Amsterdam

This publication considers the question of ‘authorship’ in town planning, based, in this case, on the city of Amsterdam. Ton Schaap began to practise town planning in the mid-1980s, at a time when the discipline of town planning was in crisis. Urban regeneration had passed its peak and new issues were becoming evident on a citywide scale. The exodus from the city to centres of urban growth such as Purmerend, Almere, Hoofddorp and Het Gooi was in full swing. The aim was to reverse this trend. The model of the compact city once again became the focus of spatial planning. The increasing influence of the market on spatial planning also necessitated a reconsideration of the role of local-authority planning departments. A number of large-scale projects were initiated at that time, including the KNSM, Java and Borneo Sporenburg harbour islands, followed later by IJburg, the Zuidas, the development of the centre of Amsterdam-Zuidoost and recently the northern banks of the IJ and the Markermeer.
A deliberate break was made with the anonymity of the urban planner. This meant that a new generation of town planners could remain involved in the practical aspects of urban planning without ‘slipping’ into a solely managerial role. Besides the high quality of many individual town-planning and architectural projects, this continuity has also had very positive results for Amsterdam at the level of the city as a whole.