April 01, 2003
The impression of the Netherlands gained from this mobile viewpoint is undergoing change. The more traffic corridors are lined by buildings and noise screens, the stronger the feeling of overcrowding and alienation. This gives rise to the paradoxical situation in which automobility produces simultaneous feelings of freedom and claustrophobia.
Dutch motorways were designed as part of the landscape and accordingly embedded in greenery. The common image of the Netherlands as an empty delta of vast panoramas is probably due more to the fact that the first motorways were constructed during the post-war reconstruction period in what was then still virgin countryside than to the Dutch landscape painters of the Golden Age. The way the motorways were embedded in the landscape made a major contribution for example to the public perception of the Randstad conurbation and its Green Heart. The uniting features of this ‘green metropolis’ were anything but urban: dramatic skies, a blanket of mist above the meadows, an uninterrupted view of the horizon and slow-moving traffic amongst the cows. Gradually the realization is dawning that this idyll is transient and that the road network is in fact a trailblazer for urbanization, here as everywhere in the world.
Large-scale spatial changes are taking place along the country’s through routes. The Dutch motorways are evolving into the main streets of urban networks, surrounded by suburbs, business centres and amusement parks. Urban nodes form, and peripheral ribbon development springs up. The motorway is turning into an autonomous world in which high visibility locations and suburban developments are strung together by crash barriers into long ribbons of colourful uniformity. No wonder the development of the road network is generally accompanied by fierce protests against the destruction, fragmentation and disturbance of the landscape, whether natural or man-made.
As well as hydraulic and civil engineering works, offices, factories, petrol stations, road junctions and suburbs, our progress through the country is marked by cultural-historical features. They tell us where we are, where we are going and how much longer the journey will take. Moreover, unlike the architecture of the motorway, heritage suggests where we have come from and says something about the special character and identity of each individual area. In an environment dictated by rapid movements and large-scale construction activities for industrial premises and residential districts, natural and cultural-historical landscapes offer some compensation – they are expressions of slowness and stubbornness. Seen in this way, monuments, townscapes, village and rural landscapes provide pointers for today’s designers on how to strengthen an area’s diversity and individuality.
The Netherlands’ most valuable cultural landscapes and historical towns have been brought together in the so-called ‘Belvedere maps’. These areas, each with a pronounced and regional character, form as it were a counterweight to the vast new-build areas that flourish in particular along the motorways. Today’s motorway landscape consists of an alternation of areas of cultural-historical interest and areas lacking any such interest. For example, the A2 forms the backbone of the Dutch economy, linking business centres and Vinex housing schemes along a line that runs through Amsterdam, Utrecht, ‘s-Hertogenbosch, Eindhoven and Maastricht. At the same time the A2 provides a perfect cross-section of the most beautiful and most typical Dutch landscapes. It passes ten ‘Belvedere’ sites, including two UNESCO world heritage sites: the Defence Line of Amsterdam and the New Dutch Water Defence Line. Nor is the A2 special. The ‘fast-moving’ landscape of the Dutch motorways coincides at many places with the ‘slow-moving’ landscapes in which the past is still a tangible presence.
Four ministries jointly underwrote the Belvedere Memorandum and the accompanying policy, the aim of which is to give cultural history quite literally a place in spatial planning. Belvedere is not about raising entire landscapes and towns to the status of ‘cultural reserves’ and cherishing them as national art treasures, but about allowing an echo of the past to be heard in contemporary planning. The desire to graft new developments on to existing qualities is easier to formulate than to put into practice. What is the point of cultural history for people who rush through the country at 120 kilometres per hour? Are any adjustments possible in an environment full of large-scale infrastructure and peripheral developments? Can new objects and structures be incorporated into a spatial setting with which they have nothing in common in terms of scale, function, construction or ambience?
Spatial developments along arterial routes threaten both historical objects and landscapes, but they also provide attractive opportunities. Thanks to the car, city dwellers are able to experience country life and to get there easily. The speed of the motor car makes it possible to introduce new spatial links, allowing people to experience, travel through and visit previously inaccessible areas. This is particularly true of large-scale man-made landscapes like the New Dutch Water Defence Line, the area between the rivers or the vast land reclamation schemes. Belvederes along the motorway call in the first place for route design and orchestration at the scale of the road network. But the development of the landscape itself, the careful coordination of renovation and preservation, is quite distinct from the aesthetic experience of someone passing by at speed. The Belvedere areas are the scene of great spatial projects involving not just changes brought about by mobility, urbanization and the experience economy but also transformations in farming, nature and the water management system. The dynamism of the motorway can contribute to necessary developments, particularly the development of special types of housing, niche specialties in farming and services close to urban areas. Each area has its own qualities and characteristics; in one case a motorway slip road may provide necessary access and reduce the load on the secondary highway network, in another case an area may be so close-knit that it would be better for it to remain inaccessible. But the closeness with which fast-moving and slow-moving landscapes are interwoven makes it impossible to consider the future of the Dutch cultural and natural landscapes independently of the motorway network.
Paul Meurs
1. The ministries in question were the Ministry of Agriculture, Nature Management and Fisheries, the Ministry of Transport, Public Works and Water Management, the Ministry of Spatial Planning, Housing and the Environment and the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science.
The Belvedere study, ‘Monumentenzorg met 120 km per uur’ was developed by Urban Fabric Schiedam and carried out in collaboration with Alterra Wageningen.
Project team: Paul Meurs, Gielijn Blom, Evelien van Es and Merel Smit.