‘The Bijlmer has all the potential of a parallel city. There are parallel economies, parallel cultures, parallel ways of thinking. You shouldn’t try and turn the Bijlmer into a suburb of Amsterdam. The Bijlmer sits on Amsterdam’ southern axis. We have said that this fact should be exploited. The southern axis, Schiphol, Buitenveldert – that’s where the potential is. We should give up the idea of a satellite city, the system of accretions they swear by in Amsterdam. Throughout the Randstad one should be thinking in terms of network cities, not the compact city.

‘In the Bijlmer the most fascinating conditions prevail for an intercultural community, where things can stand, can occur side by side on a basis of equality. We began by taking a look at the places where the Bijlmer residents have ‘kidnapped the city’, where an informal circuit obtains. We’ve checked out where the activities are. And then you see the most important points: a temple here, a meeting place there, or newly dug allotments. These are the things that need keeping as markers for the new city. You have to say to the inhabitants, ‘these things are yours’.

‘People have finally come to realize that this informal circuit must be given its place. But where’s the debate? I am convinced that those concerned with redeveloping the Bijlmer have the best of intentions. They know what the problems are. But they don’t take time to reflect. They are always in a hurry, they always have to make decisions there and then.

‘I think that we professionals spend too much time with each other, while our resources should be working for the community. But when it’s a matter of resident participation, the institutions have the most fascinating excuses. If a public enquiry evening is organized, nobody comes, is what they tell you. Too true – when you put the same item on the agenda twenty times you’re making a mockery of local participation. We’ve had that twenty times already, forget it, the residents will say. And they’re right as well. You mustn’t always arrive armed with the same question. Exactly the same goes for participation in a broader sense. Society has long since declared itself against monotony, against what is merely functional, with no sensuality, and so forth; and then the planners tell us once more that we need to hold enquiries to find out what people want. Leave it out, is what I say. Tell us something new! We simply have to do what they want and do it now.

‘Sometimes participation really looks like a way of avoiding making decisions. It’s a dreadful comparision, but the Bijlmer is like a patient on an operating table with twenty surgeons standing round. One of them thinks this is a great idea, another rather fancies that operation instead and so they just stand there, bickering with each other over the body. And who suffers from all this? The city and its inhabitants. But that’s no concern of theirs. A city shouldn’t be a laboratory. Experimenting with city and society is a dangerous occupation. The utopian ideals behind the building of the Bijlmer belong to the past now; it’s time people faced up to that. My theory is that you have to shake the Bijlmer to its foundations. It has to go through a metamorphosis. I don’t say that everything has to be demolished. First of all there needs to be a blueprint, a scenario, strategies need developing based on social, economic and cultural ideas. But it’s time we buried that utopia. And rang in a period of mourning.

‘In Holland, however, people don’t have any tradition for dealing with death. We don’t know how to get along with it. We’ve been in mourning for functionalism for long enough now; it’s time we took our leave of it. Let a new city rise. Chaos and differences must take centre stage now, instead of structures and uniformity. The death of the city, of the phenomenon of the city, is crucial to my work. New things are born, flourish and die, that’s the normal course of events.

‘What instruments do we have for creating a new city? Well, the first one is important – that’s mutual trust. If you don’t have that you can invent as many strategies as you like, they’re all bound to fail. The second instrument is philosophy. You have to have a philosophy for the future; you have to take hold of all the links with the past, to appropriate history, to get a grasp of the history of 70 nationalities and 110 different cultures, their dreams and traumas. This calls for an ideology, a philosophy, ideals. Three things are important to me: guaranteed recourse to the law, equality before the law, and justice. These are the pillars of democracy. They are the pillars of all the innovations we are working on. Designing, that’s the easiest part of all.

‘After the negative decision of the Amsterdam Planning Council we altered our draft master plan. And that was only right and proper, you can’t present illusions that can’t possibly be realized. It’s a question of the next generations who have to make their home in the Bijlmer. On page one of the modified plan we printed a photo of a child winking. That says it all; it’s a concept with a knowing look. The new plan retains Gooiseweg because everyone was against getting rid of it. Though we did include the themes of the central square, the ‘colourful ribbon’, the lake, the lifelines, the meander and the balconies.

‘It’s true, we are introducing new programme elements and that is not what the project groups are concerned with. They are busy chopping the highrise into lowrise. Last year I proposed going to the government with this plan. You can raise money just like that, but you must really intend doing something with it. No wonder, then, that Secretary of State Kohnstamm complains about the lack of vision in the cities. It doesn’t surprise me at all that they are constantly bumping up against a wall of bureaucracy, despite all the good intentions. There’s nothing wrong with the people in the groups, they are just trapped in the wrong mechanisms.
The plan must be judged at the administrative top. This is also what happened with the draft plan. It was a wretched meeting. I cried on the way back to Rotterdam, really. You can put up a struggle with the Amsterdam Planning Council, then it’s about professional matters. But the administrative board merely shrugged their shoulders. I asked if they seriously wanted a master plan.

‘As I said, the thing that’s lacking is reflection. Optimism at the administrative level is of fundamental importance for the future of the city. People must think about that future strategically and work for the long-term. I have proposed the year 3000 as the target. What do you want things to be like in the year 3000; what’s your ideal vision of the city? Then we have a thousand years to realize it. At least we know then what we’re letting ourselves in for. And let’s not be afraid to look beyond the limits of the present. But now you go from one meeting to another, and show up too late at both of them. Where’s the time for reflection? There isn’t any. It’s a general malaise.

‘We have introduced an entirely different concept, one based on professional and multicultural considerations. We have tried to grasp the complexity, without losing sight of the cohesion. There will always be complexity, and please, let’s keep it that way. Everyone tends to try and unravel things, to simplify everything, without inspiration, without life, without thought, without dreams. But we must continue to make a just and sensual city our aspiration.’