The Rampart, The Traffic Artery, and the Park; Designing for the city regions of Antwerp
Through a close reading of Antwerp’s current spatial and socio-economic composition, and the introduction of the interplay between the city’s three defining paradigms – abstracted to ‘The Rampart, the Traffic Artery, and the Park’ – this study tries to sketch a unifying strategy for Antwerp’s metropole. A strategy that embeds residential, economic, cultural, recreational, climatic, and historical motives within the different city regions. Thereby improving the connection between the left and right side of the river; transitioning the suburban region to a more polycentric structure while maintaining a spatial relation to the city; and explicitly manages the horizontal growth of the periphery. But that most importantly, captures the metropole in a single narrative from its inner-city to its outer edges. Graduation thesis prepared for the master’s degree in urban design at the Eindhoven University of Technology.
Through a close reading of Antwerp’s current spatial and socio-economic composition, and the introduction of the interplay between the city’s three defining paradigms – abstracted to ‘The Rampart, the Traffic Artery, and the Park’ – this study tries to sketch a unifying strategy for Antwerp’s metropole. A strategy that embeds residential, economic, cultural, recreational, climatic, and historical motives within the different city regions. Thereby improving the connection between the left and right side of the river; transitioning the suburban region to a more polycentric structure while maintaining a spatial relation to the city; and explicitly manages the horizontal growth of the periphery. But that most importantly, captures the metropole in a single narrative from its inner-city to its outer edges.
Graduation thesis prepared for the master’s degree in urban design at the Eindhoven University of Technology.
You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles
YUMPU automatically turns print PDFs into web optimized ePapers that Google loves.
Figure 4.0 - Previous spread
Aerial photograph of Antwerp’s city
region (Google, 2020).
Looking at the current population projections, it seems that Antwerp will have
enough dwellings to keep up with population growth at least until 2030. However,
it might be right to conclude that the city is to some extend underestimating
the effect the capping of almost the entire ring will have on the popularity
of the city. A cap with this length is unpreceded, and the effect it has on the
liveability of the city can be enormous, which might attract more migration
(both foreign and domestic) to the city than currently expected. In the extension
of this, the city is actively trying to attract more families back to the city with
the ring project. Families that, due to increasingly shrinking apartment sizes
and rising property prices, have left the city in recent years. Reading success
stories of other city that have capped their highway; the property values along
those areas have all skyrocketed as a result. Meaning that the ring zone, might
not be the best location to house families that left the city because they could
not afford its larger dwellings. A problem that could have a potential role for
Linkeroever.
The following chapter will shortly recap on the composition of the
defence structure of the inner-city and Linkeroever, and on the congestion, climate,
and health related issues surrounding the ring zone. Since the previous
chapter has established a potential polycentric structure for the suburban region
of Antwerp and its ring zone; this chapter will focus on the densification of
the ring zone and Linkeroever, and the conceptual design of the ring park. The
densification plan presented here, positions itself as an extreme scenario that
examines the maximum densification possible should the entirety of the ring
be capped. Exploring what the city could become when population growth,
and climate and health issues are used as its primary drivers. The subsequent
pages will analyse the effect of the ring on the spatial and morphological
structure of the inner-city and suburbs. After which a more thorough morphological
analysis of the areas along the ring will deduce the basic characteristics
of its urban tissue. These findings will be used to develop a densification plan
that expands the city’s current urban fabric for the ring and Linkeroever as part
of the inner-city, and Zwijndrecht and Burcht as part of the suburban region of
Antwerp.
179
Change language