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.
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scenario in which the ring park has the fullest potential to attract people to the
city, thus allowing us to explore a strategy that needs to maximise its densification
efforts.
In extension, the second (2) assumption will involve the future of the
left bank. For Linkeroever, the assumption will be made that, in light of the
needed densification, it will transition to become part of the inner-city structure
of Antwerp. As mentioned before there are many indicators that point
towards this end; like the low-emission zone, the new P+R, and the defined
urban edge. This decision would in a real-world scenario be, understandably,
quite politically coloured; which might be the reason why there is still so
much ambiguity to the plans, or lack of plans put forward by the municipality.
Especially taking into consideration the ability of the population to launch a
counteroffensive, like they did when the plans of the R2, the bigger sister of
Antwerp’s city ring, were made public. Extending our view beyond Linkeroever,
it might be prudent to also assume that the villages of Zwijndrecht and Burcht,
and possibly the southernmost section of the harbour, on the other side of the
Scheldt also receive some kind of urbanisation. This due to their close proximity
to the ring park and the city, the pending mobility improvements because of
it, and because of the current densification plans that Zwijndrecht and Burcht
are receiving.
Following the assumptions made in the previous paragraph the strategy has to
do several things on different levels of the metropolitan region.
On the metropolitan scale, this strategy would need to find a way
to give spatial direction to the peripheral regions in order to define and limit
their growth, without interfering with current economic activity. Allowing all the
growth to take place within either the inner-city or suburban region.
On the suburban scale, this strategy needs to give spatial direction to
the polycentric development and definition of the suburban region on both the
left and right side of the Scheldt, while keeping a relationship to the inner-city.
This means increasing the autonomy of the suburbs via the stimulation of
economic activity already present in the region while keeping a certain serving
function to the city, and the improvement of especially concentric mobility
between the different parts of the suburbs, which in turn also reduces the
pressure on the transport network of the inner-city. A potential starting point
for the polycentric development might be the P+R structures which Antwerp is
currently suggesting.
On the inner-city scale, this strategy needs to give thematic direction
to the green ring on the left bank, and create a densification plan for the city
and suburban districts along the ring, with Linkeroever as an integral part of
the inner-city of Antwerp. This means finding an economic driver for Linkeroev-
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