Urban Forestry Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Between 1585 and 1663, during Amsterdam’s Golden Age, the city’s built-up area increased by more than fivefold. This growth over the centuries captured the attention of historians and city planners who analysed Amsterdam’s development from a variety of angles. However, there are two aspects that have attracted most of the attention: the large scale of the city’s expansions and their methodical planning. This second aspect has, since the nineteenth century, been seen mainly from the point of view of the townscape as a whole. Amsterdam was presented as a large-scale,
scenographic composition, a ‘Versailles of the North’, and as a consequence, a work of genius. Later on, researchers began to study the city’s ground plan. Amsterdam’s development was seen as an elaboration of the ‘città ideale’, the apex of urban planning.
In this study, urbanism and city development are looked at from a more pragmatic point of view. The ideal, theoretical city was replaced by the actual city, and, therefore, the optimal city. This study views Amsterdam as an unruly physical reality with an unpredictable spatial and social
dynamism, that had to be organised and managed by the city’s officials, while they coped with the existing landscape, hydrological circumstances, the state of technology and the rudimentary legal instruments that were available to them at the time.
The city’s ground plan was the result of a complex process in which different, sometimes incompatible, interests had to be balanced. A city design is not an isolated work of art, but a solution (or an attempted solution) for a broad range of problems within a specific situation. The city’s government was responsible for Amsterdam’s defence, functioning traffic and water
infrastructures, the provision of sufficient numbers of empty lots for new construction and for the management of various other urban services. This task must be considered in relation to the circumstances in which urban development took place during this period: soil conditions, water
management, traffic, a shortage of space for housing, harbour activities, trade and industry, spontaneous urbanisation, private landownership, and the entire network of infrastructures in which the city was entangled. But the city’s ground plan was not just the result of physical factors. Indeed, the social reality was also a prominent factor in the constitution of Amsterdam’s ground plan. The field of urbanism was a game of interests, interactions and sometimes confrontations between the forces of urbanisation and city design. Each of these factors had its influence on the planning processes and their outcomes. Furthermore, there were also the various instruments of urbanism: the methodology behind fortification plans, city design and the apportioning of parcels, as well as the legislative options.