetishized was used for dutch urban planning, i think thats quite fitting, a lot of dutch cities are car dependant nightmares, once you leave the picturesque centre.
Bijlmer citizen for the past 9 months here. I have also been told that the place was deemed unsafe and not preferable to live in, before I moved to Amsterdam. However, I have come to really like the area. It is quite spacious, and the 'high rise' buildings are not actually that high in my opinion. I never felt like I was in danger, nor have I seen people that feel like like they are in danger. There is a a big sense of community, I see everyone greet each other on the street, or even in the bus sometimes people randomly bump into each other and talk. Bijlmerplein has a lot of shops and markets you can go to, and of course Bijlmer ArenA is one of the biggest attractions at the moment. (Well maybe not at the moment, sorry Ajax fans) Public transportation is very easy to access and you get to the city center relatively easy. All in all I quite like living here, and it really doesn't feel as grim as the video makes it out to be :) Thank you for making this though Hoog, you are an absolute magician with these videos!
Yeah no kidding, as soon as I saw the thumbnail I just immediately thought "wait, weren't those the same buildings from the El Al crash?" like a memory just got unlocked.
It is said that there is still a higher prevalence of cancer and autoimmune diseases in this area due to the depleted uranium used as a counterweight in the tail of the 747.
15:00 that lady's pun works so well. Meer means both lake and more in Dutch, and the Bijlmermeer neighborhood often just gets called the Bijlmer. So she's saying, "it's not Bijlmermeer any more, just more Bijlmer" Anyway good vid
As a Singaporean these look exactly like the public housing that is a dominant staple in Singapore (even amongst the middle and upper-middle class). Goes to show a little efficient planning goes a long way.
difference is that the planned HDB towns have a lot of mixed zoning- kopitiams and playgrounds and shops within the HDB areas, schools and parks and local shopping centres at most a few minutes' walk away, etc, and for older estates on the outskirts of the City area it's even more of a mixed use (golden mile and queenstown HDBs being an example). A rows of blocks of housing separated from transport, community and work spaces would suck (all the yishun jokes come to mind here, but even that is not as bad as this video shows)
Yeah, and it's important that it's social housing. People are a lot less likely to turn to crime if they have stable housing. So although it wouldn't have fixed the crime problem, it would've certainly helped.
14:30 I remember this plane crash, but I didn’t know it was here. One thing I do remember is that they couldn’t identify how many people had been killed because of the amount of unregistered residents and unregistered citizens living in the place. I think something like three times more people were killed than they could actually count for.
i'm from that area but gaasperdam its called Reigerbos absolutly beautifull there, the bijlmer now is a bit better back in the days it was very grim walking there
This was done in the UK. I can remember back in the 60's that people were delighted to get a place in these new developments and escape inner city slums. Members of my family moved there and loved it. But as time moved on so did society. Enter criminality, antisocial behaviour, fear amongst the now older residents, erosion of community and the resulting isolation.
Yeah. It's kind of a chicken and egg situation whether these places bred crime by their ugly design or crime was just the result of a general collapse in public safety. Having seen slums, which lets be honest were where the poor went before these places were built, in Latin America that are riddled by crime, I suspect these issues would have become a problem wherever the poor were concentrated as society because more and more low trust.
@@forthrightgambitia1032 It's not even a kind of chicken and egg situation. The answer to the question very simple to find. Did the rest of society experience the same level of collapse in public safety? I am Dutch and i can tell you: No, the rest of society did NOT experience the same level of downfall. Not even in the "bad parts of town". Yes, the design of the buildings definitely enabled crime to come to such a rise. There were so many places where dealers and junkies could "lounge", lots of nooks and crannies. And finally, the chicken and egg situation isn't even a "question". Every biologist can tell you there were eggs before there were chickens. Remember dinosaurs?
@@stonytina5177 How do you explain most of Eastern Europe then where no such downfall happened, moreover such apartment blocks are widely regarded as some of the most desirable places to live, like the New Belgrade municipality in Belgrade, Serbia?
What these city planners often fail to realize is that the reason cities have risen from the bottom up, “unplanned”, is that the growth was organic. Top down, “planned” cities require massive coordinated sustained construction from the time of planning until full completion. How many projects can withstand this amount of dedication to actually see it through?? The amount of money, manpower, and materials that needs to be supplied and sustained throughout a length of time with unknown complications and changes along the way.
Great video. Really reminds me of the “Scampia” neighborhood in Naples. It was envisioned in a similar way to Bijlmer: high-rise, “efficient”, interconnected buildings with a utopian view. Today, it’s filled with crime and is in decay and home to some of the poorest residents of the city. Most of the buildings have been demolished.
if you read the comments: the residence said the love their neighborhood and it is utopia for them. This video is pushing hate. People in these homes now are telling you. its not true. THEY HAVE A VALID VOICE than the creator of this video.
My parents told me the rent in 1973 was 800 Guilders, comparable to over 3300 Euro today. It was a nice place though, if you like highrises. But the biggest mistake was to place 'new citizens' from (former) colonies in large concentrations in the Bijlmer. We moved in '78 after my parents had encountered several attacks from junkies or otherwise 'socially challenged' (discriminated) people. Nice to recognize the floor plan. I still have a few memories from a time the until I was almost 5.
eeeeeeexactly! finally somebody did point it out! those houses look awesome and I am rather sure the problem was in people not in houses itself. ex-eastern-block is full of such projects and provide home up to this very day for totally normal middle class people and are totally ok place to live and not dangerous or ghetto.
The same story here in the UK. There is an excellent book about this period and type of development in the UK called "Concretopia" by John Grindrod. Recommended.
Had they done three things differently,I think the original plan would’ve worked. First buildings no more than 4 stories tall. Second , larger apartments, for a more luxury feel and three, integrated mixed use of commercial and residential usage. Also, if they had finished the metro connections first, it would’ve changed the whole dynamic. My father was a community planner and worked in this field. Wish he was still around to Talk to about this. He was active during this time.
I’m sorry but the apartments in these flats can be HUGE. They’re normally around 90-100m2. Some even bigger with more rooms. Way bigger than projects of the same era in slotervaart or contemporary buildings. Size is not the issue.
@@RetgunTej I got the impression they were too small for the immigrant community with larger families. Frankly, 100 sq meters would be good for a couple. Maybe a couple with a small child. I’d consider that tiny for a family of 4, 5 or 6. My first place was 92 sq meters. Great for me. When my wife moved in after we married, it was a bit tight. Still, these apartment buildings were designed with storage separate from the units, which was great! That effectively increases the usable space in the flat. So, I could see them feeling roomier than a comparable flat elsewhere. Regardless, combing units could have accommodated larger family units. But, I’m not sure practical that would’ve been in practice.
@@just-dl The average size of an apartment in Amsterdam is around 75 square meters (approximately 807 square feet), according to a 2021 report by the Dutch real estate agency Pararius. So 100 sqm is above average... the problem is the ''American brain root'' of zoning residential and commercial separate, also building high density area but still car oriented... that's why this failed, also why most american ''projects'' failed, and complexes like Alterlaa in Vienna is a success. (Alterlaa was reported in 2008 as having the highest tenant satisfaction rating in Vienna.... and those high-rises are way taller.... 23-27 floors - so is not the height a problem)
I'm American and my gf is Dutch and I have been really enjoying learning about the history of her country. This is yet another video that has expanded my knowledge. thank you!
Very interesting video, I visited the Biljmermeer as a small field trip with my class group (I was studying abroad in NL and it was for a Intercultural Communications class). It was a very odd feeling place, and felt so...disconnected from the rest of the city. Like someone just plopped this city down from somewhere else. It's interesting contrasting with how they're developing areas like NDSM-warf now. They're still pursuing high-rises out of necessity, but the style is completely different. There's effort to create a neighborhood, provide shops and cafes on the ground floor, and it's laid out like a more traditional high density city area.
The use of AI to change (or maybe you did it completely from the beginning) to VO to glitching out and transitioning the sales pitch into the dystopian parts was a great touch.
I visited Bijlmer for a few days in 1991 (I think, anyway before the plane crash) while on interrail tour with a few friends. We were lodged by a Surinamese guy who ran a "private hostel" in his apartment. Nice host, and he explained how he was very selective on the guests he picks, and thus is able to continue the business without getting complaints from the neighbors. He spotted us at the main railway station "looking lost" (we were, yes.. arriving just before nightfall, and not having any lodging arrangements..). I do remember the junkies in the metro, and also remember wondering that we were the only whites in the train (Finland back then was very dominantly white, so this was very new to us..). Still, arriving in Bijlmer, looking at the vast lawn areas not having trash around, and overall the place looking fairly clean once we'd left the metro station, I started to like the place. High-rise concrete, yes, but appreciating exactly the large areas of green that this planning provided.
The following documentaries should give a nice view of the old Bijlmer architecture that you encountered: Ergens ben ik nergens - Dagelijks leven in de Amsterdamse Bijlmermeer (VPRO 30-4-1989) ruclips.net/video/S4ncfUYpPgA/видео.html Bijlmer promotion video: ruclips.net/video/e-BtqXy7-_0/видео.html
When I first saw this video, and all the way throughout while I watched it, I couldn't stop thinking about my city's local district. In Tallinn, Estonia, we have a district called Lasnamäe, and it is pretty much EXACTLY what you describe in the video, except a soviet version. This utopia urban planning phenomenon, was, unfortunately in a lot of countries. Lots of people suffered from it all over Europe, us included. From what I see in the video, Bijlmermeer is in fact much smaller, holding about 50k people, while Lasnamäe has 119k. It would be interesting to see a similar video on it, there are lots of interesting moments in it's planning and history.
This is great exemple of no application of "Design Thinking", not including the people who were going to live there in the ideation and conception of this enormous project.
I think the problem was that it looked great on the drawing board but it's not enough for architecture to look great there: it has to to be designed with people in mind. old towns don't have this problem as much because they grow organically, but a completely new housing development needs to be thought through in excruciating detail
We had apartment complexes like these in S. Korea big difference was, they were mixed in with traditional housing, retail, government offices, other places of work, didn't have direct access to public transportation, other then few bus stops. Most important part was government offices in which your local politicians was expected to spend most of their time working right there mixed in with the people, they represented and you could literally walk to where your boss lived as well for many people and they shopped and lived in same neighborhood as their employees. Only factories were separated, because they polluted to much.
There were many many similar housing projects all accross Europe at the same time, many of them smaller than Bijlmer but others quite comparable. I lived for two years in one of these in a Paris suburbs that's been a bit more of a success, because added to the concept of a park city of high rises with large walkable areas around a new metro line they also built from the beginning a lot of individual houses and mid-rises in the middle as an attempt to attract different kinds of people. Which worked relatively well to this day. In my area the buildings were disposed in interesting ways as to create a feeling of density in some areas with lots of bushy alleyways making it a bit of a maze when you're not used to it. I liked living there even though the building I was living in was extremely derelict and cops were more stupidly suspicious because there was more of an expectation for youth to engage in criminal activities. Supermarkets were a bit too far away and there wasn't just enough shops in most areas but the greenery and walkability was great, I was going out all the time just for that. Many of these urban projects were dramatic failures when not thoroughly thought-out but I think that the attempts at doing it better were generally sincere, belonged to their era and should be respected.
yeah. i live in a "blokowisko" in poland in the 90s, and it was ok. spaces for kids to play, not too many cars back then, etc. little shops and services at the corners. surprisingly little crime.
The result is very similar in the US with their public housing. It does not matter what the design, planning etc is. High rises, small homes etc, it does not matter. If you put a bunch of poor people in one area that area is going to start to decline. The people who can afford to leave will leave first, and that will be the middle class followed by working class residents. They will be replaced with more poor people, then its only a matter of time before its a drug and crime infested ghetto. The problem with most cities (and suburbs) is people want to live separated from the problems of the inner cities (poverty,crime,drugs etc). Which means they will block just about any attempt for low income or poor people to live where they live. Which leaves the state no choice but to put its poor people in the few remaining areas that will tolerate it.
You see, when I think of a city built to maintain happiness and joy within it's inhabitants, I don't think of endless, copy and pasted, geometrical bricks of concrete; devoid of color, plant life, and recreation.
Yeah, I witnessed the same development at my birthplace in Germany. The city, which was more a loose agglomeration of small towns, in the 1960s decided to build an artificial city centre. With a large mall and a lot of high-rises with affordable flats. Relatives of mine moved in, as it was "modern" and "middle class" at the time. But it never took off. Well, my grandma did, in one of those "pass throughs". The wind was funelled through this pass through so hard, it literally blew her away... Ended up in the hospital. Anyway, in the late 80s the city decided to move all the "undesired people" (unemployed, not willing to work; migrants, not willing to integrate) into the relatively cheap flats. By the late 90s the whole area was a disaster! A ghetto stacked upwards. A couple of years ago the largest high-rises were torn down, because there was no way to fix this. The area is still something, you try to get out off. Not a place to live in.
Public housing ALWAYS results in ghettoization, high violent crime, drug use, and generational poverty. Always. Is it because of the housing....or the people who are placed into these projects?
It lacked beauty. It was souless. People are not breathing, drinking, eating, working machines. The lack of enthusiasm was just a symptom of the highly efficient but extremely souless art and construction.
It would have been nice to also show the Bijlmer today, and what Amsterdam has done to improve the things mentioned in this video. That said, very nice montage
There is a lovely book about the architect behind this plan, "De Betonnen Droom" by Daan Dekker, which also shows the sad mistake/events that happened here and lead to the initial failure of the neighbourhood.
Beautifully made, considering the craftsmanship alone. The audio, the visuals... Everything is so stylish! Even the AI-Voices sound amazing, I reluctantly admit... I would have loved to hear more about the current state of the Bijlmeer and what can be learned from what went wrong. But the comments seem to do an alright job!
I love seeing real life examples of dystopias. Because everybody writes down their ideas on a paper, thinks they got all the answers, until they simply try it and fail hard. Because there are things you don't know you don't know.
It turned out as dystopia only due to bad habits of people and not enough security. Ex-eastern-block is full of such projects and they provide home for millions of totally normal people and are not ghetto by any means. why it did not work out in Netherlands must be more related with inhabitants than housing itself.
Significantly better though the area of the crash is still the worst off part. What doesn't help is the poor connection to the rest of the city. The other side of the Bijlmer has two metro lines, one directly downtown. The area of the crash on the other hand has only one metro line and not nearly as well connected. But as a whole the Bijlmer area is doing much better, crime is down significantly for example, that seemed to have moved West and to the city of Rotterdam.
Much like a lot of the other outskirts of Amsterdam, the Bijlmermeer is still a relatively poor neighbourhood with its accompanying challenges, but things are already a hell of a lot better than they used to be back in the 1980s and 1990s.
What it needed was people. The project was so modern and new that it took years of globalization, migrations and a housing crisis for people to actually populate and enliven the place and now it works. It was truly ahead of its time.
Showing some crime statisics, comparing the Bijlmer to surrounding neighbourhoods would've been nice addetive to this video. The Bijlmerramp, the cargo plane crashing into the highrises is still a mystery, somewhere in 2070ish it's full documents are supposed to be released.
A truly interesting topic. Something similar happened in my home, Stockholm in the 1960ths. We demolished large parts of our old city and replaced it with a new brutalist style. The result was one of the ugliest squares in Europe and removing all life and character from parts of the city centre
Wonder which neighbourhoods you mean. I was Erasmus in Stockholm and when visiting friends in Kungshamra I felt the architecture was so unnatural and it was kind of scary to walk alone there in the dark. I lived in Lappis which for some reason felt safer
Wat mostly thinking of Norrmalm. A lot of the old stone city was destroyed. But in the suburbs like Kungshamra and especially Vällingby and Farsta was built in a very brutalist style
My mom actually led a program to make the bijlmer a more liveable environment. We are Surinamese and she actually understood what the people of the Bijlmer needed. Nowadays the Bijlmer is a much better place.
Architects and urban planners seem to be susceptible to a sort of "god complex", where in pursuit of a grand vision they lose touch with the people who will be inhabiting those spaces. Brutalism is a good example of this.
Remarkable video. I have a deep understanding of this area's history and each time I'm in Amsterdam, I eagerly visit to observe its evolving landscape. Unfortunately in my post-soviet state we not only overlook the flaws in such dated urban planning methods but also continue to draft masterplans that introduce increasingly obsolete parasitic districts. these areas offer no value to either the city or its residents, who are effectively forced to live in these uninspiring environments
If all designer do is fiddle with the planometric view; and make fun shapes, they will build another failure. Plan can be part of the solution, but not the whole story.
Awesome! I don't know if you understand Dutch; but I would highly recommend the following videos for historic footage of the old Bijlmer: ruclips.net/video/S4ncfUYpPgA/видео.html ruclips.net/video/Rj1946Tem2M/видео.html ruclips.net/video/bpEes4UuUzc/видео.html ruclips.net/video/e-BtqXy7-_0/видео.html There is much more historic footage available in the "Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision". For copyright reasons, however; most of this historic footage is only viewable within the institute itself. Unless you pay for them for sending you a private copy.
I do feel that you have missed the mark on this one, but that was almost guaranteed with a running time this sort on a subject this complicated and deep. Granted a lot of the subjects remain a matter of debate, but what caused the downfall of the bijlmer was not that people didn't want to move there initially, a lot of people in the older Amsterdam neighborhoods wanted to move (living conditions there where BAD), but the delays and finally the Suriname issue and more just caused a failure cascade that no one could be bothered to fix. It got bad enough that the corporations who build, rented and maintained the flats told the government to give them money and they would keep them functional, but at large wanted nothing to do with them. It could have all worked out just fine, but the will for it was not there, these are not the sort of projects you can do piecemeal. I was born here in one of these flats and to this day I am still living here, I have seen it change from its lowest point to what it is now. Make no mistake the only reason they demolished a lot of the flats was to get the people away and spread them out, the buildings where just fine and you can see it around those still standing. The only thing that was needed was to remove the elevated roads and bring more live to the ground to get that social control and they have and it worked wonders, specially in summer time this place is lively and fun. I think that showed the only I think core design flaw to the plan, you need to give people a reason to be around, so shops, markets etc all on the ground floor. But well this was the 60/70s so cars still reigned supreme :( Anyhow Bijlmer nowadays is just fine, some people still shiver when they hear the name, but the housing market shows a different tale. Of course you still have google reviews on the supermarkets that are negative because only black people shop there (I wish I was joking...) but I love it here, most culturally diverse place on earth :)
I don't even necessarily think the Bijlmer in itself was a failure, but rather a case of the wrong project in the wrong time. Build a neighbourhood like that today, and you bet your arse it wouldn't slide down as badly as it has done between ~ 1980 and 2000.
A durable neighbourhood will eventually bounce back up because it’s fundamentally a good place to live in, and people want to make it so. And it has enough desirable attributes that well-to-do people will put up with social problems to have the privilege to live there. A fragile neighbourhood has no one willing to rebuild it once it breaks down.
Mostly depends on if it's 90% public housing, which was originally the case in the Bijlmer, or if it's mostly private housing. For every neighborhood in the world the percentage of public/social housing is the most defining factor for poverty, crime rates and general detoriation.
@@hylje Yeah, the main issue with the Bijlmer was primarily that it was severely lacking in facilities in the beginning. If they had that covered from the start, I'm convinced nowhere near as many people would have been tempted to move to Purmerend or Almere instead. Then the influx of people from Suriname in the neighbourhood would have been significantly smaller, and with that better manageable.
@@jellemb3603 Should have elaborated on that a bit more, but nowadays when new flats or even entire neighbourhoods are being built here in Amsterdam, often they have to adhere to something in the likes of 40% social housing, 30-40% free market rent, and 20-30% buy. Which I believe is a pretty balanced distribution.
That was a great video. Even more than a warning against top-down planning, it's a cautionary tale of being careful what you wish for. People in the city thought this was what they wanted. They even forced it on the local, smaller municipalities with the tyanny of the majority but none of them put money down before construction began, so it was an artificial demand
The retro English voices are ai generated. The quote from the mayor is also ai generated. The rest of the Dutch retro voices are not*
I do have to admit that I’ve been procrastinating on making this video for a while, and I still don’t feel entirely confident with the script, but i felt like I had to get it done. Hope that y’all enjoy the video nonetheless
Thank you to GŁOWA for the intro and outro song: twitter.com/_GLOWA_
Sources: docs.google.com/document/d/1YvHtJdQv3kdoU3MOm68-Ept5aMi-MPkVJiA6f74JqiQ/edit
The end felt rushed and incomplete but It was an awesome video even with that. Loved the style.
I had my suspicion that this building project was going to have the same outcome as Pruitt-Igoe. At the end I was like 'Is this it'? lol. I am lost on 'Dystopia' but I am assuming it is related to modulating buildings and in consequence people's lives also become uniform and monotone. I think during this time up until the late 80's there was this fantasy world of modernists that was heavily related on foot traffic and public transport that many designs look what is no known as Brutalist, much like the UIC campus was originally designed with large concrete elevated corridors connected to the train. Still an awesome video even if it felt rushed I learned something, first time watcher. I hit the like button and subscribed :D
YOO I NEED TO WORK FOR YOU PLZZZ
Hi Hoog ... Great video thank you for posting; deeply insightful and moving...please can you tell me the name or even link for the background music from around 2:00- 4:00. I'd be v grateful :)
@@rsBrad Yes, I was a bit disappointed that it stopped when I expected the "feel good" story to begin. As far as I understand, the area has now improved a lot, and it never hurts to show people that bad things can and often do get better. (It seems the average Dutch person nowadays believes the 1980s were a paradise, when in reality there were massive problems with hard drugs in places that are now 100% safe, massive unemployment that seemed unsolvable, etc.).
Seperation of zoning almost always leads to disaster. Basically all well designed living spaces mix commercial and residential areas. The Bijlmer is now a much better neighborhood, and that's exactly what they did, they added commercial activities everywhere. You needs shops, bars and restaurants if you want a livable space. The high rise itself is not even the big issue here, it's the fact that these high-rises are completely seperated from commercial activity.
I wonder why it wasn't a thing back then. Most condominium towers in my country reserves at least the first few floors for commercial space accessible to non-residents.
@@nunyabiznes33 Top down stratified thinking. Categorisation and separation of those categories has appealed to many people all over history. Zoning is still a big deal in the US for example. The Bijlmer was very much a product of its time, when people thought that commercial activity would crowd a place too much, but without it you clearly get the opposite problem, an empty street, which isn't nice and calm, but dirty and dangerous. People stick together for a reason, even in rural areas people tend to live relatively close together and at least in the Netherlands even the smallest of villages almost always have a bar and a restaurant, a sense of community is super important and it was heavily undervalued in these kinds of projects. But as they say, hindsight is 20/20.
@@szymex22You just need pollution standards for that.
@@nunyabiznes33My guess is that back then, commerical and industrial space was a lot dirtier and louder than nowadays. In the 1900s the east side of cities was often poorer than the Westside just because the wind blew eastward. Nowadays you have less manufacturing and more office space. You also can't dump your trash into the streets as easily
@@tobene My neighborhood has furniture makers, shoemakers, and bakers, all small scale. Even fifty years ago, not all factories were dirty. A number of US towns had textile mills in small town as well as cities, so workers didn't need to own a car.
I lived in the Bijlmeer from 2008 to 2009.
Let me tell you that compared to other “ghetto” neighborhoods in Europe (I’m from Spain) it looked like an utopia.
Collective gardens and farm animals, schools and kindergartens, very good public transport and connections, peaceful streets in which cars are not a threat.
I even remember moving my stuff from one unit to the other side of Amsterdam by bike, and it was snowing.
I lived in a building in which a drug addict help association had it’s offices, I had never felt insecure.
From the video I understand that it took years to get to this point (thanks for your work) but it would be fair to narrate the current situation as well.
You got luck man. I lived in the bijlmeer 99-00 and it was a nasty place. Murders at the metro stop, drug addicts and dealers everywhere. It was bad.
dont think you understand their comments intent mate^^
they are aware it was bad, they are also there 10 years after you(lol) @@nageboorte
It is a ghetto because we let ghetto immigrants in. That is all.
The state of a place is directly connected to the kind of people that live in it
In 2009 it was already way better. Trust me, as someone who grew up there in the 90's. It was way worse.
@@nageboorte yeah I don’t doubt you, but I wasn’t mentioning that period 🤷🏻
I've lived in the Bijlmer for over 5 years now and honestly it's amazing. I know it used to be bad, and it still has a reputation, but these days that just means they still have the most affordable prices in Amsterdam, and for the largest apartments at that. I can walk 5 minutes to get to a grocery store, pharmacy, GP, Gym, a Metro that takes me directly to the center of Amsterdam in less than half an hour, and I'm surrounded by nature (and limited/calm car traffic on the sparse roads). All my neighbors are either elderly, students or nice immigrant families and even though there isn't much neighborhood cohesion in my experience, people still greet each other when walking their dog or just passing each other in the hallways :)
And the rats make nice pets
(okay that last point is sarcasm, the rats are sub-optimal for some but they don't bother me)
Of course, that was all made possible by changes like mixing the commercial and residential zoning
Jij woonde daar damn. Welke stad woon je nu dan en welke veranderingen merk je tov de Bijlmermeer?
@@oguzkzn7137 ik woon er nog steeds :P
Hiervoor woonde ik in n dorp en daar was echt niets dus hier is alles beter naar mijn mening
im in an area whitch should be at least middle class möre sö üpper... but häl germance with german näims är at best a mere majörittie xP
german = ti?
nooit verwacht jou in een random non-asmr comment section tegen te komen lol
Has the introduction of cats, the majority having been spayed or neutered, been considered?
It seems urban planners consistently miss the value of being able to walk to restaurants, shops, cafes, pharmacies, gyms and other facilities. Good transport links to work areas and large shopping centres are great, but being able to simply walk 5 mins to get most of your day to day needs is also such a great thing to have.
it seems urban planners develop all of their ideas from the modern conception of man as nothing but a money making machine. Everything is thought out of efficiency and economics.
This thinking dehumanizes designs and kills the spirit of spontaneous and genuine human culture.
For modern men, culture and folklore are obstacles, wastes of time.
The only goal worth pursuing is profit.
@@cienfu_egos Yes. Governments and corporations see people as numbers on a spreadsheet devoid of personal style, opinions, culture, hopes, dreams, hobbies, etc. Just eat, shit, work, consume and sleep.
@@cienfu_egos you must be a clueless amurican this is social housing built by socialist architects and central planners
@@cienfu_egos "For modern men, culture and folklore are obstacles, wastes of time."
Holy, I just got shivers. It's so true and explains so much of what's going on today
@mechupaunhuevon7662 Exactly this. If it weren't for stratas, my ideal living situation would be in buildings like this with ground floors reserved for commercial use.
Like imagine this same hexagon design, but lined with small restaurants and bars and a communal area in the center to actually enjoy the company of your neighbors.
Also don't plan such a large project just assuming people will be interested... Fill a building before you start building the next one.
I live in Bijlmer right now and the place has improved a lot in comparison with past decades. It's such a nice place to live for young families.
can you tell more about the experience of living there? cause I fell like while the video gave a great insight on how the things were, there are not enough information on the things are now.
@@malal4726 yes please
@@malal4726 I've been living in the heart of the Bijlmer, Kraaiennest, for the last five years. It's been an incredible journey, giving me the opportunity to explore a part of Amsterdam that was previously unknown to me. Despite the enduring stigma associated with this area, my experience has been overwhelmingly positive.
One might be surprised to find that, contrary to some expectations, the Bijlmer is quite peaceful. Yes, the area is often stereotyped, and the initial shock for newcomers might still be there, but the reality is different. The Bijlmer maintains its unique character, blending 'culture' and modest living conditions in a way that's distinct yet harmonious. In comparison, areas like Nieuw West might be facing more significant challenges.
A highlight of living here is definitely the food. The culinary scene is vibrant and offers an amazing variety. Although the area still has a long way to go in terms of development, there are promising signs of progress.
For now, the benefits of living here include affordable rent, spacious living conditions, efficient public transport, and the added bonus of beautiful green spaces. It's a corner of Amsterdam that's slowly but surely making strides, and perhaps one day it will receive the recognition it deserves. For the moment, I'm enjoying the unique blend of tranquility and culture that the Bijlmer offers.
Is this irony? Or sarcasm?
I lived in Bijlmer for 2 years with my wife. It isn't a bad place imo
One of the saddest stories in my family history - my uncle sold his beautiful old appartment in Amsterdam's city center to move to a fancy new Bijlmermeer appartment in ca. 1974. He fell for the idealistic concept and lost tons of money/value from it. I cannot imagine how much his previous place would be worth today.
Prolly the old apartments is worth literal millions. RIP.
To me it looks like they tried to make a big village but sell it as a fancy thing. I don't see what problems this kind of innovation would solve, trees don't eat up pollution, don't even make half of the world's oxygen much less that of a park, and if this was about burning less fuel, cars aren't even close to the main reason for pollution in the first place. The buildings look ugly even though they're arranged in a fancy futuristic shape, they just picked a few trees that don't even give fruit and told people to figure it out if they wanna plant something better. Even if there has been as many residents as expected, the dispersion of responsibility makes people less likely to take initiative for anything because there's enough others who would do it, so often times nothing gets done in the first place. This is true so much so that you will most likely get killed in a heavily populated area at night even if people hear you scream because everyone assumes someone else will save you (it has happened quite a few times). This kind of thing could only work if you already have a bunch of residents requesting something like this so you build according to the demand. If there's no demand, this is what happens.
Who invited this guy to the party?
@@toxihex876
"trees don't eat up pollution" Not all pollution for sure but they do eat up CO2. They certainly help.
"don't even make half of the world's oxygen " Half of the world's oxygen comes from plankton in the seas. Unfortunately you can't bl**dy well plant a large lake in the middle of a neighborhood so trees are the second best thing, pardon my sarcasm.
"and if this was about burning less fuel, cars aren't even close to the main reason for pollution in the first place." Back when these were built reduced pollution from cars wasn't on anybody's mind and not even cathalytic converters had been mandated yet or unleaded fuel.
The main reason for pullution is from production of electricity and heat. And I'm afraid the 2nd worst reason for pollution comes from road transport. To put it in perspective aviation and shipping comes nowhere near the global emissions of cars, trucks and buses. Now picture this you're facing an alternative between stripping people of their electricity and heat which they take for granted 24/7 OR their cars which they don't utilize for transport more than a fraction of that time. For people living in large urban centers with the possibility of fast and convenient fast public transport *even less* . Well, it's obvious those well-off enough to afford cars can afford the taxes and the high-tech required for lower emissions.
Today forward-thinking countries which think long-term are shifting to becoming fossil-fuel free and pay extra now to reap the dividends in the future. The countries still thinking it's the 1960's will have a nasty wake-up call in the future when prices go through the roof for what little there is left. Alas there's this still quite some way to go, but you've got to *start* somewhere right? Not just state facts without any perspective or important circumstances which paint a more accure and complete picture.
Long story short you're saying:"This isn't the worst reason for pollution so nothing should be done." Whether that is indeed your intention or not that's how it will be interpreted. Especially in the light of the rest of your comment.
" Even if there has been as many residents as expected, the dispersion of responsibility makes people less likely to take initiative for anything because there's enough others who would do it"
Do what exactly? Plant apple trees? Start shops? Pick up the garbage?
"so often times nothing gets done in the first place. This is true so much so that you will most likely get killed in a heavily populated area at night even if people hear you scream because everyone assumes someone else will save you (it has happened quite a few times)."
And you have a cynical and misanthropic view of human beings. Any *actual studies* you can post the link to here to back up that rather crude assertion? Not helping people in peril? Where do you live??
" This kind of thing could only work if you already have a bunch of residents requesting something like this so you build according to the demand" There is *always* a demand for cheap housing no matter where and when. The only mistake they did it asking for insane prices. Young people living on their own or people working part-time jobs aren't so picky about aesthetic qualities of a place as long as they are sheltered.
" If there's no demand, this is what happens." But there *was* a demand. They just got the target demographic wrong. As for *demand* hate to inform you of this but there is PLENTY of demand for cheap housing in the large and middle-sized cities. For some reason that's rarely if EVER offered. Wonder why? Perhaps because you can raise market prices and force people to wait in line for YEARS before they finally get their apartment.
In your borderline autistic view of the whole thing you assume it's purely an aesthetic question whereas in reality the whole thing is a socioeconomic question. "Bad architecture" doesn't give rise to criminal behavior - poverty does.
When you get out of your sheltered la la land reality where everything can be interpreted retroactively to fit your own myopic perspective of a fairly complex problem maybe you can learn something.
@@McLarenMercedes I have a bachelor's in psychology and we were taught the "misanthropic" views through actual studies that aren't hard to find. The case I was referring to was cited to us by a professor. You seem to be really confused on a lot of things, and you spent way too much time and effort writing out this entire thing, most of which I'm not even gonna read because of this.
Long story short, the buildings look depressingly ugly, the greenery was just that - a depressing shade of green, they tried to lump up way too many people in ugly apartments nobody asked for. We could go in depth, but it really is as simple as that for the most part.
I live just past the Bijlmer and can say that the area has changed a lot. This video shows it at it's worst - but a large number of the flats have since been removed and the entire area has been rebuilt. Right now there are several areas that still being built up and it is quite a pleasant place these days. :)
I moved to Diemen in 2004. It was only this year (2023) that I realized that the Bijlmer looked radically different in the past.
During a tour of Gouden Leeuw & Groenhoven; renown architects mentioned that the Bijlmermeer had been in development for more than 200 years(!). After hearing this fact; I decided to further investigate the Bijlmer its past developments and architecture. I literally did not know that there were so many honey-comb flats, concrete parking garages, and raised roads. When I saw video-footage of the old "Nassuth" Bijlmer; my mind was literally blown(!).
1. Firstly because of the surreal and "un-Dutch" magnitude of the Bijlmer its
colossal concrete garages and high-rise flats.
2. Secondly because of the thought that so much of the old "Nassuth" Bijlmer
had been demolished.
3. Thirdly because the sheer scale of the Bijlmer its demolition and
redevelopment, simply does not seem to make sense to me. Like the
Bijlmer; other housing projects for workers have had similar social
problems in the past. As far as I know; these historical problem areas were
most notably; De Jordaan and De Pijp in regards to the Amsterdam area.
Despite their initial social problems; most of these areas their housing and
original architecture have withstood the test of time. So much so; that
these areas currently host some of Amsterdam its most expensive houses
after thorough renovations. To this very day; I am therefore very surprised
that many of the original honeycomb flats have NOT been preserved for
renovation and/or gentrification to preserve and upgrade the BIjlmer its
original and unique architectural heritage. The renovation of Kleiburg has
after all proven that this approach is feasible and much more desirable:
1. Renovation is much less expensive than demolition and redevelopment
2. Preserving the Bijlmer its high-rise buildings would have provided much
more housing opportunities in comparison to terraced houses.
3. Many of the Bijlmer inhabitants their social problems have remained.
Frankly speaking; the Bijlmer its poorer residents have been subtly, yet
forcible relocated. It could therefore be argued that the city-council
offloaded their Bijlmer woes, by "deporting" their poor to anywhere else.
Finally; I still do not understand why mostly the honeycomb flats were demolished, whereas the high-rise buildings of the H-buurt, Gouden Leeuw & Groenhoven have remained unscathed. On the one had; I suspect that home-ownership gentrified De Gouden Leeuw & Groenhoven. I can nevertheless still not comprehend why the flats of the H-buurt had remained unscathed by demolitions.
Original Bijlmer footage:
Ergens ben ik nergens - Dagelijks leven in de Amsterdamse Bijlmermeer (VPRO 30-4-1989)
ruclips.net/video/S4ncfUYpPgA/видео.html
Antillianen in de Bijlmer (E-Paraiso is geen paradijs)
ruclips.net/video/Rj1946Tem2M/видео.html
But as a white head dutch kaaskop, i don't see much real dutch people there still. It's like going on vacation, but with ugly high rise. :) I rather then just visit the tropical places where the people originated from. Don't understand they love to trade that in for bijlmer lol
@@HermanWillems wat zijn "real dutch people"
It's getting gentrified. It won't be long before the hip-crowd turns it into an 'avocado on toast-town'.
@@HermanWillems'tropical people'. Well I'm sorry to burst your bubble but you will be seeing my tropical self anywhere BUT the tropics. I am Dutch. Born and bred. Too bad my skincolour upsets you and that you would rather see the likes of me in some tropical country but...I am Dutch, black and not going anywhere. Deal with it. Think about that when you fake smile to the dark-skinned person who prepared your take-away meal. We can see that the PVV has won: dutchies aren't afraid to show their xenophobia, anymore. *sigh* guess I'm back to being called a 'foreigner'. It's okay to be xenophobic, again.....
I do remember that one time i woke in the morning and thought, "Damn, why doesn't everyone live in massive concrete prison complexes?"
Me neither 😂
Fr💀
@@Adam-326 the design is a fucking mess. Car centric. Separates work areas from residential making it a sea of houses with nothing interesting other than the park. It's horrid.
Ask that question to people who live in new york or any other concrete jungle
To be clear, i would say you Nether woke Up and thought about how we can give all people affordable homes. Am i right?
I'm in love with how the voice telling us about the promising Bijlmer, turns on it about halfway through. Really well done.
it scared me a little i’m not gonna lie
It creates this eerie horror, as if the narrator was possessed by some demon in the middle of the segment. Reminds me a lot of SCP-1981.
@@1020mikki😂
@@_sinescape😂
As someone who relies on captions, I sort of wanted some kind of visual representation of that change. Maybe some kind of "glitching" effect to the captions that made it clear that the tone was changing, but that's a stylistic thing, not due to the tonal shift being unclear. I just think it would have looked cool.
I grew up in former USSR. Huge share of people there lived in high rises build in 70-80 and many do still prefer it. I think those neighborhoods were very well designed and some of it was simmilar to Bijlmer but many things differ:
1) no pasage/ground floor storage/garages. Most of the buildings had 2 sides - one facing the steet and the other facing inner garden. Inner garden side had the enterance, with benches and gardens 'belomging' to the block. Benches were always field with grandmas chatting and gardening.
2) inner gardens had playgrounds for kids, a bit of greenery and/or a little footbal field. All was relatively open and quite compact
3) loads of schools, daycares, grocery stores, pharmacies, swimming pools, doctor offices etc scattered around. Also huge market places. All in walking distance from whatever point. That made for loads of foot traffic
4) after soviet collapse these neighborhoods are still very popular. One thing that changed - they added more comersial properties by basically converting almost all ground floor appartments to small buisnesses and fitting more malls here and there. Shows how much it is important to have a bakery, barber, nail salon and shit load of other staff in walking distance.
All of it proves that creating foot traffic is very important. Most people I know that came to live to western europe or US are just puzzled by whole story of driving to the store or taking a train or a bike to get your hair done. 10 min walk is what they are used to
nobody prefers commie blocks, they were forced to move there :)))))
I grew up in the USSR (Russia) and I loved the mix of "wild growth", playgrounds and old houses and/ or old...
I wish they built more neighborhoods like this, and continued to refine the idea as they went.
Thanks for a great reality checkpoint.
I get fed up with Westerners who think their life is so much better than other people's without having lived their lives.
@@oliveryt7168 to be fair in a lot of Western Europe has similar close proximity stuff. Particularly in the Netherlands it is hard to find your typical zoned neighborhood that you often see in the US. One of the main reasons the Bijlmer failed so much is because it didn't have this, and was the exception to the rule (now it has tons of commercial/social activity, and it's a very lively neighborhood). So nobody wanted to live in a neighborhood that didn't have all this stuff, and a half empty neighborhood only made things worse.
1:00 “The Netherlands is not known for high rise buildings. It’s people are tall enough, so there’s not much need for compensation.”
I had to rewind to make sure I heard that right lol
Yeah, they are the second-tallest people after the Montenegrins. As a Dinaric person myself they have my respect.
I wish Herzegovina was independent because they would blow everyone out of the water. There are towns were most males are >2.0m
@@overlord165ууооеевееввовивииивтъяувр
Hoog is a velvet voiced visionary. Embracing a short vs tall culture war is obv the only way forward. I never trusted my niece and nephew anyway
@@overlord165lol heck no, Dutch are the tallest
have you ever SEEN a dutch person? I am 2m tall and feel small there!@@Kanyewestisfree
“In a time where the Netherlands urban planning is borderline fetishized…” someone send this to “Not just Bikes” dude legitimately creams in every video about it.
I've lived in the Netherlands my whole life, but I can imagine his perspective and appreciation for the urban planning here compared to Canada and the US. Must've been a huge change to where he used to live.
Yes
To be fair: The Netherlands was half destroyed back in the sixties and seventies because they fetishized American infrastructure.
If it wasn’t for grass roots protest even Amsterdam city would have been demolished and turned into a highway, just like almost every Brabant city, and Utrecht, and Groningen, and parts of Amsterdam anyway.
It wasn’t until the late nineties when the real change started to occur and that fetish turned around as they started to see the bad sides (pollution, crime, ghettoization et cetera).
I think you can say that they learned their lesson from their little American adventure.
I definitely think it can go too far as urban planning should be suited to the region, transportation and work culture, existing infrastructure, etc. Every country and city needs its own urban planning philosophies in a way. But, having grown up in Canadian suburbia, I know it's poorly fit for purpose. All the best aspects of my neighborhood, I now realize, were remnants of much older walkable neighbourhoods. I still loved to walk, though, and despised our mediocre bus system, so I became used to taking an hour to walk home from high school
Fun fact:... I study urban planning in a new building called "Jakoba Mulder House". After looking up more information about this woman (Jakoba Mulder), it turned out that she was also involved in Bijlmermeer. She submitted an alternative plan with far fewer high-rise buildings, but more mid- and low-rise buildings. This was because mothers could not keep an eye on their children from the high-rise flats (on a sports field, playground, etc.). That alternative plan unfortunately was discarded, so please let this be a lesson for the future!
I just looked her up! Thanks for your insight!
Great point. There need to be many perspectives included in a good plan.
Or we could instead address the root causes of crime so parents don't have to worry about seeing their kid 100% of the time. Inequality and harmful policy like drug prohibition is the producer of crime. The future of cities is in denser mixed use zoning. It just doesn't make any sense having single family homes in cities. The fact that anyone can spin the idea of having everything you need and want withing a brief fifteen minute walk as a bad thing is insane, and often is done through misinformation and a drastic warping of the concept. Also, it ignores the fact that in the current system, more disadvantaged people often already live in a situation where they are effectively trapped in a fairly small region as a result of economic factors, often keeping people from being able to find gainful employment, simply as a result of the needless urban sprawl and degradation and ignoring of public transit, sustenance, and habitable shelter as fundamental human rights.
@@poiu477 Well looks like you have the answers buddy. Only way anyone could disagree with you is through misinformation huh…
@@MelGibsonFan Yeah there's literally no way to frame the fifteen minute city movement as anything bad without gross misinformation. It's literally the same concept that y'all find so attractive about "small town america" just moved to an urban setting. No variants of it include controls on movement, and are often coupled with investments in public transit to BETTER facilitate movement of people and INCREASE freedom. The concept also typically includes resurgent investments in community experience and cohesion.
All that said though, not every disagreement is "misinformation", just the ones utilizing misinformation.
The idea of mixing greenery through highrises for efficient yet pleasant housing is not a bad idea. The problems happen if you do not mix other things through that, such as recreation and workplaces. This is the issue that US suburbia also has.
You need places to be truly livable and that means mixing all bits of living together.
Edit: While I love attention this post is getting I would like to request 2 things:
1. If you are going to reply to me; make your reply on topic. Replying to things I did not say makes you look a bit daft. (Also: I will not bother responding).
2. Be courteous to each other.
You can't really mix things when highrises (and suburbs) are designed for cars. You either drive to live or live to walk.
More people means more land is needed for food, too. You can stack all you want, but ultimately you didn't actually free up land for anything, you just made it more "efficient". Kind of like a people factory.
Those green strips became rape machines at night...
Not mixing recreation and work places is part of the design - recreation and work generates noise and pollution, homes should be quiet and private. Efficient public transport allows people to easily get from one zone to the other, while each zone is ideal for its purpose.
You really don't want to live near a polluting factory or a loud nightclub - it's a nightmare.
@@Flyingdutchy33 This is unrelated issue because you can't control the population growth (unless you are CCP). How the housing arranged is unrelated to how much food you need but the total population is.
We had (and still have) neighbourhoods like this all over Eastern Europe. Though they are stigmatized somewhat as "low income" the infrastructure always was and still is phenomenal in every regard (stores, community centers, restaurants, schools, even local hospitals, my neighourhood even having a college) and this makes them still desirable. Worth mentioning that the infrasturcture was very deliberate by the planners, it wasn't an afterthought.
Yep, the Amsterdam example is basically a showcase of bad planing, execution and leaving a grand housing project in hands of private sector. In my country (Poland) they are great, especially after renovations.
They got some of the ideas right, but only some. Definitely poor planning. The shapes alone could tell you as much, a lot of straight lines that won't even break the wind, huge empty spaces with no thoughts put into them, reliance on cars and trains for everything... It might look nice from above, but humans aren't birds.
@@LutraLovegood You use trees for breaking the wind. And the "empty" spaces were parks. I see no issue with relying on trains. Do you have any idea how many cities rely on public transport? All of them.
@@ValleriaValentine yeah its an odd complaint to rely "on cars and trains" pretty sure all cities/suburbs rely on one or both.
@@matthiuskoenig3378 it is busses, trams and trolleys for the "last mile".
I spent a year studying CIAM as a historical architect at university - I came away with a vehement disagreement with plenty of their ideologies, and their executions. A group of aristocratic, privleged people experimenting with their social ideologies and built environment theories on those who had no voice to say otherwise, ultimately leading to expensive and failed mega project constructions and insane amounts of impoverished neighbourhoods across Europe.
Post war Europe was an incredibly dangerous place for utopian planning, and for every success story there is a bleak and tragic failure.
Yes, my thinking was along the same lines as yours. It's begging for problems to undertake a massive development such as this with nothing more than a hope that it will be well recieved. A little at a time so as to accurately assess demand is the right formula for development. This project falls in the category of social engineering which never ends well
Thank you for sharing. This is a common pattern among people who think they are the smartest people in the room and should be granted the power to make decisions for everyone.
That's gotta be one of the most beaten tropes of idealist utopian urban planners: "let's build a city for the people", then they start drawing some very neat plans and interesting looking buildings that are horribly expensive for their capacity and end up making worse every single problem they wanted to solve. Cities don't have to look good on maps and drawings, they have to be somewhere you want to live in reality.
Brasilia, comes to mind: look at the master plan. Wow! It's a city shaped like an airplane! So modern! Well, they separated residential, commercial, hospitality, industry and government so well, everything is far apart and everyone needs a car to move the huge distances between everything. Plans had to be adapted and more services had to be built near where people live over time, but it had to be shoehorned into the original plan without disturbing it too much. Public transit is a huge mess and horribly inefficient, sidewalks are undersized or completely missing and you'd have to be either brave or suicidal to try using a bicycle to get to work. Then the city's population outgrew what it was planned for, housing prices soared and people had to move out even farther away from where they work... who would have guessed that in a country with a long tradition of a bloated government, it would keep growing and getting even more centralized, needing ever more people to rubber stamp all those important papers that have to be shuffled around?
please don't forget that such city planning paradigms are a reflection of US ones. notice the disparaging comments about "the city" and such - that's straight from US city planners who created suburbs (for the sake of white flight) as well as car dependency (per the ripping out of streetcar tracks around the country so that cars dominate). also, the concept of privileged folks mandating ideologies for folks who have no say is from the US, too.
@@cocoaswann2095 it's interesting that here in Brazil, things are pretty much the reverse of this. Living near the city center is usually considered a privilege for the rich and upper middle class and "the suburbs" have a strong connotation of being poverty stricken places with barely any infrastructure and lots of violence.
There are exceptions, of course... lots of older cities had issues with inner city urban decay, especially in cities that had severe drug issues early on. Coastal cities also had very early this pattern of richer people moving near beaches and away from ports and the old city center. But overall, "suburban" here is used as a substitute for "poor".
I was a child in Amsterdam when this was built. At that time, intelligent people already knew that it would become a ghetto quickly.
It has never become clear to me why city planners did not create versions of Plan Zuid or Watergraafsmeer elsewhere, instead of the phenomenal mess they created in Noord, West and Zuidoost. The dedication to colossal failure was phenomenal.
" lack of housing", but you already knew that. Kinda short minded to call Noord a mess
@@DonGivani What's worse is that even back then they were already aware that they weren't building enough. So they didn't even achieve their goal of building sufficient housing.
@@bramvanduijn8086 They would , they definitely would ( Almere), but developers, politics were so slow !!! There was more than enough space in Almere, Amsterdam KNSM, Amsterdam IJburg.
By now there should have already been a subway going to Almere Pampus and nobody should wait so long for a house.
"At that time, intelligent people already knew that it would become a ghetto quickly."
At this time, anyone who can use their brain to foresee obvious deferred issues is referred to as a "boomer".
@@channul4887 the point it is NOT a ghetto, ghetto you may see in other countries, not in Amsterdam.. The rents in Gaasperdam, Bijlmer are high. We have a perfect mix of public housing and free rentals..it is far from a Ghetto..I know because I live here
I lived in one of the original blocks 2017-2018, Kleiburg Klust - this video perfectly sums up everything I was told about the place when I lived there, the funny looks I would get when I told colleagues I loved it! After the Biljmerramp, the plane crash, this area went through huge renewal. The neighbourhood I lived in still held a shadow of the stigmas from the times mentioned in this video, but it was a vibrant, beautiful place; I lived in a cultural crossroads. Hundreds of nationalities intermingled and living together. It still had its rough edges, but it was one of the most significant, and I dare say happiest periods of my life. I returned to live in the Netherlands in 2021 because of my experiences in the Bijlmer, not in spite of them!
Beautifully put together video; I would love to have seen a bit more to the epilogue about how the neighbourhood exists today, but also understand that the points made here are on responsible urban planning.
I am now a subscriber :)
Let's zone all the stuff people need to get to 30+ miles away. It'll surely be a utopia if we make getting to places you need to be as time consuming, difficult and expensive as possible. Pure genius.
-North America
Like any usa city. Like how LA is 1 hour driving from LA...
@@brianvanmaanen1897 it can even be as much as 3 hours. I know someone who has to commute from one side of LA to the other and it looks excruciating
The Netherlands is a small country though. It wouldn't be 30+ miles away. More like 5 miles at most. Our cities are pretty compact and small compared to stuff in America.
But it's still an issue. Us Dutchies like to be able to walk to the store in like 10~15 min. Or at least bike to the store in 10 min. We like everything we'd need in daily life pretty much next door (relative to how far apart stuff is in America at least. :P) So separating housing and the commercial areas completely was still an issue for us.
@@Purplesquigglystripe LA did not need to be like this, LA is the opposite case in city planning. LA is what happens when you privatize your city transport, and then the auto companies buy out that private company and shut it down so that everyone in this huge state is reliant on automobiles. That is what happened after WW2 in California. CA used to have 100s of Trolley and Street Car Companies in every city, LA had the LA streetcar Co, they operated trolleys up and down most of LA's streets, getting around wasn't so bad. But then the government privatized all these companies. and General Motors bought them out, because at the time a MASSIVE investment in the auto industry and Highways was going on at the time. So if GM could convince the government that street cars were not worth it, they would be better off investing in HIGHWAYS and FREEWAYS, then they would sell more CARS. And that is exactly what they did. One of the only cities in CA that kept its street car program govt owned was San Diego, and they converted it into the San Diego Trolley. California could have had a wonderful public transit system, but the auto companies literally fucked it all up so they could force the government to invest in highways to sell cars.
I really like the dynamic you've created between the Hoog narration and the old tv/radio narration. The lil whiplash of an out of character line followed by the glitching to show the character wasn't as established as it had seemed up to that point was really nice. The "that's a nice video essay way of saying..." had me laughing out loud 👌👌
Also, the graphics get better and better. Prime example, that shot of low rise Amsterdam next to billionaires row is really neat. the 3D environments and tvs to set the vibe and the maps are really nicely done too
Took a while to realize it was AI generated! I already wondered what old American tv source would talk about the Bijlmer.
Yeah This video is sensational bullshit. There's nothing to like about it.
@@kykaleyeah I was thinking these things too. Didn't realize it was created for this video until it started getting sarcastic.
Yeah that’s was fantastic that’s sarcastic tone. Btw I am an architect and yes we should lay to rest fail modernist theories that’s still have an impact today unfortunately
Every dystopia emerges from promises of utopia.
I've live in Bijlmer for a year when I moved to NL, and always wondered where the stigma around it came from. Each time someone from Cetral Amsterdam asked me where I lived they were very suprised and worried when I said Bijlmer. This was a fascinating watch, and definitely gave me a new perspective!
The area has improved a lot in the past 15~20 years. The thing is that once an area gains a certain image in the eyes of the surrounding people, it takes a very long time for that image to change.
Great video summarizing the history of Bijlmer, however things have changed. I lived and studied there for four years, and had an awesome time. There is still a stigma, especially from Dutch people, about the region but most foreigners love it. There is easy access to all big chain supermarkets, metro, bike lanes and parks. Many companies and shops have opened up in the area creating a feeling of more safety. I understand the ongoing issues of the neighborhood but I guarantee that it is not as bad as depicted on this video.
If you are ever on the region go on a walk around Gaasperplas or Nelson Mandela park. The shopping district around Bijmer ArenA is also decent full of shops and restaurants. Perhaps you can also vist Brouwerij Kleiburg which a very cozy local brewery.
I think the Bijlmer is a lot nicer now than Osdorp. Public transport is better too.
My cousin who has a good job at a bank in Amsterdam also decided to buy his house in the Bijlmer some 6-7 years ago. So while it has a bad rep nationwide as a bad neighborhood I figured must have improved a lot
yeah, it's a paradise compared to the average US suburb
I recently had a class on this in my architecture course and one of the things that stuck with me was the plane crash. Nobody even knew how many people in that building died that day because nobody knew how many people lived there. There was absolutely no control whatsoever, which is indeed what happens when you build things that are disconnected from the streets. Think of all the small alleyways, dark corners and quiet garages, except they decided to apply this is on a monstrous scale. It's really sad to see all these failures in city planning, and I'm kind of reminded of Pruitt Igo now too, because of the devastating effect it can have on people's lives. I do want to say that I really appreciate how you convey both information and emotions through your videos, I really felt something here.
I live here, in one of the hexagon flats on the top floor. Interestingly in my eyes nowadays it's actually the utopia it was meant to be. I've been living in Amsterdam for 7 years, of which the last 4.5 here. Before that I lived in Oost and Oud zuid, and this is my favorite neighbourhood by far.
The internet wins 💖with fact and not fear.
if you did not comment.. we would not know. this video will stand as the truth. his truth only
@@cinnamonstar808 well both definitely have their points. it is the uptopia it’s meant to be now but only to them, some people might not like it there even now, but the video is talking about the past of it and the effects it had on the people and society that lived there and its change over time. both can be true my friend
Where did you live in oud zuid that you like the bijlmer more? Just out of curiosity. I could not wait to get out of the bijlmer tbh. Now I live in zuid and it is much better here except the airplane noise.
@@ythelldoineedahandle I lived right next to gerrit van der veenstraat tram stop. I'm a biologist and in bijlmer I now live 10 mins walking from diemerbos, 10 min biking from gaasperplas so I love that, and also bijlmer has a much stronger sense of community, everyone greets eachother nicely and i have lots of interesting small conversations with strangers, while in parts like oud zuid everyone lives their separate lives.
@@mau19Y1 The area around G.vd Veenstraat is really posh so if you are not into that sort of thing I can understand that you felt out of place. The park around Gaasperplas is lovely, I used to to run there on a daily basis like 7-8 yrs ago, so I can understand why you like it there.
To this day many architectural schools around the world still tout the work of Le Corbusier and the horrible blight that places like Bijlmer represent. It is about time that the modernist movement admit that most of their theories were a complete disaster for our cities. It's about time that we lay these design monsters to rest!
Honesty, it was a good idea but the timing was bad, mixed with a few bad events and full of stigma. It could have been a sucess case with a few minor changes.
@@fernandotaveira7573No,
People need proper housing, gardens, low builds. Highrises deprive huge areas of light. Especially in a place like the Netherlands where the sun never climbs high.
People need privacy, nature and peace. None of which are available in these buildings.
If you have 2 neighbours you have a small community.
If you have 100 neighbours you have a chicken roost with too much mess for a proper community.
A small apartment building by itself can be decent for traffic and social system.
A massive cluster of apartment buildings is always a problem for traffic and social systems.
An ethnically homogenous area of native Europeans is functional and harmonious.
A human landfill of irreconcilable racial, cultural aliens thrown into a European nation can never be funvtional or harmonious.
So no, not a good idea by any measure. And I'm sure that was the whole point. Malice
But there are palces that thrived, like Renovación San Borja, and Villa Portales
@@zteaxon7787 Search the about the Villa Frei
@@zteaxon7787 so true
01:05 'It's people are tall enough so there's not much need for compensation.'
Just throwing that out there, eh? XD
I personally lived in the Bijlmer Area for 12 months in 2021-2022 and loved my time there. It is so incredibly green, while still having access to good shopping areas like in my case Amsterdamse Poort. I believe that this city development is actually really pretty good and liveable.
The fact that the initial goals were still missed simply shows that very successful city planning is incredibly hard and that planning and developing a HUGE new region with radically new ideas is just not quite the right approach. Nevertheless I think the Bijlmer Area was an incredible step into the right direction when it comes to city planning.
Our goal is to analyse the mistakes in the process and planning and do better in the future!
Yeah 2021-2022 was long after the initial failings of the neighborhood, until the 00's it definitely had a strong reputation of a ghetto (by Dutch standards). Since then it has improved a lot.
Yes there were many good things about the plan, they missed some very important things (lack of commercial activity) and overbuilt too much at once but we can learn things from them. The housing crisis in the Netherlands is appalling right now and housing is desperately needed so some ambition is in order with a good amount of learning from past mistakes.
I think Bijmer oost ist still kinda how I imagine it to be back in the day
Bullshit
@@hshahauahbsganavcsznevw thanks for your elaborate response lol
babe wake up, hoog made a new video about dutch urban planning
It is amazing how this concept is almost the exact opposite to most of the modern ideas of ideal neighborhood planning. One of the most interesting schools of thought now is that now smaller buildings of differing design surrounding a central yard is better for community building. Having a pocket of community gardens and meeting places in this central space as small islands of isolation and peace. The buildings stand to segment the neighborhood from the outside and face inward. Their back entrance and utilitarian side facing the streets.
Then you connect these buildings with smaller roads and pathways, explicitly trying to add curves, distinctive differences and features to each street surround. And then using commercial spaces as separators and insulation between residential areas and larger roadways.
This is a great video.....BUT....I feel like it's a part 1. There needs to be a part 2 where we see what's happened to it now. What are the areas like that they rebuilt differently after the demolision, and what are the original parts like today? What changes have they made and has that improved things? Was it able to be adapted and improved or is it still a horrible place to live now? Are they going to demolish the rest or keep it, and why? My other thought is that you made out that the lack of density is what caused a lack of eyes on the street, and therefore crime, but I don't think that's correct because there are many low density places that are very safe. Think wealthy neighbourhoods with expensive single family homes. There's definitely more to it than that. It's more to do with the layout and design than density alone. Perhaps you could delve into that a bit more in a part 2 also. Or maybe a part 3.
Nowadays it's a regular "clean" suburb. Nothing money can't fix. It's no longer a government owned place, private investors fixed the place up,it's quiet, there are some shops here and there, but it's still very much an alienating space due to it's architecture. People just live there and via metro they are in the centre in 15 min.
Well, going by the same "revitalization" projects in Europe, it means the apartments now belong to investors who milk the shit out of those needing a place to live, and poor or even not so poor people have to live in places with precarious public transport or share a house despite being adults with stable jobs.
@@fresagrus4490
The state (without own money) and the privat investors made the same. Credits to build houses and blocks to get new credits. Some paid the credit, had a good time, they made crisis.
I feel there is a beautiful video waiting to be made by you.
Production value is so good I almost feel guilty watching it for free
I lived in the Bijlmer and it was a horror show.
You can pay me so you feel better =)
I appreciate the aesthetic choice of using AI voices. It makes the turn at 8:33 with the line "there you can find a stray junkie who is illegally occupying one of the apartments" really make the entire dystopian vibe come alive. I would love to know which model you used for that. It worked particularly well.
Your videos amaze me. I never thought I would subscribe to a channel about urban planning and design, but here I am.
The "AI" voice seemed suspect at first but I was open to considering it but as we got more of it I started questioning the veracity of what made the video.
i think it's crap because the text is on screen. pick a lane!
They probably have semi commie rules if a squatter squats on someones property long enough they get to keep it. The Lefties love this kind of insanity.
I agree, it was really well done
@@User0000000000000004 What?
They did something similar in my home city of Turku, Finland back in the 70's i believe it was. They built this separate satellite town called Varissuo full of high-rise buildings close together, surrounded by natural forests and having a shopping centre with a school, healthcare center, and library in the middle of it all. It was really innovative at the time, but then the city bought many of the apartments and started housing people with um... "Social problems". Today it's like a timeslip back to the early 90's recession where everyone's depressed and just drinking and doing drugs out in the open. They tried to give the place a new image by renovating the outsides of the buildings with modern colorful prefabs, but you still have the dilapidated dank stairwell and that barely functional elevator with a flickering light waiting for you when you step inside one of the buildings.
It also sounds like there aren't enough jobs around there. Here's a tip: Set up a well finded social worker station in the area where you move most of the people who need social workers. Or, you know, don't solve your problem in place A by moving it to place B.
@@bramvanduijn8086 There was/is a social worker station as well. It is virtually a separate city with all the services imaginable except a police station. I think the problem is that the city just placed too many people in need of social housing into one place instead of spreading them across the city as they've done in more recent times. And you are right about the job situation, but Turku is a small city of 250,000 people in total with an above average public transit network so you can go anywhere within the city in less than 1h no matter where you started from. What i mean is that the job situation affects the whole city, not just the "Hoods" like Varissuo.
I prefer the concrete color. If all you do, is paint concrete Brady Bunch colors (for some relief), it looks even more depressing. See: University of Illinois at Chicago, by Skidmore
Nothing spells coming home like out of order elevators and using piss covered stairwells.
Soothing, almost like a warm bath.
Amazing how those drugs make it to 250k towns in finland, considering how far away it is from the traditional producer countries. Assuming you're not talking about dutch mdma, or estonian (russian LOL) 3-methyl-fentanyl
dude these graphics are absolutely beautiful. wow. good coverage of the subject in the title. cant wait to see more of your videos (im less than 10 min in to this one)
My biggest surprise was a lot of parks and a family focus, but no mentions of a school, or even amenities.
I’m also surprised by the sheer scale they seemed to plan at. I would’ve thought they would have done it in sections. High density housing is… well dense and needs a lot of people. Making a cities worth all at once and trying to fill them all seems like a pipe dream.
Great Video! Today sociology also knows that these semi public spaces (like the lawns arround apartment blocks) are poison for people to taking responsibilty and for feeling at home. They neither feel public nor private, thus they aren't used or cared for. Many redevelopments therefore include a stronger division. Small hedges and fences, but also communal gardens run by small groups, etc.
"They neither feel public or private, ..." Tom Zwitser:"Public space is not neutral."
1. Convince yourself that strict zoning creates a utopia.
2. Build a cool table sized model to impress everyone.
3. Spend obscene amounts of money building it in real life.
4. Living there absolutely sucks.
5. Repeat.
I’ve been following your channel since the beginning and your production keeps getting better. The Secret Base/Summoning Salt style synth music is nice. The AI voice was also a nice touch. Great video!
Holy sh*t... that was the best way ive seen anyone incorporate a Squarespace ad into their video. well done.
“All of the positives of rural living without any of the negatives”
Except, the wide open spaces, the lack of neighbors, the quiet, having a unique home, or any of the things you enjoy about rural living.
The lack of neighbors is not rural living. That's living in the wilderness.
I like how around 2:50 the voice speaking doesn't sound like English but the captions were so perfectly timed made it sound like it was english
We still have to respect them trying something new and many lessons have been learned. My lasting personal memory (as someone living in Utrecht) was from when the airplane crashed i just left a party with friends (who later started a isp called xs4all) we had every month in one of flats closeby. The crash happened about 20min after i left and i was nearing central station to get on the train going back to Utrecht. Having lived my whole life in the inner city of utrecht i had to move to new 'massive' building area called 'leidsche rijn' the new part of Utrecht and some of the same dangers where felt for a while (like not enough shops) but overal people seem to be happy with how its evolved.
New does not equal good.
@@tavernburner3066 ehmm yes that was kind of my point really still i can see where they came from and why they felt it might have worked. It looks to me that the projects of that size after it where done more in stages to the new parts could be filled and evolve into a community before moving forward. And they have a totally different design and variation.
@@scb2scb2 I see a miscommunication. the problem with your statement is that this new city cost a lot of money that the state will never get back. Trying new things is not a virtue in it of itself.
@@tavernburner3066 Not really they tried something that we now know (40 years later) that doesn't work and we know why. Should they have tried it at that scale? no but it was a different time we have to account for that. The ideas behind why they wanted to build the bijlmer and even some of the concept where not random and they really wanted to solve a few issues. Given that it was a few decades after WW2 and 20 years after the country got rich this massive building concept made sense to many people. Its easy to see now why it failed but we have to see it in the context from when most of the planning was done and what they knew then. Clearly newer building projects in this country took the lessons and moved way more careful and step by step. Not sure what you mean with money from new parts will not being able to support themselves as far as i know most of them do thats why the bijlmer project stand out so much.
I've lived in both the inner city of Utrecht and in Leidsche Rijn and they both have big positives. I work at the Utrecht University Science Park so it's very far from Leidsche Rijn and as an autistic person with high noise sensitivity traveling by rail to work is very uncomfortable and exhausting, but living in Leidsche Rijn itself is quite pleasant. There is shopping, nice restaurants, and beautiful places to walk around. It is also very easy to get around there by bike, and the layout of neighbourhoods doesn't feel monotonous.
There is an uncanniness to this video that makes me question how much of this is footage and story is true, and how much of it is AI generated.
Its so subtle and wonderful
This is a real story, nothing made up. Just an immaculate editing of existing old footage, narration and 3D modelling. It’s a very well documented story, the neighbourhood is a lot nicer now as well, with a well established Surinamese community and culture. All but one of the honeycomb high rises have been demolished by now.
Ooh, I missed the bit in the description where it says some of the voices are ai generated 😅
@@luipaardprint Even if some alternate voices are AI, the script certainly is not fully AI.
@@luipaardprint So many things have improved over the years, yet people are complaining louder than ever before 😞
All he did was generate ai voice overs for real quotes im pretty sure. If you have watched his other video's you can tell the script is not AI generated.
The main problems with these types of constructions are, in my opinion, the failure to obtain full funding so that projects do not get completed as planned; the use of materials unsuited to the climate (Northern Europe is just not suited to bare concrete); the failure to effectively deal with issues of access (people do not generally like windswept balconies and a plethora of stairs); and, perhaps, the most important, a failure to maintain developments.
A development like this could have worked. They are not intrinsically bad. The ideas such as open space and zoning industry away (though not all places of employment), do improve quality of life.
In my opinion, there were many things that could have been done to improve this place. Lower building heights and more variety in the height, even with a loss of open space, would have given a more human scale to the project. The use of other materials, such as brick, wood, and even plastic to clad the concrete, would have given it a less dystopian look. Grey skies do not need grey buildings. Better access ways would have given people a greater sense of security as they moved around the site and also given people a private space outside their front door, however small. A lowered expectation that people will use public open space, given the choice, many people would like a larger private space, a large terrace rather than a small balcony.
None of these ideas would have been out of place at the time. Unfortunately, brutalist monoliths were preferred, structures in which people were filed away rather than given a chance to thrive. It's hardly surprising that the target middle-class showed little interest.
You always manage to not only convey the information but also bring a certain feeling and athmosphere with it. I really admire that, huge respects
Lovely video, great to point out the flaws of urban design in a country that is often highly praised for it. High quality well researched as always
Its as if they had to try it out to figure it out.
@@bismuth7730 I think the difference is that they tried it out, failed, but took what they learned and the things they DID get right and reapplied it elsewhere. In any lesser country, they'd either repeat the mistakes for profit or discard everything because "the investors are scared of even seeing anything related to the disaster".
The Netherlands isn't perfect, but they are still minimally reasonable on how they build their cities (even modern ones), while The Line is just... happening?
The canals in Amsterdam barely survived the 50s and 60s. In some other cities they did mostly disappear. There were serious proposals for constructing a 6-lane highway right through the old city center.
@@NothingXemnas they didn’t learn anything at all, they just mostly stopped building high rise buildings except for luxury apartments
I moved to the Netherlands last year and i was genuinely surprised by how low density is in most places. In Eindhoven which is not a small city public transport is also terrible unless you have to go directly to the centre and roads are huge barriers... In the beginning of the video the word fetishized was used for dutch urban planning, i think thats quite fitting, a lot of dutch cities are car dependant nightmares, once you leave the picturesque centre.
That “perfect” city is utterly nauseating. How that could appeal to anyone is incomprehensible.
Bijlmer citizen for the past 9 months here.
I have also been told that the place was deemed unsafe and not preferable to live in, before I moved to Amsterdam. However, I have come to really like the area. It is quite spacious, and the 'high rise' buildings are not actually that high in my opinion. I never felt like I was in danger, nor have I seen people that feel like like they are in danger. There is a a big sense of community, I see everyone greet each other on the street, or even in the bus sometimes people randomly bump into each other and talk. Bijlmerplein has a lot of shops and markets you can go to, and of course Bijlmer ArenA is one of the biggest attractions at the moment. (Well maybe not at the moment, sorry Ajax fans) Public transportation is very easy to access and you get to the city center relatively easy. All in all I quite like living here, and it really doesn't feel as grim as the video makes it out to be :) Thank you for making this though Hoog, you are an absolute magician with these videos!
Holy hell! I recognized those buildings from the El Al 747 crash... Those tall, angular structures are unmistakable.
Yeah no kidding, as soon as I saw the thumbnail I just immediately thought "wait, weren't those the same buildings from the El Al crash?" like a memory just got unlocked.
It is said that there is still a higher prevalence of cancer and autoimmune diseases in this area due to the depleted uranium used as a counterweight in the tail of the 747.
15:00 that lady's pun works so well. Meer means both lake and more in Dutch, and the Bijlmermeer neighborhood often just gets called the Bijlmer. So she's saying, "it's not Bijlmermeer any more, just more Bijlmer"
Anyway good vid
As a Singaporean these look exactly like the public housing that is a dominant staple in Singapore (even amongst the middle and upper-middle class). Goes to show a little efficient planning goes a long way.
You actually punish crime.
difference is that the planned HDB towns have a lot of mixed zoning- kopitiams and playgrounds and shops within the HDB areas, schools and parks and local shopping centres at most a few minutes' walk away, etc, and for older estates on the outskirts of the City area it's even more of a mixed use (golden mile and queenstown HDBs being an example). A rows of blocks of housing separated from transport, community and work spaces would suck (all the yishun jokes come to mind here, but even that is not as bad as this video shows)
Yeah, and it's important that it's social housing. People are a lot less likely to turn to crime if they have stable housing. So although it wouldn't have fixed the crime problem, it would've certainly helped.
I've never seen an ad inside an ad before. The Squarespace ad was interrupted by another ad. I never even thought of that as a possibility.
14:30 I remember this plane crash, but I didn’t know it was here. One thing I do remember is that they couldn’t identify how many people had been killed because of the amount of unregistered residents and unregistered citizens living in the place. I think something like three times more people were killed than they could actually count for.
i'm from that area but gaasperdam its called Reigerbos absolutly beautifull there, the bijlmer now is a bit better back in the days it was very grim walking there
This was done in the UK.
I can remember back in the 60's that people were delighted to get a place in these new developments and escape inner city slums. Members of my family moved there and loved it.
But as time moved on so did society. Enter criminality, antisocial behaviour, fear amongst the now older residents, erosion of community and the resulting isolation.
Yeah. It's kind of a chicken and egg situation whether these places bred crime by their ugly design or crime was just the result of a general collapse in public safety. Having seen slums, which lets be honest were where the poor went before these places were built, in Latin America that are riddled by crime, I suspect these issues would have become a problem wherever the poor were concentrated as society because more and more low trust.
@@forthrightgambitia1032
It's not even a kind of chicken and egg situation. The answer to the question very simple to find.
Did the rest of society experience the same level of collapse in public safety?
I am Dutch and i can tell you:
No, the rest of society did NOT experience the same level of downfall. Not even in the "bad parts of town".
Yes, the design of the buildings definitely enabled crime to come to such a rise. There were so many places where dealers and junkies could "lounge", lots of nooks and crannies.
And finally, the chicken and egg situation isn't even a "question". Every biologist can tell you there were eggs before there were chickens. Remember dinosaurs?
@@stonytina5177 How do you explain most of Eastern Europe then where no such downfall happened, moreover such apartment blocks are widely regarded as some of the most desirable places to live, like the New Belgrade municipality in Belgrade, Serbia?
@@SerbAtheistIf New Belgrad is the most desirable place to live, that simply means the rest of the country is even worse.
What these city planners often fail to realize is that the reason cities have risen from the bottom up, “unplanned”, is that the growth was organic. Top down, “planned” cities require massive coordinated sustained construction from the time of planning until full completion. How many projects can withstand this amount of dedication to actually see it through?? The amount of money, manpower, and materials that needs to be supplied and sustained throughout a length of time with unknown complications and changes along the way.
Great video. Really reminds me of the “Scampia” neighborhood in Naples. It was envisioned in a similar way to Bijlmer: high-rise, “efficient”, interconnected buildings with a utopian view. Today, it’s filled with crime and is in decay and home to some of the poorest residents of the city. Most of the buildings have been demolished.
if you read the comments: the residence said the love their neighborhood and it is utopia for them. This video is pushing hate. People in these homes now are telling you. its not true.
THEY HAVE A VALID VOICE than the creator of this video.
My parents told me the rent in 1973 was 800 Guilders, comparable to over 3300 Euro today. It was a nice place though, if you like highrises. But the biggest mistake was to place 'new citizens' from (former) colonies in large concentrations in the Bijlmer. We moved in '78 after my parents had encountered several attacks from junkies or otherwise 'socially challenged' (discriminated) people. Nice to recognize the floor plan. I still have a few memories from a time the until I was almost 5.
@@XHALE303 Insanely expensive. I was paying 800 guilders in rent when the guilder was replaced with the Euro in 2001.
Crazy, why you wouldn't just get a mortgage instead is beyond me
You meant the immigrunts?
eeeeeeexactly! finally somebody did point it out! those houses look awesome and I am rather sure the problem was in people not in houses itself. ex-eastern-block is full of such projects and provide home up to this very day for totally normal middle class people and are totally ok place to live and not dangerous or ghetto.
This channel does incredible work. Every second is 100% absorbing. Thank you!
Thank you :)
The same story here in the UK. There is an excellent book about this period and type of development in the UK called "Concretopia" by John Grindrod. Recommended.
Had they done three things differently,I think the original plan would’ve worked. First buildings no more than 4 stories tall. Second , larger apartments, for a more luxury feel and three, integrated mixed use of commercial and residential usage. Also, if they had finished the metro connections first, it would’ve changed the whole dynamic. My father was a community planner and worked in this field. Wish he was still around to
Talk to about this. He was active during this time.
I’m sorry but the apartments in these flats can be HUGE. They’re normally around 90-100m2. Some even bigger with more rooms. Way bigger than projects of the same era in slotervaart or contemporary buildings. Size is not the issue.
@@RetgunTej I got the impression they were too small for the immigrant community with larger families. Frankly, 100 sq meters would be good for a couple. Maybe a couple with a small child. I’d consider that tiny for a family of 4, 5 or 6. My first place was 92 sq meters. Great for me. When my wife moved in after we married, it was a bit tight. Still, these apartment buildings were designed with storage separate from the units, which was great! That effectively increases the usable space in the flat. So, I could see them feeling roomier than a comparable flat elsewhere. Regardless, combing units could have accommodated larger family units. But, I’m not sure practical that would’ve been in practice.
@@just-dl The average size of an apartment in Amsterdam is around 75 square meters (approximately 807 square feet), according to a 2021 report by the Dutch real estate agency Pararius. So 100 sqm is above average... the problem is the ''American brain root'' of zoning residential and commercial separate, also building high density area but still car oriented... that's why this failed, also why most american ''projects'' failed, and complexes like Alterlaa in Vienna is a success. (Alterlaa was reported in 2008 as having the highest tenant satisfaction rating in Vienna.... and those high-rises are way taller.... 23-27 floors - so is not the height a problem)
The larger one - they made two with a wall. Because 50 m² could be 500 what ever money every month.
I'm American and my gf is Dutch and I have been really enjoying learning about the history of her country. This is yet another video that has expanded my knowledge. thank you!
Very interesting video, I visited the Biljmermeer as a small field trip with my class group (I was studying abroad in NL and it was for a Intercultural Communications class). It was a very odd feeling place, and felt so...disconnected from the rest of the city. Like someone just plopped this city down from somewhere else.
It's interesting contrasting with how they're developing areas like NDSM-warf now. They're still pursuing high-rises out of necessity, but the style is completely different. There's effort to create a neighborhood, provide shops and cafes on the ground floor, and it's laid out like a more traditional high density city area.
The use of AI to change (or maybe you did it completely from the beginning) to VO to glitching out and transitioning the sales pitch into the dystopian parts was a great touch.
I visited Bijlmer for a few days in 1991 (I think, anyway before the plane crash) while on interrail tour with a few friends. We were lodged by a Surinamese guy who ran a "private hostel" in his apartment. Nice host, and he explained how he was very selective on the guests he picks, and thus is able to continue the business without getting complaints from the neighbors. He spotted us at the main railway station "looking lost" (we were, yes.. arriving just before nightfall, and not having any lodging arrangements..).
I do remember the junkies in the metro, and also remember wondering that we were the only whites in the train (Finland back then was very dominantly white, so this was very new to us..).
Still, arriving in Bijlmer, looking at the vast lawn areas not having trash around, and overall the place looking fairly clean once we'd left the metro station, I started to like the place. High-rise concrete, yes, but appreciating exactly the large areas of green that this planning provided.
The following documentaries should give a nice view of the old Bijlmer architecture that you encountered:
Ergens ben ik nergens - Dagelijks leven in de Amsterdamse Bijlmermeer (VPRO 30-4-1989)
ruclips.net/video/S4ncfUYpPgA/видео.html
Bijlmer promotion video:
ruclips.net/video/e-BtqXy7-_0/видео.html
When I first saw this video, and all the way throughout while I watched it, I couldn't stop thinking about my city's local district.
In Tallinn, Estonia, we have a district called Lasnamäe, and it is pretty much EXACTLY what you describe in the video, except a soviet version.
This utopia urban planning phenomenon, was, unfortunately in a lot of countries. Lots of people suffered from it all over Europe, us included.
From what I see in the video, Bijlmermeer is in fact much smaller, holding about 50k people, while Lasnamäe has 119k.
It would be interesting to see a similar video on it, there are lots of interesting moments in it's planning and history.
This is great exemple of no application of "Design Thinking", not including the people who were going to live there in the ideation and conception of this enormous project.
I think the problem was that it looked great on the drawing board but it's not enough for architecture to look great there: it has to to be designed with people in mind. old towns don't have this problem as much because they grow organically, but a completely new housing development needs to be thought through in excruciating detail
@1:04 that line, at what I can only assume is a playful jab at what used to be New Amsterdam, was absolutely hilarious
Thank you for sharing your video with the world ❤️ it’s really appreciated and so kind of you to share your work ❤️ thank youuuu and thank youuuu
We had apartment complexes like these in S. Korea big difference was, they were mixed in with traditional housing, retail, government offices, other places of work, didn't have direct access to public transportation, other then few bus stops. Most important part was government offices in which your local politicians was expected to spend most of their time working right there mixed in with the people, they represented and you could literally walk to where your boss lived as well for many people and they shopped and lived in same neighborhood as their employees. Only factories were separated, because they polluted to much.
There were many many similar housing projects all accross Europe at the same time, many of them smaller than Bijlmer but others quite comparable. I lived for two years in one of these in a Paris suburbs that's been a bit more of a success, because added to the concept of a park city of high rises with large walkable areas around a new metro line they also built from the beginning a lot of individual houses and mid-rises in the middle as an attempt to attract different kinds of people. Which worked relatively well to this day.
In my area the buildings were disposed in interesting ways as to create a feeling of density in some areas with lots of bushy alleyways making it a bit of a maze when you're not used to it. I liked living there even though the building I was living in was extremely derelict and cops were more stupidly suspicious because there was more of an expectation for youth to engage in criminal activities. Supermarkets were a bit too far away and there wasn't just enough shops in most areas but the greenery and walkability was great, I was going out all the time just for that. Many of these urban projects were dramatic failures when not thoroughly thought-out but I think that the attempts at doing it better were generally sincere, belonged to their era and should be respected.
yeah. i live in a "blokowisko" in poland in the 90s, and it was ok. spaces for kids to play, not too many cars back then, etc. little shops and services at the corners. surprisingly little crime.
The result is very similar in the US with their public housing. It does not matter what the design, planning etc is.
High rises, small homes etc, it does not matter. If you put a bunch of poor people in one area that area is going to start to decline.
The people who can afford to leave will leave first, and that will be the middle class followed by working class residents. They will be replaced with more poor people, then its only a matter of time before its a drug and crime infested ghetto.
The problem with most cities (and suburbs) is people want to live separated from the problems of the inner cities (poverty,crime,drugs etc). Which means they will block just about any attempt for low income or poor people to live where they live. Which leaves the state no choice but to put its poor people in the few remaining areas that will tolerate it.
You see, when I think of a city built to maintain happiness and joy within it's inhabitants, I don't think of endless, copy and pasted, geometrical bricks of concrete; devoid of color, plant life, and recreation.
what about inception
Yeah, I witnessed the same development at my birthplace in Germany. The city, which was more a loose agglomeration of small towns, in the 1960s decided to build an artificial city centre. With a large mall and a lot of high-rises with affordable flats. Relatives of mine moved in, as it was "modern" and "middle class" at the time. But it never took off. Well, my grandma did, in one of those "pass throughs". The wind was funelled through this pass through so hard, it literally blew her away... Ended up in the hospital.
Anyway, in the late 80s the city decided to move all the "undesired people" (unemployed, not willing to work; migrants, not willing to integrate) into the relatively cheap flats. By the late 90s the whole area was a disaster! A ghetto stacked upwards. A couple of years ago the largest high-rises were torn down, because there was no way to fix this. The area is still something, you try to get out off. Not a place to live in.
Public housing ALWAYS results in ghettoization, high violent crime, drug use, and generational poverty. Always. Is it because of the housing....or the people who are placed into these projects?
Das klingt wie Schönebeck
@@chrisdealemania Marl. Aber es gibt sicherlich dutzende solcher Fälle.
@@elchinator DIese Plattenbau Siedlungen gibt es leider gefühlt in jeder größeren Stadt heutzutage. Stichwort Chorweiler
It lacked beauty. It was souless. People are not breathing, drinking, eating, working machines. The lack of enthusiasm was just a symptom of the highly efficient but extremely souless art and construction.
Dankzij de bijlmer hebben we SMIB.
It would have been nice to also show the Bijlmer today, and what Amsterdam has done to improve the things mentioned in this video. That said, very nice montage
There is a lovely book about the architect behind this plan, "De Betonnen Droom" by Daan Dekker, which also shows the sad mistake/events that happened here and lead to the initial failure of the neighbourhood.
Beautifully made, considering the craftsmanship alone. The audio, the visuals... Everything is so stylish! Even the AI-Voices sound amazing, I reluctantly admit... I would have loved to hear more about the current state of the Bijlmeer and what can be learned from what went wrong. But the comments seem to do an alright job!
I love seeing real life examples of dystopias. Because everybody writes down their ideas on a paper, thinks they got all the answers, until they simply try it and fail hard. Because there are things you don't know you don't know.
Many Dutch shopping centers built in that era also had dark corners with the (nowadays) predictable results.
It turned out as dystopia only due to bad habits of people and not enough security. Ex-eastern-block is full of such projects and they provide home for millions of totally normal people and are not ghetto by any means. why it did not work out in Netherlands must be more related with inhabitants than housing itself.
@@KasparOnTubeYou design housing around people, then they adapt to whatever small changes. Not the other way around
@@AizakkuZ bad people remain bad in small cute houses too ;) they are just spread out on bigger area so You aint spot them so easily.
What a sudden end to the video. How is the neighborhood faring now? Did the adjustments after the crash work? What still needs to be done?
Significantly better though the area of the crash is still the worst off part. What doesn't help is the poor connection to the rest of the city. The other side of the Bijlmer has two metro lines, one directly downtown. The area of the crash on the other hand has only one metro line and not nearly as well connected. But as a whole the Bijlmer area is doing much better, crime is down significantly for example, that seemed to have moved West and to the city of Rotterdam.
Much like a lot of the other outskirts of Amsterdam, the Bijlmermeer is still a relatively poor neighbourhood with its accompanying challenges, but things are already a hell of a lot better than they used to be back in the 1980s and 1990s.
What it needed was people. The project was so modern and new that it took years of globalization, migrations and a housing crisis for people to actually populate and enliven the place and now it works. It was truly ahead of its time.
Showing some crime statisics, comparing the Bijlmer to surrounding neighbourhoods would've been nice addetive to this video.
The Bijlmerramp, the cargo plane crashing into the highrises is still a mystery, somewhere in 2070ish it's full documents are supposed to be released.
You think the government was looking for an excuse to tear down the project?
A truly interesting topic. Something similar happened in my home, Stockholm in the 1960ths. We demolished large parts of our old city and replaced it with a new brutalist style. The result was one of the ugliest squares in Europe and removing all life and character from parts of the city centre
Wonder which neighbourhoods you mean. I was Erasmus in Stockholm and when visiting friends in Kungshamra I felt the architecture was so unnatural and it was kind of scary to walk alone there in the dark. I lived in Lappis which for some reason felt safer
Wat mostly thinking of Norrmalm. A lot of the old stone city was destroyed. But in the suburbs like Kungshamra and especially Vällingby and Farsta was built in a very brutalist style
Great video! I haven’t seen anyone mention you nail the pronunciation of Dutch words. You sound Dutch when you say them, it’s impressive
0:36 Why did that guy use such a hard quote just to build a couple flats
Damn Hoog, you always make excellent videos, but this one knocks it out of the park for me! The story telling and visuals are great!
My mom actually led a program to make the bijlmer a more liveable environment. We are Surinamese and she actually understood what the people of the Bijlmer needed. Nowadays the Bijlmer is a much better place.
Architects and urban planners seem to be susceptible to a sort of "god complex", where in pursuit of a grand vision they lose touch with the people who will be inhabiting those spaces. Brutalism is a good example of this.
Remarkable video. I have a deep understanding of this area's history and each time I'm in Amsterdam, I eagerly visit to observe its evolving landscape. Unfortunately in my post-soviet state we not only overlook the flaws in such dated urban planning methods but also continue to draft masterplans that introduce increasingly obsolete parasitic districts. these areas offer no value to either the city or its residents, who are effectively forced to live in these uninspiring environments
If all designer do is fiddle with the planometric view; and make fun shapes, they will build another failure. Plan can be part of the solution, but not the whole story.
Awesome! I don't know if you understand Dutch; but I would highly recommend the following videos for historic footage of the old Bijlmer:
ruclips.net/video/S4ncfUYpPgA/видео.html
ruclips.net/video/Rj1946Tem2M/видео.html
ruclips.net/video/bpEes4UuUzc/видео.html
ruclips.net/video/e-BtqXy7-_0/видео.html
There is much more historic footage available in the "Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision". For copyright reasons, however; most of this historic footage is only viewable within the institute itself. Unless you pay for them for sending you a private copy.
Almost the entire of Singapore's housing is built in this philosophy. It worked perfectly.
Yeah but they also have the death penalty for throwing recyclables in the trash.
Netherland have death penalty for that?
Netherlands has the death penalty for anything.
I do feel that you have missed the mark on this one, but that was almost guaranteed with a running time this sort on a subject this complicated and deep. Granted a lot of the subjects remain a matter of debate, but what caused the downfall of the bijlmer was not that people didn't want to move there initially, a lot of people in the older Amsterdam neighborhoods wanted to move (living conditions there where BAD), but the delays and finally the Suriname issue and more just caused a failure cascade that no one could be bothered to fix. It got bad enough that the corporations who build, rented and maintained the flats told the government to give them money and they would keep them functional, but at large wanted nothing to do with them. It could have all worked out just fine, but the will for it was not there, these are not the sort of projects you can do piecemeal.
I was born here in one of these flats and to this day I am still living here, I have seen it change from its lowest point to what it is now. Make no mistake the only reason they demolished a lot of the flats was to get the people away and spread them out, the buildings where just fine and you can see it around those still standing. The only thing that was needed was to remove the elevated roads and bring more live to the ground to get that social control and they have and it worked wonders, specially in summer time this place is lively and fun. I think that showed the only I think core design flaw to the plan, you need to give people a reason to be around, so shops, markets etc all on the ground floor. But well this was the 60/70s so cars still reigned supreme :(
Anyhow Bijlmer nowadays is just fine, some people still shiver when they hear the name, but the housing market shows a different tale. Of course you still have google reviews on the supermarkets that are negative because only black people shop there (I wish I was joking...) but I love it here, most culturally diverse place on earth :)
Which supermarket?
This sort of thing happened in cities here in the US.
I think ownership would have helped prevent their deteriorization a lot
along with mixed use.
15 minute citrys it is 2030 you own nothing and you are happy and zee vill eat zee buGS!
Another perfect video from Hoog, well done!
I don't even necessarily think the Bijlmer in itself was a failure, but rather a case of the wrong project in the wrong time. Build a neighbourhood like that today, and you bet your arse it wouldn't slide down as badly as it has done between ~ 1980 and 2000.
A durable neighbourhood will eventually bounce back up because it’s fundamentally a good place to live in, and people want to make it so. And it has enough desirable attributes that well-to-do people will put up with social problems to have the privilege to live there.
A fragile neighbourhood has no one willing to rebuild it once it breaks down.
Mostly depends on if it's 90% public housing, which was originally the case in the Bijlmer, or if it's mostly private housing. For every neighborhood in the world the percentage of public/social housing is the most defining factor for poverty, crime rates and general detoriation.
@@hylje Yeah, the main issue with the Bijlmer was primarily that it was severely lacking in facilities in the beginning. If they had that covered from the start, I'm convinced nowhere near as many people would have been tempted to move to Purmerend or Almere instead. Then the influx of people from Suriname in the neighbourhood would have been significantly smaller, and with that better manageable.
@@jellemb3603 Should have elaborated on that a bit more, but nowadays when new flats or even entire neighbourhoods are being built here in Amsterdam, often they have to adhere to something in the likes of 40% social housing, 30-40% free market rent, and 20-30% buy. Which I believe is a pretty balanced distribution.
As soon as I saw this I knew the place would be filled to the brim with culturally enriching immigrants.
A walkable/bikable city that doesn't require you to have a car to get places with weed cafés. A dystopia indeed
That was a great video. Even more than a warning against top-down planning, it's a cautionary tale of being careful what you wish for. People in the city thought this was what they wanted. They even forced it on the local, smaller municipalities with the tyanny of the majority but none of them put money down before construction began, so it was an artificial demand