Tuindorp Oostzaan’s housholds issues © GfW

Tuindorp Oostzaan’s flooding issues © GfW

Your house is sinking into the soil. It seems unstable on the floor. Cracklings appear on the external walls. Your indoor walls are full of mold and fungus. And now, heavy rain makes you walk in water in your garden, all around your house, in your neighbourhood. The trees don’t stay put and fall. Your health is seriously affected. 

You’re not in an episode of ‘Extrapolations’. This is the reality of the 17 000 inhabitants of Tuindorp Oostzaan, in Amsterdam.

Once an ideal garden city neighbourhood in the Northen part of Amsterdam and designed according to the concepts of community spirit, greenery, village-like atmosphere, it faces nowadays increasing challenges related to houses and neighbourhood structural issues, worsening with years and climate change.

Most of the underlying issues, such as groundwater management are not to be seen by untrained eyes. Yet, they will be the key focus of the two main renovation activities of the EUI Ground for Well-Being (GfW) project: the redesign and transformation of the Plejadenplein – a main square in the centre of the neighbourhood – and the redesign of the main mobility axis of the area, Meteorenweg.

GfW seeks to tackle both the physical problems caused by the difficult soil and the social challenges in the neighbourhood in an integrated manner.  Seven key components form the core of the project, before climate change worsens even more the situation.

Garden cities are generally known to be utopian urban planning projects striving to create better communities and better lives. Based on socialist ideas, they emerged as ecosystems enabling their residents to benefit from improved living conditions while being connected to each other and to nature. Nowadays, in many cities around the world, the garden cites have become on the one hand a refuge for middle class people seeking to reconnect to each other and nature in a charming environment, on the other, areas prawn to many urban planning challenges (from bad insulation, to flooding to safety and security issues) – especially affecting those lower income households still living there.

From a garden cities utopian concept to nowadays’ challenges and striving solutions – this article sketches the way the EUI Ground for Wellbeing project led by the City of Amsterdam, in the district of Tuindorp Oostzaan, is anchored in its social and cultural heritage while seeking to address initial planning issues leading to current increasing soil subsidence and impermeability.