Regaining traffic space
Studio Jaywalk’s vision on the introduction
of the 30km zones in Amsterdam.
Short lecture in Arcam December 7th 2023.
If transportation was only about getting efficiently from A to B, everyone would drive a Trabant. But there is another dimension to being motorized that is about individualism, speed and expressing power. “the right of the fastest”) The latter would be suppressed by a 30km/hour zone throughout the city. This will therefore always evoke resistance like a form of socialism, the levelling has an aspect of equality but also takes away some freedom.
In a pleasant old city, the street is an extension of your living room to dwell in with traffic as a guest.
But turn it around: circulation space from your bed to your desk as in a drive in house where you get in your car before leaving the house. Many American cities don’t even have sidewalks: you don’t get far as a pedestrian. Everything has become motorised circulation space.
During our project for the What If Lab we looked at existing bridges in the city, mostly 19th and 20th century ones, the latter often with Amsterdamse School characteristics. It struck me that there is often a varied use of materials and mass and transparency are used consciously.
For example Bridge 600 (Frieda Belinfantebrug) in New West could have been a straight balustrade with two poles at the end but it became a spatial etude, a piece of music with a strong start and end chord bringing you across the water. It made me realise that we have come to regard traffic spaces in a very one dimensional way, modern bridges mostly express continuous lines and surfaces elegantly linking A to B but without crescendo and diminuendo.
An example: the second IJburg bridge I worked out where I even proposed two semi circular rest areas along the way.
Often it feels like one leaves the urban tissue behind, later to arrive again.
So when 80% of the city becomes a 30km zone, the city will slow down. But we can gain even more with this measure. The same amount of cars driving 30km an hour, will use less space.
If we sit back, this free space will be claimed directly by bikes and ebikes. In that way, the city doesn’t gain much. So we have to take action and regain this free space for the pedestrians.
Regaining traffic space, that’s our vision which we show in a short movie/animation in the exhibition Slow How at Arcam. This exhibition ends end of February 2024.
In order to be able to claim this space for pedestrians you have to know which needs there are (goverment & inhabitants/visitors of the city), and also what’s possible design-wise and in budget.
For the Ingenieursbureau Amsterdam, we (studio Jaywalk and social organiser Arjen Heus) developed 3 design concepts for bridges that won’t need to be renovated when vehicles are banned. Important elements were social contact, places to be, stages for expression and storytelling.
Concept development, design strategy and participation went hand in hand. The designs that came out formed a recognisable identity together. This way, the bridges gain an longer life, it slows down the city and people get more space to be in the city centre.
In our vision the same thoughts can be implemented in the 30km zones of Amsterdam.
