A Cascoland art project in Kolenkitbuurt, Amsterdam. Photograph: Mark Weemen
Kolenkitbuurt is a neighbourhood in western Amsterdam with a bad reputation. It was built shortly after the second world war as part of a major urban expansion plan, following the garden city principles outlined by Ebenezer Howard. Today, the neighbourhood is characterised by a repetitive pattern of monotonous, four-storey tenement blocks. Ninety-five per cent of the mostly small houses are in the social-rent sector, and they are occupied by some 7,000 people, many of them from large immigrant families.
Built between 1949 and 1953, the neighbourhood wasn’t originally given a name, just a number, so residents began calling it by the same nickname as the church around which it was built: Kolenkit, or “coal-scuttle”. Fifty years on, the area had fallen into despair and in 2004 was proclaimed the least popular neighbourhood in Amsterdam, with all “liveability” indicators in the red: high unemployment, poverty, youth crime and a relatively high rate of high-school drop-outs.
By then an urban renewal programme had started, demolishing more than 1,000 houses and building back bigger homes to diversify the housing stock and attract more wealthy residents. Yet in 2007, when neighbourhood liveability and social security were made priorities on the national political agenda, Kolenkitbuurt was still listed as one of the worst neighbourhoods in the Netherlands. All 40 areas on that list were targeted with an intensified programme to prevent ghettoisation.
The need for a different approach to solving the problems of disadvantaged neighbourhoods has been widely supported in theory and practice. Academics argue that “bottom-up” urbanism can respond more quickly to societal needs, compared to a top-down approach. Kolenkitbuurt is an example of this strategy – for the social part of the programme, the district government adopted an unusual approach.
A tender call was put out to garner ideas on improving liveability in the neighbourhood. The eventual winner would be awarded the opportunity (and an operational budget) to execute their plan for a limited amount of time, during which they could prove their value to the neighbourhood.
The tender was won by Cascoland, a small international network of artists, architects and designers formed by Dutch community artists Fiona Bell and Roel Schoenmakers. Cascoland has guided participatory projects in South African slums and in Rio de Janeiro, among other cities; each time it has provided an empty casco (“frame”) of facilitation and artistic skills which is eventually given meaning by local communities.
Four mobile henhouses – with added decoration. Photograph: Mark Weemen
Cascoland had already been working in the Kolenkit area for three years as part of a study by the University of Amsterdam into the role of cultural enterprises in disadvantaged neighbourhoods. The fact they were already known by major stakeholders in the area – indeed were residents themselves – created the preconditions for a higher degree of local involvement, which was an advantage over other competitors.
According to Stephen Graham, professor of cities and society at Newcastle University, one of the benefits of bottom-up urbanism is that it highlights creativity – in addition to encouraging entrepreneurship, providing incentives to property owners to maintain properties, and supporting environmentally sustainable development. In this sense, Bell and Schoenmakers have acted as cultural process managers for bottom-up initiatives and ideas.
Due to the open character of their approach, however, no promises could be made about the outcome – which meant policymakers were initially reluctant to accept Cascoland unconditionally. The collective was allowed to run a pilot project for eight months from August 2010, with an operational budget that enabled two or three artists to work in the neighbourhood. The local housing corporation also made two small locations available for free; to gain a better understanding of the local residents and what services or activities were lacking, Cascoland began by organising weekly activities in these locations. The first was an open neighbourhood dinner where ideas were exchanged over an affordable meal.
By hosting activities with a low barrier to entry, Schoenmakers and Bell gathered many participants to share information about what small additions would impact the quality of life in the neighbourhood most efficiently. This research phase revealed that the issue of liveability in itself was not perceived as problematic. Instead, the local families, many originating from rural areas of Morocco and Turkey, expressed a desire to keep small cattle as they had done in their home countries.
Video: the Cascoland Kolenkit project
According to Nina Wallerstein, professor of family and community medicine at the University of New Mexico, “empowerment is a social-action process that promotes participation of people, organisations and communities towards the goals of increased individual and community control, political efficacy, improved quality of community life and social justice”. Cascoland’s involvement in Kolenkit increased its residents’ feeling of responsibility about the interventions and services developed in the neighbourhood. Moreover, the empowerment process increased the residents’ happiness with their living environments, because they could replicate some habits and activities typical of life in their home countries.
For example, residents said they wanted more meeting places such as parks in the area. As a result, one of Cascoland’s first interventions focused on a one-acre plot that had been vacant for years: the plot was derelict and surrounded by a fence, and perceived as a source of discomfort. Still, this piece of land was valuable because of its central location and its proximity to shops and the main walking routes in the neighbourhood, so Cascoland began by organising playful activities connected to the boundaries of the site – creating a labyrinth made from the fences so people could interact with the fenced environment in a positive way.
As some residents had expressed a desire to keep chickens, Cascoland also developed four mobile henhouses for the site, which were designed and made in collaboration with the residents. Several neighbourhood families with children were selected to keep the chickens, under the condition that they would feed them and clean the henhouse.
Gradually, the vacant plot developed into a meeting place. The henhouses stimulated commitment from neighbours and encouraged them to take responsibility for the management of their public space. The government saw the success of this intervention and eventually removed the remaining fences, allowing the community to fully reappropriate the unused plot.
Indeed, the mobile henhouses proved such a success that Cascoland could not meet the demand of neighbours interested in keeping chickens. Schoenmakers and Bell saw this as an opportunity to implement another important aspect of their approach: empowerment. They helped these interested neighbours apply for a permit at the district office to enlarge the henhouse project, and ultimately enabled the community to co-operatively design and build a large chicken coop surrounded by fruit trees.
The community-designed and built chicken coop. Photograph: Paul Fennis
Meanwhile, Kolenkitbuurt residents who frequented barbecue spots outside the city expressed a wish to have the same facility within their neighbourhood. At the time, other districts of Amsterdam were imposing stricter regulations to prevent the development of barbecues in parks and squares, but thanks to the moderation of Cascoland and the involvement of the local community, Kolenkit was able to implement this project. The HoutsKolenkit, a publicly accessible area furnished with three barbecue grills and several picnic tables, created a viable place for residents to cook dinner and eat together; it was a valuable social asset to the neighbourhood.
Cascoland’s strategy went further than simply facilitating general requests from residents, however. It was also able to identify less visible problems around the neighbourhood – for instance, children at the local school who were often appearing tired in class.
Upon investigation, this was traced to families letting visiting relatives sleep in children’s bedrooms due to lack of space. The kids, forced to sleep on the couch, were tired the following day. Cascoland and the residents came up with a simple solution: one of the vacant apartments was turned into a neighbourhood guestroom, maintained and managed by neighbours, that can be booked for a small amount.
In all, more than 20 interventions have been implemented since the beginning of the Cascoland project in 2010. Others include the decoration of a formerly dark and dank tunnel by neighbours, the creation of an ice-skating rink and a festive neighbourhood breakfast. Each project has its own purpose, its own planning, management and financing process, and different combinations of artists and residents are involved in each one.
In the beginning, policymakers had been reluctant to agree to such an open-ended approach to the Kolenkitbuurt programme. However, the openness of Cascoland’s strategy – which did not include a precise set of outcomes, only a working method – can be considered its strength. No single “result” should be regarded as the final stage of an urban revival process, and when institutions support the creation of a bottom-up initiative, they should also define how to transmit the management of the process to the citizens themselves.
Cascoland was always focused on empowering the community to keep the programme going in the long term, helping residents to initiate and manage their own projects without outside assistance. In theory, this makes the Kolenkit programme resilient and Cascoland, in itself, redundant – so they can move on and focus on new initiatives.
This is an edited extract from CITIES Foundation's new book, We Own the City: Enabling Community Practice in Architecture and Urban Planning, published by Trancity/Valiz and launching from Amsterdam on 27 May. Read more of We Own the City here
*This is cross-posted with special permission from the Guardian
Head photo: Bert Kauffman via Flickr, Some Rights Reserved