The experience of the suburb Westelijke Tuinsteden (of the Western garden cities) of Amsterdam

Abstract

The urban peripheries, like the cities, have been changed. This change is not correlated only with the mutations that time brings, but principally with a general transformation of the contemporary city. The urban periphery nowadays seems to be an aggregation of "...central places, localized between the historical centers and the horizontal expansions of the diffused city". Traditionally, periphery is regarded as the transition between the compact city and the countryside. According to this point of view, the periphery is neither city nor countryside. It is simply the space in - between, without special characteristics. Of course, while the two extremes are changing, the "space" of the periphery is changing too. This makes us consider how much the means of periphery have been altered. The process of this mutation was autonomous and was combined with the contemporary alteration of the city. Speaking, therefore, of the periphery and the urban alteration is like talking about a new way of approaching the city. The text that follows is a critical report of the policy and the methods that were adopted for the development of the problematic area of the Westerlijke Tuinsteden at the periphery of Amsterdam that is again in focus.