In the first part of this chapter, I illustrate the practical implications of these four dimensions of urbanity for an extended transportation planning by pointing to several projects and controversies in Amsterdam.2 In the second part, I explore the related issue of how to actually bring about change.
Specialization and Interchange
The first dimension of urbanity refers to the ongoing division of labor, partic- ularly developed in cities, where opportunities to network with closely related, specialized activities and various producers, and to interact directly with consumers, abound. An innovative urban climate emerges from the combin- ation between this extensive division of labor and the multiple physical and institutional marketplaces (see, among others, Storper (1997), Porter (1998), Simmie and Kirby (1998) on the territorial and cultural dimension of the urban economy). Besides this innovative cultural climate, the development of special- ized economic activities requires an array of attractive conditions for location.
Accessibility becomes increasingly important in this respect.
In Amsterdam (Figure 5.1), several new “nodes” emerged next to the historic core (around the Central Station – CS), still the node best connected by public transport. The new nodes typically combine excellent public and private transport accessibility. The main node, the Schiphol airport, integrates in a unique way intercontinental air links and direct connections to regional and national motorways and railway networks. The airport area has concen- trated within it a rich range of activities requiring spaces for offices, conferences, hotels, retail, and logistics; office space rents rank the highest in the Netherlands and the employment base – roughly 50,000 – is equivalent to the city center’s employment. Besides the airport area, other transportation interchanges have specialized functionally, such as Amstel and, particularly, Zuid stations that have clustered large office complexes in financial and business sectors. The areas around Sloterdijk and Bijlmer stations accommodate a mix of warehouses and office spaces (some of these offices are part of a dynamic ICT sector). The firms there benefit more, not only from space availability but also from better access to the regional labor market and to the metropolitan facilities, than do firms in the city center, dependent on public transportation, and firms in the suburbs, dependent on private transportation. On the contrary, many special- ized, small-scale professional services remained located in the densely built historic center, a pedestrian and cycling area, which proved to be the ideal setting for Internet-based and multi-media businesses.
Services have clustered functionally: hospitals along the western and southern sections of the motorway ring; the congress and exhibition center, the insurance exchange, the district tribunal, and the Free University around Zuid station; a regional retail and leisure complex at Bijlmer station. In the old city, more small-scale shopping, entertainment and cultural activities continue to thrive. These patterns of functional specialization have been reinforced, after Luca Bertolini
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an unfortunate attempt to develop downtown offices there between 1980 and 1990, through newly opened (or in the course of being opened) cultural and leisure facilities along the waterfront, east and west of the Central Station.
All in all, two basic types of urban centers are thus developing in Amsterdam: dynamic sub-centers in nodal zones enjoying exceptional accessi- bility by both car and public transport, and an expanding and specializing old city. Similar trends can be observed in other cities and towns in the metro- politan area, albeit with a somewhat lower dynamics and a more local orienta- tion. While its lower accessibility by car puts the old city at a disadvantage, it also fosters a unique environment. Certain kinds of economic activities, including many high-profile, and innovation-oriented activities, appear to profit from its specific, diverse accessibility mix. The high share of car-free modes can be said to be even a necessary prerequisite for the unique degree of informality and conviviality (a decisive location factor for many). But there are limits: a key transport planning challenge is that of identifying the level of regional accessi- bility, including accessibility by car (and truck), that the historic center still needs in order to maintain its vitality and to avoid turning into the exclusive domain of tourists. On the other hand, the emerging sub-centers need to ensure that slow forms of accessibility, including pedestrian, fit a lively urban environment. At the regional level, the broad concern is how to deal with this diversity of acces- sibility conditions and with changes caused by transformations in the hierarchy Cities and Transport
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0 5
Kilometers 10 Built-up areas
Airport Seaport Railway Motorway Railway station
Haarlem
Hoofddorp Schiphol
Airport Lelylaan Sloterdijk Zaanstad
Almere
Hilversum Amstel
Zuid
Bijlmer Central Station
Figure 5.1 Amsterdam, the Metropolitan Area, with Main Transport Infrastructure and (Sub)Centers
of transportation networks. Transport planners should not reject these differences and instabilities through a pursuit of generic accessibility improvements or through an exclusive focus on shorter-term mobility management. Rather, they should capitalize on the distinctive accessibility features of different locations, in order to cater for the combination of mobility requirements – both fast and slow, both individual and collective, both physical and virtual – that seem to characterize contemporary urban economies (Phelps and Osawa 2003). Rein- forcing such diversity would not only be important for the economy, but also conducive to an urban environment where a variety of cultures and lifestyles can thrive, as will be discussed below.
Diversity and Freedom of Choice
A variety of lifestyles and cultures and their interactions provide the city’s inhabitants with a host of new choices that represent, traditionally, one of the most attractive dimensions of urbanity. This does not mean that each location must be organized in terms of a mixed formula; but rather that there will be a mosaic of different cultures at the scale of the city, often displaying charac- teristics of homogeneity within their particular communities. Homogeneity becomes problematic in spatial terms only if its magnitude is a factor aggra- vating deprivation. Diversity in the accessibility features of locations can contribute to the development of such a variety of living environments. In Amsterdam, residential choices (at least of those who can choose!) seem increas- ingly influenced by differences between more and less accessible, more and less intensely used, urban areas. For instance, the walking and cycling environ- ments of the historic “canal belt” of Amsterdam and the car environments of the green suburbs around Hilversum and Haarlem are both highly desired resi- dential environments, albeit by different sorts of populations. Furthermore, a recent upsurge in the demand for high-quality apartments has emerged next to multimode peripheral nodes that are well connected to destinations outside of the urban region. At the other extreme, there are the relatively non-accessible locations that provide an ideal setting for experiments in alternative cultures and lifestyles, illustrated by the squatter tradition in Amsterdam.
On a different level, the accessibility to natural features (green areas, water) plays also an important role in bringing about an attractive and varied range of living conditions. As regards the use and perceptions of nature and open space, the immediate surroundings of the home seem more important to users than the facilities available on a larger scale (in Amsterdam, for instance, 90 percent of the green areas used by residents is in the immediate vicinity, only 10 percent is in more remote areas). However, from the point of view of transport planning and infrastructure development, the crux of the matter lies, rather, at the regional scale, as choices at this scale directly affect the possi- bilities at local levels. In Amsterdam, the traditional concept of a “lobe city”
(star-like, built-up urban “fingers” along public transport corridors alternating with “wedges” of open space at walking and cycling distance) is still relevant in terms of its aims – especially that of generalized access to open space – but Luca Bertolini
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it does not meet the needs of the increasing scale of activity, the differentia- tion of lifestyles and, crucially, the high mobility. A more useful concept in this respect may be that of the “aesthetics of mobility,” recently introduced by the Dutch architect Francine Houben (Houben and Calabrese 2003). Houben’s central thesis affirms a shift of emphasis from places to routes in the use and perception of the landscape, from “staying in” to “moving through.” Under this thesis, the transportation infrastructure needs to be considered as a “room with a view.” Houben applies this idea mainly to motorways and railways, although the “slow” cycling, pedestrian, and sailing routes that network the urban with the regional landscape and that make possible its discovery and experience, are as important as the “fast” routes.
Civic Exhibition
In the preceding sections the focus has been on the potential role of transport and infrastructure policies in fostering specialization and diversity in the economic and socio-cultural sphere. An essential characteristic of urbanity, however, is that alongside opportunities to create these individual realms, there are enough places for the various economies and lifestyles to meet and confront each other, or opportunities for the development of “public” realms (Lofland 1998). As Geddes (1915) already contended a long time ago, for a city to be truly urban, it is of fundamental importance to have meeting places, which are the scene of the population’s strivings and conflicts, and act as places of “civic exhibition.” Fundamental preconditions for developing a strong public realm are qualities such as physical and institutional accessibility, non-coercion of behavior, conditions for spontaneity, an informal sphere, and, perhaps above all, the presence of diverse people and activities, coupled with the possibility to express even radical differences (Sennett 1970, 1977; Crawford 1995;
Deutsche 1996; Lofland 1998; Hajer and Reijndorp 2002).
Traditional examples of places where this can occur are city squares and streets, parks and markets. In today’s highly mobile urban society, however, places at the confluences of traffic flows are possibly becoming more important (Bertolini 2000; Hajer and Reijndorp 2002; Bertolini and Dijst 2003). These are invariably the places that gather the most diverse groups of people; on the contrary, many traditional public spaces tend to be increasingly dominated by a single group, be it the tourists in the historic city center, or the local resi- dents in the socially homogeneous peripheral estates and suburbs. But there is a flip side, best typified in Amsterdam by Schiphol airport. Schiphol is often referred to as the prototype of a new urbanity and, arguably, it is a distinct contribution to other dimensions of urbanity, but only to a limited extent is it a place of civic exhibition. The efficient handling of flows is such a paramount objective in this “zero-friction” environment (Hajer 1999), that there are few civic exhibition opportunities for different individuals and groups. And this seems the core of the problem, because it is precisely the presence of contrasting manifestations of culture and lifestyle that is important (Crawford 1995;
Deutsche 1996). In this respect, there may be more interesting possibilities at Cities and Transport
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other emerging urban nodes, and, most notably, at the railway station areas in Amsterdam. A unique variety of mobility flows (from local to regional, and beyond) is matched there by a great variety of functions (including offices, retail and leisure, and housing). However, too often the reality is still that of a strict separation of flows and functions in space and/or in time, and of strong limitations to the range of possible uses. To a large extent, transport planning and infrastructure development cannot determine the actual degree of mixing and interaction in the public realm. They are never neutral, however. For instance, the internal organization of the transportation interchange and the characteristics of the physical links to the immediate surroundings will have a direct impact on the opportunities for interaction between different groups. How much do the worlds of car and public transport users, of cyclists and walkers actually overlap? And how permeable is the transportation interchange to the local neighborhood? These are matters that become even more important if put in the context of a strong in-built tendency of new urban centers and networks of mobility to form enclaves and effectively “splinter” from the rest of the city (Graham and Marvin 2001).
Connectivity
The fourth and last dimension of urbanity is the most explicitly linked to transport planning and infrastructure development. The assumption of a direct, simple relationship between the urban built environment and the city’s social and economic life – or of an urbanity strongly rooted in physical proximity – is increasingly questionable. Since the industrial revolution, modern transport and telecommunications techniques have provided humans with ever more ways of interacting in the absence of physical proximity. It has thus become increas- ingly possible for people to live, work, and recreate in different places, and for firms to spatially de-couple different components of the production processes.
Many urban households and businesses continue to seize these opportunities to escape from the disadvantages of physical concentration and to decentralize spatially. There is, however, an intriguing paradox (Ascher 1995; Hall 1996;
Urry 2002; Graham in this book). Notwithstanding all the hype about decen- tralization or even dematerialization of the city, physical interaction between people in many urban activities is proving to be still irreplaceable and increasing rather than decreasing in value. It has been demonstrated, for instance, that face-to-face contacts play a pivotal role in high-quality business services (Wheeler et al. 2000), but it seems that this has also been the case with the up-and-coming sectors of culture, leisure, and the media. Physical human inter- action appears to be retaining its essential role in the socio-cultural sphere too, as testified by the enduring, and in many cases growing, success of live festivals and other events. The effect of the progress in transport and telecom- munication technologies seems to grant the possibility of being much more selective about when (i.e., for which purpose) and to what extent (i.e., how often) physical proximity – or face-to-face contact – is needed (Mitchell 2000;
Urry 2002), rather than to produce a one-way decentralization or even diffu- Luca Bertolini
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sion of the city. All these developments make connectivity – or the qualities of the “space of flows” (Castells 1996) – an increasingly important dimension of urbanity. Infrastructure provides the material links allowing for the spatially disjointed city to continue functioning as a whole and, thus, for the possibility of maintaining physical contacts when required. Connections at various scales are needed to complement the variety of types of economic activity and indi- vidual lifestyles that go with urbanity, each with its specific accessibility demands.
In this respect, transport planners face a practical dilemma. While the evolution sketched above ideally requires connections at all levels, infra- structure development remains highly capital intensive and, increasingly, also politically complex to implement, making it essential to set priorities:
which spatial scales should be privileged? In the Amsterdam case two appear especially important. The first is the regional scale, which corresponds to a broadly defined daily urban system, or, roughly, to the area represented in Figure 5.1. This is because it is at this scale that by far the largest and growing share of the everyday flows of people and goods feeding the local economy and civic society takes place. The main thing missing is a high-grade public transport system; moreover, the congestion in the overcrowded motorway net- work is becoming a pressing issue. The second strategic spatial scale is that of the international links. Exchanges are expected to intensify, in parallel with developments in business and tourist networks. Currently, these links rely almost entirely on air travel, but soon high-speed trains will also serve them. The first point here is that more convincing, long-term answers to the question of how to combine sustained growth in air travel with quality of life in the airport surroundings need to be found. The second important task is to find ways to link effectively all the major centers in the region (not just the airport or the high-speed train stations) to these evolving international networks. In the field, a clear vision on transport development priorities is absent, and the municipality – like local governments elsewhere – seems, rather, to participate in all sorts of negotiations for all sorts of infrastructure, reacting to opportunities and threats as they arise. What, then, is a better approach? A more explicit debate and clearer choices relative to the urbanity dimensions discussed above would be part of it, but the intrinsic complexities of change in real world cities must be also recognized. The latter point is the object of the next section.
How to Bring about Change?
In the preceding section, the task of transportation planning has been specified through the characteristic dimensions of urbanity. In this section, the focus will shift from discussing relevant problems and potential solutions to identifying specific urban mobility policies that can bring about change in the existing urban transport and land use system. This is a crucial and often neglected
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point. Most urban mobility policies are defined in terms of optimization: how to maximize mobility benefits and minimize mobility costs. Policy documents typically follow this line (see for instance, Commission of the European Communities 2001, or World Business Council for Sustainable Development 2001). While certainly reasonable, this approach also has important limits.
A well-known difficulty is agreeing on definitions and measurements of benefits and costs, that is, on the goals of the policy process. But there is more than that. An approach that centers on optimization also requires that there is a sufficient degree of certainty about the waysto achieve those goals, that is, about the actual impacts of suggested policy measures. This is, however, seldom the case. Rather, uncertainty about both policy goals and ways to achieve them seems an intrinsic feature of the urban mobility system, which funda- mentally restricts the scope for optimization and, more generally, for a purely rational-choice approach to change. A considerable body of literature on the limits of rational-choice approaches has emerged; this is particularly rele- vant to complex processes of change, such as those connected with urban mobility issues (for an overview, see Chapter 2 in Meyer and Miller 2001).
However, promising ways of dealing with these issues have been proposed. A recent and particularly appealing way is the application of evolutionary theo- ries and methods. The rest of the chapter explores this potential and illustrates it in the Amsterdam case.
The Transport Land Use Feedback Cycle, and Beyond
The relationship between transport and urban form has long intrigued scholars.
Both historical (Muller 1995; Hoyle and Knowles 1998) and geographical (Cervero 1998; Kenworthy and Laube 1999) analyses document the high degree of interdependency between the two. However, causal links remain difficult to prove. A feedback cycle where changes in transport and land use patterns both influence each other, and where external factors also interfere, is the widely accepted way of illustrating this complex relationship (Manheim 1974; Hanson 1995; Wegener and Fürst 1999; Meyer and Miller 2001). The time aspect is particularly important (Batten 1996; Wegener and Fürst 1999): while the activity and mobility patterns of individual actors can adapt quite rapidly (in some cases even on a day-to-day basis), changes in the shape of transportation networks and in urban morphology are of a very long-term nature (in the order of decades). Limits to the rationality of actors (due to lack of or inability to cope with information, organizational constraints, conflicting interests, etc.) further complicate the picture.
The node-place model introduced by the author (Bertolini 1999, Figure 5.2) offers a framework to further penetrate this dynamics. The basic idea under- lying the model is that – in line with the feedback cycle – improving transport provision in a location (or its node-value) will create conditions favorable to the further concentration and diversification of functions there (because of improved accessibility). In turn, intensification and diversification of land uses in a location (or increase in its place-value) will create conditions favorable to Luca Bertolini
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