Changing public space

after the master plan was finished. With hindsight, Rijnboutt acknowledged that the latter is
preferable:
You cannot supervise and design at the same time. I have tried it, but felt very unhappy.
It is way too complicated to arbitrate between the interests of different architects, if you
also have your own interest. Obviously, you do influence a design to a large extent as
a supervisor, but more on the level of a director or conductor of an orchestra. (…) As
supervisor, I am the conductor that has to interpret and execute the compositions of
others …. (Rijnboutt, cited by Koster, 2001: 9, translation from Dutch by the author)
As discussed in Section 1.4, the number of actors involved in the redevelopment of Dutch
public space has risen in the last decades. To structure the complicated processes, a directing
figure has become more and more indispensable (Van Dijk, 2001). The local government is
not always willing or capable of fulfilling this task on its own, for example because it lacks the
required experience of dealing with large-scale redevelopments. The architect can assist the local
government in directing the redevelopment process by mediating between the government and
the designers. But there are other possible process coordinators. Enschede’s local government
decided to call in the expertise of management consultancy Twijnstra Gudde during the
decision-making phase and engineering consultancy DHV throughout the actual redevelopment
of the Van Heekplein. As one of Enschede’s public-sector representatives commented:
We hired experts of Twijnstra Gudde and lawyers of Loyens Loeff, etcetera. You don’t
necessarily want to have those kinds of experts in house. You shouldn’t want that, that
would cost too much and you don’t use them to the fullest extent. You have to call those
people in from the market whenever you need them, and let them go after the project is
finished. (Public-sector representative II)
DHV assisted the local government as executive by making the contracts with each individual
actor regarding the contribution to the construction of the underground parking garage and by
leading the meetings between the different parties. The opinions about the performance of these
external experts were mixed. One informant, for example, argued:
Without DHV this [the redevelopment of the Van Heekplein] would not have been possible.
However, I have never actually researched it, but I can imagine that if you would add up
all the bills of the involved advisors… I can already tell that a similar development could
have been made with substantial lower costs. (Designer III)
In sum, there have been other actors who have influenced the redevelopment of the PPP
squares in addition to the three key players discussed in Section 4.3. This includes architects and
consultancy agencies, who act as supervisors and advisors in the redevelopment process. However,
these assistants were all in service of the local government and/or the developers and investors,
who therefore remain the key principals in the redevelopment of the research objects.
8.3 Effects of private-sector involvement
Because the private sector is increasingly involved in the redevelopment of public space, it is
important to look at the potential consequences of its involvement. We have formulated four
possible effects of private-sector involvement derived from the literature review in Section 4.4.
These are: 1) an increase in the available budget for the design and management of public space,
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