All people have the same possessions, everybody is usefully employed and the tasks are taken in turns. Everyone thus has the same activities, develops in the same way and is paid the same wage for their efforts.

The year is 2003. On a vast site to the northeast of ‘s-Hertogenbosch, bordering the River Maas and a lake called Engelermeer, nine castles are being erected to accommodate a society of one thousand urbanites in princely conditions. Ninety per cent of the plan area is devoted to parkland and a golf course. These developments have aroused quite a lot of discussion. Some consider the residences to bear little resemblance to ‘castles’, a term which is thus challenged as a marketing ploy. The debate about the reinterpretation of the castle as a spatial and architectural concept is however trivial compared to that about the public nature of the development. For example, the scheme has been termed the first Dutch version of a gated community. A third issue concerns how these residential buildings are to function in, or rather in conjunction with, their surroundings. Suppose a column of car-borne commuters files out of the estate in the morning and back in again at the end of the working day. What happens in Haverleij between 9 AM and 5 PM? Will the castles be haunted and uninhabited for the span of the working day? And what purpose is then served by the public space? Are the public areas of Haverleij mere landscaping, or are they meant to function as a long, communal driveway which will be devoid of social control half the time, so that in a few years’ time Haverleij will be full of security cameras and so really take on the character of a gated community?

As a spatial concept, Haverleij does bear a considerable resemblance to Thomas More’s Utopia: nine castles on an autonomous plot of land with a substantial public domain. The sheer size of this public area is a unique physical attribute of Haverleij by Dutch standards, for most Dutch housing estates consist of a vast sea of houses with not a patch of breathing space.

But besides the similarity, there is a difference. The public space of Utopia was the place where society was shaped. It was the place where the inhabitants of the castles constructed a culture through public entertainment and recreation in the public gardens. In Haverleij, the public space is merely a landscaping layer in the total design of the estate, a ‘decor’ with an unusually high proportion of public greenery. The public space of Utopia had a bonding function, but that of Haverleij has not been assigned any notable purpose.

There are earlier examples of a spatial configuration of public space similar to that of Haverleij. One such is the Bijlmermeer housing estate in Amsterdam. It is an example that cogently illustrates what can go wrong with an abundance of public space. Bijlmermeer turned into a district full of public security hazards. So now we must ask ourselves how it is possible that public space, which we all apparently need in order to experience our surroundings as a pleasant living environment, could degenerate into an unattractive no-man’s land. Perhaps it is because we have overestimated the functional utility of public space. When provided in proportions such as those of Bijlmer or Haverleij, public space becomes an area of land to which we are incapable today of according an explicit function. We have withdrawn too far into our homes, and we treat public space merely as somewhere to take the dog for a walk or to drive through on the way to some other destination. The purpose of public space has been abolished by the individualization of contemporary society.

This loss of function first appeared with the rise of the garden city concept somewhere in the early 20th century. Although the ideas underlying the garden city were a logical consequence of the poor living conditions extant in most towns, the provision of large areas of greenery and open space in residential areas problematized public space. Hitherto public space had appeared in response to a certain utilitarian need, e.g. for a market square in a mercantile town. The garden city concept introduced a form of public space that, to this day, we have been unable to link with any real function. When it is accorded a function, it is increasingly that of a buffer area. While the Bijlmer space was unmanageably public, that of Haverleij is for the most part empty and easily surveyed – presumably so as to remove in advance the risk of Bijlmer-like unmanageability. Since we lack any general function for public space and therefore no longer have any bond with it as residents, we are prepared to give up public space and instead design it as a buffer zone between the sinister outside world and the protected interior of our home. How different that was in the case of Utopia, where the public space was a condition of existence and thus formed a link between the private and the public realms.

The low building density of Haverleij nonetheless presents good opportunities for creating a unique residential environment where people will join their private territories to the public space. That does however require a different attitude to this public space, an attitude in which it is assumed that public space has an unequivocal functional role, where public space is more than merely ornamental greenery and is something for which the resident feels an attachment. It is therefore necessary for us, as urban designers, planners and architects, to go in search of a new function for public space, a function appropriate to the contemporary lifestyle of the modern citizen. In physical respects, a centuries-old dream has been concretized in Haverleij, but in the absence of some form of bond between the residents and that space, there are strong doubts as to whether it will ever really function.