

A Dutch City Makes Room for Its River and a New Identity - solidangle
http://www.citylab.com/design/2015/05/a-dutch-city-makes-room-for-its-river-and-a-new-identity/393404/

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JacobAldridge
One thing I noticed and admired in many European cities is a sense of their
place in history - not just awareness of the past, but appreciation for the
future. I've never felt that in the cities of my home country Australia, where
projects always feel like they meet a current need but will require re-doing
in the future.

The best example I saw was the Plaza Mayor (town square) in Salamanca, Spain -
there were commemorative plaques on all four walls of the square to great
Spanish figures through history, but rather than fill all the spaces many were
left blank for great figures from the future.

This project feels to me that it's taking a similarly long-view for the town.

~~~
shoo
Your comment about leaving empty spaces for the future reminded me of the
ANZAC Parade war memorial in Canberra, Australia -- empty spaces have been
left there for possible future wars.

(See e.g. the "north-to-south" table of memorials in
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANZAC_Parade,_Canberra](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANZAC_Parade,_Canberra))

~~~
dmix
And the new Snowden, Assange, Manning statues in Berlin:
[http://m.euronews.com/en/305239/](http://m.euronews.com/en/305239/)

Although this one is more explicitly symbolic.

~~~
tormeh
Note, that's Alexanderplatz; there's all kinds of stuff there all the time,
but none of it is permanent.

------
Someone
_" The epic film “A Bridge Too Far” was about fighting in Nijmegen. [...] a
local university that specializes in research. [...] The Waal is Europe’s
busiest river, [...]"_

Nice article, but hat's not its strongest paragraph. The bridge in Nijmegen
was one of the goals of operation Market Garden, but the "bridge too far" was
15 km or so further North, in Arnhem.

Also, a "university that specializes in research"? Don't all universities do
that?

Finally, some context for those who wonder why they haven't heard about _"
Europe’s busiest river"_: if you gave people a map showing the delta of Rhine,
Meuse, and Scheldt that doesn't show names of waterways and told them where
the Rhine enters the Netherlands, I bet most would guess the Waal is where the
Rhine flows because over 70% of the Rhine's water enters the Waal.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhine%E2%80%93Meuse%E2%80%93Sch...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhine%E2%80%93Meuse%E2%80%93Scheldt_delta)
has a fairly good description.

Thechnkcally, the Rhine flows to the North Sea over the 'Oude Rijn' (Old
Rhine). The Wikipedia page doesn't even show what fraction of the Rhine's
water flows there because the river Rhine has been dammed of for centuries
(since 1122. See
[http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaartse_Rijn#History](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaartse_Rijn#History)).
Effective water flow there is less than 10 cubic meter per second. The Waal
normally has 1500 cubic meter per second. This design prepares it for ten
times that flow.

~~~
oneiric
Many schools do not do research, just teach. Perhaps that doesn't fit your
definition of university, but it is not in the "dictionary" definition for
what its worth.
[https://www.google.com/webhp?hl=en#hl=en&q=define+university](https://www.google.com/webhp?hl=en#hl=en&q=define+university)

~~~
Retric
I always get annoyed when people think the point of University's is 'pure'
research. There are plenty of pure research organisations out there, the point
of undergrad is to teach and the point of Doctoral programs is to teach
research.

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Animats
The large brick building being moved is on Self Propelled Modular
Transporters. Those are the current answer to moving big things on land. Each
unit has four, five, or six sets of wheels. All wheels are powered and
steerable in any direction and have powered jacks for their load. Any number
of units can be ganged together to produce a big moving platform, controlled
by computers to move or rotate in any direction.

That brick building is a small job for this approach. Mammoet sometimes gangs
hundreds of those platforms together for big jobs.

~~~
Someone
For those interested: [http://www.mammoet.com](http://www.mammoet.com) has
plenty of examples. Not only for the "toys for boys" stories and videos, but
also as a nice example of marketing. Their message is not that they do heavy
lifting, but that they move time ( _" Moving large and heavy objects is how we
serve customers. We really make our customers excel when we move time. With
smart solutions, we safely and professionally move deadlines forward, improve
uptime and reduce cost of ownership."_)

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Animats
Tapei and San Jose, CA have done similar river-widening projects, without the
island. Both have parks along a river flood plain, parks that are intended to
be flooded during unusually wet periods. Taiwan's riverside park [1] is on
both sides of the main channel of the Tamsui River. The edges of the park have
high walls to protect the city. Guadalupe Park and Gardens in downtown San
Jose[2] is a smaller example of the same concept. In both cases, the parks
will take damage when flooded, so they only contain things that can handle
flooding or easily replaced.

[1]
[https://www.google.com/maps/place/Taipei,+Taiwan/@25.030306,...](https://www.google.com/maps/place/Taipei,+Taiwan/@25.030306,121.457588,3a,75y,297.12h,86.69t/data=!3m5!1e1!3m3!1sVIlj4GTR58deSaBJENnGCg!2e0!3e5!4m2!3m1!1s0x3442ac72bce20a99:0x3f6a35cedd0ac2e0!6m1!1e1)
[2] [http://www.grpg.org/river-park-gardens](http://www.grpg.org/river-park-
gardens)

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pacaro
I'm impressed by the cost. Remodeling a city and building 4 new bridges for
approx 10% of the cost of the new east section of the Bay Bridge...

~~~
briandear
California isn't really a shining example of efficiencies in public
expenditures.

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omegaworks
Who owns the island? "New land in Europe" is a very strange thing to hear
given our modern concept of property rights and land ownership originates
there.

~~~
wobbleblob
Private ownership of land in and around the cities is not common in the
Netherlands. The ground is leased from the local government. When the lease is
up, the owner (usually local government) has the right to refuse to renew the
lease, and automatically gains ownership of any property you have built on it.
They may offer to lease the land to you again, or lease it to someone else and
sell your property at current market value, or they may force you to tear down
anything built on it at your own expense.

I looked up the English term for this system, "Emphyteusis". The fact that
I've never heard of it before indicates that it's probably not a common
concept.

~~~
jacquesm
> Private ownership of land in and around the cities is not common in the
> Netherlands.

This is only partially correct. Private land ownership exists (and is the
dominant form) in many cities in NL, but there are a few prominent ones where
'erfpacht' (still) exists. In quite a few cases the annual fee can be bought
out for a lump sum for a couple of decades or even for ever.

~~~
wobbleblob
It looks like most of the 20 or 30 largest cities have such a system, even if
most have plans to phase it out, that will be a process of decades.

The lease is normally bought for a period of 20 to 40 years. When that period
is up though, the county can and sometimes will refuse to renew the lease if
they can sell the ground for a higher price to someone else, or if they want
to change the zoning of the area. Home owners don't always consider this risk,
they just buy the property, along with the lease, from the previous owner.

This isn't a great tragedy if the ground happens to be a sports field or a
petting zoo, but not so long ago there was a tragic case of a man who lost his
home because the county refused to renew the lease. The county decided to
split the property, partitioned his home and sold half of it to someone else.
His ex wife was allowed to rent the other half of the property from the new
owner of the lease.

This case was in the news, because after losing a lawsuit and a series of
appeals, the man lost the house he had bought, with a mortgage largely paid
off, and all he had to show for it was a bill for removing improvements he had
built in the yard. After exhausting all legal options, he decided to undo the
partitioning of his former home with a sledge hammer, which landed him in the
papers (and probably in jail) as the crazy ex husband with the sledge hammer.

edit:

[http://uitspraken.rechtspraak.nl/inziendocument?id=ECLI:NL:R...](http://uitspraken.rechtspraak.nl/inziendocument?id=ECLI:NL:RBMNE:2014:4010)

~~~
tormeh
Did the city buy the house from him at market value or did he just get a
really raw deal?

I like the policy in principle, though, makes sure you don't get quite the
landed elite you would get otherwise.

~~~
wobbleblob
As far as I can tell (from trying to parse Dutch legalese), the owner of the
land, county Soest in this case, gained ownership of everything built on the
property when the lease was nullified. The way mortgages work in this country,
the man with the sledgehammer would still be responsible for repaying the loan
in full, even though he was no longer in possession of the collateral.

If I had known or fully grasped all this years earlier, I would never have
bought a house!

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contingencies
If anyone hasn't yet played the original _Close Combat: A Bridge Too Far_ ,
it's an absolute cult classic game with TCP/IP multiplayer support that
centers on this area of Holland - highly recommended.

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InclinedPlane
Something similar is cities that have begun "daylighting" their rivers which
were converted into little more than concrete drainage canals.

