Cities4PEDs Atlas_November 2021.pdf

Working document
History
The district derives its great heterogeneity from
G.J. de Jongh’s urban design from the late 19th
century, which was implemented in Delfshaven
(an area in the harbour of Rotterdam, of which
the district of BoTu is a part) and is characterized
by a homogenous street grid. It was marked by
prostitution and drug dealing during the 1980s
and 1990s which led to strong protest and
action from the citizens. In the 1990s and 2000s,
many buildings were demolished and rebuilt.
Within this starting point of the transformation
process, the strong bottom up dynamic of the
Delfshaven district can already be seen.
In 2017, the Delfshaven Cooperative, the city
municipality and a local housing corporation
applied for the project “next generation
living districts” and joined forces with the
International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam
(IABR), where a common goal was developed:
using the energy transition as a lever for social
and inclusive city making. Luckily, the district
can build upon a vibrating network of local
cooperatives, and projects, where people are
involved in different projects and roles without
a certain coordination point in the district. This
enables transformation processes with a strong
community engagement.
District transformation
BoTu 2028 is an initiative on neighbourhood
scale, which started in 2018, that built upon
the results and successes of a project of a
‘Stadsmarinier’ (marine servant) that was
commissioned by the mayor with a budget of
2.4 million € in order to increase local safety
over the following two years. The servant
included actors who were already working
locally to address pressing local issues. Like this,
an iterative working method was established
and the budget was invested directly into
implementation projects. The result was a
growth of the social and safety index of more
than 10% in the district. The projects which
bring together businesses, the municipality and
citizens are still ongoing. BoTu 2028 has three
thematic streams: energy, care and employment
as well as three key working methods:
community building, the working culture
of civil servants and their responsibility for
resilience and impact by design, a programme,
where pressing issues are addressed locally.
The BoTu2028 hybrid programme organisation
facilitates the process of change towards a
resilient neighbourhood.
After this success, the local actors were able to
convince the mayor that a 10 years programme
is needed to increase the social and safety index
locally in order to reach the average safety level
of Rotterdam. The programme amounts to circa
one million euro’s per year. Of that budget,
50.000 €/yr from the BoTu 2028 programme
and further 50.000 €/yr from the municipal
sustainability programme, brings 100.000 €/yr
investment for local energy transition initiatives
for the district up to 2023 (and hopefully 2028).
The foreseen budget for the years until 2028 can
be assembled in a new way each year by the
local civil servant and ‘program council’, which
brings a great flexibility and the possibility to
react on local dynamics. Recently, a “Working
Together Agreement” on energy transition
was signed by many initiatives of the district.
It incorporates participatory budgeting to let
citizens decide into which projects the money is
invested.
OOZE architects & urbanists joined the district
transformation with a strong perspective on
CO2 emission savings and communication
strategies for inhabitants. A big challenge is to
bring inhabitants on board for the gas exit, as
gas is cheap and often used for cooking. OOZE
calculated that the transition of domestically
used energy only accounts for 20% of CO2
emissions. Therefore, other challenges like
mobility, transport, food, waste, consumption of
everyday life should be addressed equally.
Development of the Local Energy Action
Plan (LEAP)
The LEAP is built on technical research
conducted by PosadMaxwan & Generation
Energy as well as an anthropological social
study. It outlines a step-by-step process which
closes resource loops and leads to a more selfreliant
and resilient neighbourhood, which can
be replicated and scaled up to be applied to
the rest of the country and beyond, helping to
achieve a net zero carbon economy by 2050.
To develop the LEAP, the neighbourhood was
subdivided into cases (housing blocks with each
counting 200-500 inhabitants), which served
as a unit to extract information on energy
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