Travel Intelligence: Almere: Last Exit to Utopia by John Weich
Almere’s founding fathers created a flexible, polynuclear scheme comprising five homogenous cores spread across 132 square kilometres of pristine land. The decision to shun the modish compact city model (compact = prosperous) is indicative of the cum laude swagger with which the young architects of the responsible Projektburo strolled into the Zuiderzee wastelands and planned the new town. It also assured that full-blooded urbanites would revile Almere for its suburban façade right from the very beginning. The Projektburo’s open-ended approach was tinged with pragmatism and the euphoric dogma of the early 1970s. The flexible model that designated a high street, city hall, business district, public facilities and communal space for each self-sufficient core, would enable future planners to mould and shape the city over time as the demographics became more specific. Moreover, they would avoid typical new town snags that saddled pioneer residents with sterile and amenity-less environments. One-third of the city would be dedicated to industry, one-third to housing and one-third to parks and open space. Eighty percent of the dwellings would be devoted to single families, and 70% to low to middle income residents. Sidewalks wide enough for children to play on. One job for every three residents. One company for every 100 homes. Industrial areas would be situated close to the home to accommodate a female workforce. Bus stops erected every 400 meters, train stations every 800 meters, every home within a five minute’s walk a large park or forest. It was a heyday in methodical planning, and today many of those distances can still be pinpointed to the meter.larg Almere's distances between cores are much more akin to American towns than to Dutch ones
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