About my PhD at the TU Delft Urbanism
The hypothesis
The annihilation of space by time hypothesis
In addition to the situation in The Hague involving the municipal executive and interest groups, there is a broader explanation for the fragmented and diverse city images. The book Collage City (1978) by Colin Rowe and Fred Koetter served as an inspiration to view modern cities in a completely different way. It explores the perspectives of architects and urban planners who have had and continue to have ideas about the ideal city, constantly redefining it. This has resulted in the fragmented urban form seen in modern cities.
When walking through The Hague, you will experience a journey through different urban areas, each with its own unique buildings and atmosphere. These include the old city, which has a variety of buildings, the neighborhoods from the end of the 19th century with enclosed urban spaces and beautifully designed residential houses, the controlled brick architecture in the historic interwar neighborhoods, the spacious post-war neighborhoods with a continuous green landscape, the Vinex locations, and the New Hague Centre where diversity and densification are emphasized.
In the city center, you can see a wide range of buildings and urban spaces. There are city palaces built in the latest French fashion from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century, alongside modern concrete buildings. There are also shops from fin-de-siècle and gray residential buildings from the seventies, mixed with colorful postmodern urban ensembles from the nineties.
In the past, there have been studies on how people experience cities (Lynch, 1960). It has also been observed that cities have a fragmented character, with contradictions and pluralism in architecture (Jacobs, 1961) (Venturi, 1966) (Jencks, 1977) (Rowe & Koetter, 1978) (Vidler, 2001). Some have explained the fragmented nature of the city by referring to socioeconomic relations within the city (Harvey, 1990). The scholar Karl Schlögel, who specializes in Slavic languages, interpreted this diversity in cities in a different way. In his reflections on European cities, he made the argument:
‘The Europe of the Cold War has disappeared. Instead of a once homogeneous space – ’the East’, ’the West’ – we now findfragments, enclaves, islands. For many people, this is nothing more than piecework, but in reality, they are parts from which thenew Europe becomes one whole. The fragmentation is a form of renewal, at least for the moment. It is more important to stickto fragments – they are real – than to the whole, which for the time being is only a promise. The official rhetoric has alsoacknowledged this by embodying fragmentation, the fragmentation as pluralization, as ‘diversity in unity.’ The fragmentation isthe hour of disillusionment, that is, of the Enlightenment. This also reveals the forces that play a role in the creation ofsomething new.’ (Schlögel, 2008: 11).
This temporary fragmentation is also central to the work of philosopher Marshall Berman (1982) and social geographer David Harvey (1990, 2000, 2005) in their interpretation of the postmodern city. The city emerged in the 1970s and was further developed with the rise of neoliberalism in the 1980s. This development was accompanied by a new way of experiencing space over time. The concept of temporary fragmentation and fragmentation refers to Karl Marx’s idea of the ‘annihilation of space by time.’ As he points out: ‘While capital …must strive to tear down every barrier…to exchange and conquer the whole earth for its markets, it strives on the other side to annihilate this space with time’ (Grundrisse 1857: 538-539).
According to geographer Erik Swyngedouw (2009: 62), this means that capitalism relies on the acceleration of capital circulation, which involves destroying existing spatial structures and creating new ones that allow for faster capital circulation. Time is crucial for capitalism (it must be faster and faster) and needs to be constantly increasing, but space or geographical organization often poses a barrier to this acceleration. Capitalism seeks to overcome spatial constraints and obstacles through technological innovation, new spatial forms of organization, and new communication techniques. However, this destruction of space can only occur by creating new rigid spatial structures. Swyngedouw explains Harvey’s work by stating that this process results in the ‘annihilation of space by time,’ leading to global integration and globalization, while also causing local differentiation in social, ecological, and cultural aspects. This fragmented, diverse, cosmopolitan, creative, and innovative urban culture and practice is what characterizes the postmodern city.
Harvey (1990) discusses the fragmentation of the city in the Marxist tradition during the 1990s as a period of transition from one spatial and temporal arrangement to another. In the new millennium, he presents a different interpretation of fragmentation, suggesting that it represents a new spatial and temporal arrangement influenced by neoliberalism starting in the 1980s (Harvey, 2005). He also talks about how spatial utopias have transformed into a utopia of the process.
Fragmentation is a term that has acquired a negative connotation among authors like Schlögel, Berman, and Harvey. It implies that there was once a state of wholeness or perfection that has been destroyed by circumstances. It can be compared to a broken scale that can be repaired or a transitional phase from one space-time configuration to another.
However, ‘fragmentation’, or more positively, heterogeneity, appears to be the permanent state of the urban landscape. The unity and homogeneity mentioned by Schlögel seem more like wishful thinking, the thoughts of someone who already has the next utopia in mind. According to Marx, the transitional phase appears to be more of a permanent situation when considering the city’s development over a longer period. The city in question is one where the interests between policymakers and interest groups are more pronounced than in other places, a city where representation has been central since its inception: The Hague.
Is the central thesis of ’the annihilation or fragmentation of space by time hypothesis’ correct in the example of The Hague? Wasn’t it instead a complex interaction between the mental perception of the city and its normative cityscapes, as well as the physical city itself with its possibilities and path dependence?
Research questions and scope
The central research question is: is the fragmentation in normative cityscapes an important characteristic of a modern city such as TheHague and thus reflects in general the debate culture of policymakers and interest groups with all the conflicts that go with it in a moderncity in interaction with the physical (im)possibilities and path dependence? Sub questions are: what is a normative city image; which city images were there between 1860 and 2010; which interest groups were influential and what the motives; how develops a city image from the begin to the decline; what are the consequences for the appearance of the city of all those city images?
The scope of this study is a number of eye-catching city images of The Hague from the period from ca. 1860 to 2010, the period of development of the modern city and city government. The structure of this study is that the meaning of the guiding theme of the city image is first inventoried and discussed as used by contemporary researchers. Subsequently, the guiding theme of city image as it hasbeen dominant in The Hague since the late Middle Ages and which was taken for granted and almost without conflict is clarified and described in more detail in order to show the path dependence, the intertwined relationships with society in a broader perspective and the local architecture and built environment. It then describes the city images that have marked The Hague since Thorbecke’s statereforms. The relevance of this study is that it contributes to the discussion of what The Hague should look like now that the city mustmake a statement in its new Omgevingsvisie.
What is a city image?
There are different meanings of city image or cityscapes, and it depends on which perspective one considers the city from.
Besides the physical city, there is also such a thing as ’the city between ears’ that is portrayed by handy marketers, argued thegeographer Hospers (2010). The appearance of the city has gained excessive attention due to the competition between cities.Municipalities frantically emphasize the individuality within the ever-expanding urban landscape where the boundary between city andcountry is nowadays untraceable. The city seems stripped of the categories of space, movement and time and seems to be reducedto a city image in the media. At best, a moving image that suggests space. The represented city is becoming increasingly important,and it differs from the physical city in terms of space and historicity. The main aim of this image is to attract and retain visitors, wealthyresidents, foreign institutions and companies in order to maintain the urban economy.
In 2006, The Hague was the first city in the Netherlands to have an alderperson who was exclusively concerned with city marketing.City marketing, place marketing or place branding is an urban management strategy born out of the need for a more urban policy inan increasingly competitive climate (Van den Berg & Braun, 1999). Sometimes city marketing hardly exceeds the level of promotion, in which an implausible identity is marketed, sometimes one presents the existing qualities of the city. Sometimes magnified and exaggerated, sometimes dull, flat and dutiful. It often turns out that urban policy is no more than a real estate developer who, supported by a financier, wants to put away a large project.
In order to present themselves, some cities attribute properties such as ‘picturesque’, or even of a ‘color’ and an ‘Eigenlogik’ (Löw,2008). Others speak, by analogy with man, of a ‘character’ (Florida, 2008), ‘DNA’ (Schmitt et al., 2002) or of an ‘identity’. Oneimagines the city as one imagines man and assumes one identity, which some say is manmade.
Metaphors commonly used to interpret a person’s individuality are now projected onto cities. One smooth and easily graspable imagethat is recognizable to everyone, as communication experts like to see. Sometimes events and prestigious projects are connected.For example, The Hague applied for the European Capital of Culture in 2018, a ‘Mega Event Hosting’ and for this the city councilwanted a ‘flagship’ of international size, the Spuiforum. Today known as the culture cluster Amare.
The book: Het veranderend stadsbeeld van Den Haag: Plannen en processen in de Haagse stedebouw 1890-1990 from 1991 is stillexemplary of the long search in The Hague for the one image with which people would like to profile themselves. The justification the authors therefore refers to: ’the appearance of The Hague’ (Freijser et al., 1991:8). Usually, one speaks in the singular about the image of the city, just as in singular one speaks of the personality of man, while The Hague is characterized by its richness of images,many appearances and city images. A book such as de Stad (Dings, 2006) that appeared in honor of Ed Taverne shows the endlesslayering in meanings of the city. It then starts with the remark: ‘The city is many cities’.
In the situation in The Hague, the international institutions in the field of peace and security also play a role in the urban economy andthe profiling of one city (Van Krieken & McKay, 2005). Paraphrases such as: ‘The Hague, Legal Capital of the World’ and ‘The Hague,Wéreldstad aan Zee’ echo the years after the millennium in The Hague city hall and on municipal websites. Architectural icons suchas the International Criminal Court, the new Boulevard and the Spuiforum or Amare illustrate the mundane image that administratorswant to create of the city.
This dissertation is not a historical study. A historical study implies unity and causality in developments, while this causality is lackingin the object itself of the study, the image. The historical research is based on this and places individual city images in a historicalcontext to expose the special conditions under which the various city images came to fruition and became self-evident for a short timeand then sink back into oblivion. On the other hand, by taking the image as a starting point for the interpretation of architecturalhistory, periods without a well-defined conception suddenly become visible. Such as in The Hague, for example, the Fin de siècle and the architecture of the eighties and nineties of the last century.
The various case studies can be read as separate stories about city images that dominate in The Hague. In this study, the image ismainly associated with the production of the city in one particular era. A city image was created at a certain moment for a certain partof the city at the scale level of urban ensembles, such as the neighborhoods Willemspark, Duinoord, Marlot, De Resident or the Wijnhavenkwartier with the Spuiforum. Not coincidentally, this is often the scale of the feasibility of projects, these were then carriedout within a period of time within which there was no doubt about the image.
With a higher scale level, the city image in this sense already becomes uncontrollable. The conditions and circumstances under whichthe individual city image developed over time are different from each other. Each period in history seems to have its own possibilitiesand limitations. This research into city image in The Hague is not complete. Only the most striking city images have been researchedand described.
In summary, a city image is an easily perceptible frame in our heads without space, time and causality, but with a chain of associations, ideas and images about a future state of a city and in which policymakers and interest groups had a motive to influencepeople. A cityscape is the imagined city.
Research method and sources
The approach of the urban iconography research
Urban iconography
The phenomenon city image is used in the discourse on urban iconographic research (De Rock, 2012). In this context, the relationship between the original of the city and the reproduction that was made of it is central. Iconography involves studying and describing subjects in the visual arts. The deeper layers of the artwork were exposed. Often these are backgrounds or small references that can be meaningful. Based on this iconographic study, conclusions are drawn about the situation in the past. Inaddition to works of art, the city or landscape is also regarded as a representation, a representation. Usually these are paintings ordrawings of fragments of cities as they were made from the Middle Ages with the city as the subject. With the help of urbaniconography, people want to gather knowledge about the original condition, its inhabitants, its buildings and the urban spaces.Historical depictions of the city such as maps, paintings, or poems usually appear distorted and manipulated echoes. Often these city images also say something about how the makers wanted the city to be seen. After the Second World War, Erwin Panofskyinvestigated the underlying religious symbolism of early cityscapes. However, Panofsky only looked at the sacred function of the works of the Gothic and Renaissance periods. The study of how the city was depicted or represented gained momentum in recentyears, with the meaning of the phenomenon of the city image also changing.
The pictorial turn
The French urbanist and historian Pierre Lavedan first drew attention to cityscapes and their value for historical research into cities inthe fifties (De Rock, 2012: 248). His ideas had a great influence on architecture and on the European city (Rossi, 1966) (Castex,Depaule & Panerai, 1980). The way of representing urban spaces and the distortions caused by subjective experience became aresearch theme. The research became diverse and methodologically changes took place. In the last quarter of the twentieth century, the theme was broadened: the ‘pictorial turn’, in which people more often thought outside the boundaries of one’s own discipline, as inLavedan’s studies. There was even talk of a paradigm shift that gave urban iconographic research a new dynamic. For the first time,the social sciences paid attention to the discourse about images. This broadening of the discourse led to a new view of urbaniconographic research. ‘From the eighties onwards, iconographic documents were recognized as fully-fledged sources alongsidehistorical sources’, says De Rock (2012: 249). These pictorial sources, which were usually used as support or as secondary sources,now became central. Usually, iconographic documents were illustrations when researching archives and literature. The realsignificance of the iconographic documents in each period was thus marginalized. Until now, urban iconography has been about citiesfrom the past, whose existing urban structures have disappeared today or have changed to such an extent that it is difficult to imaginethem. In this sense, the cityscape passively represents reality.
The spatial turn
In the study of urban iconography, there was another important methodological change that had a major influence, the ‘spatial turn’. Acrucial analytical category was added to the instruments of the urban historian: space and spaciousness (De Rock, 2012: 251). In the nineties, Henry Lefebvre’s La production de l’espace from 1974 was rediscovered and the conception of urban space as animmutable and passive backdrop for economic and political processes came to an end. Lefebvre distinguished three dimensions ofspaces. The space as experienced by everyone. The representation of space or its representation in maps, engineering, architecture, geography, planning, etc. Spaces of experience such as utopian plans, imaginary landscapes, etc. People became acutely aware thatspace is not only a physical fact, but above all an ideological construction. After all, the representation of space based on maps, prints, paintings, illustrations and films reproduced a social order. This gave urban iconographic research a new direction and numerous sub-studies were published on the religious, ritual, political, social, legal, architectural, cultural and ecological dimensionsof urban space’ (De Rock, 2012: 251). This ‘spatial turn’ caused urban space to be regarded as an ambiguous category.
At the turn of the century, several books gave structure to research and discourse for historians who wanted to get started with thecity and its way of representation (Burke, 2001) (Rose, 2001). These studies were based on methods from linguistics, semiotics andstructuralism. There was a transmitter (the object of research: the city), a message (the medium, such as a painting or poem) and areceiver (the viewer). The result of the methods in these studies was that the two different disciplines came closer together in theirdiscourse on city images and cityscapes, because the image was no longer the passive object of research but interacted with theviewers.
The turn to the urban landscape
A third major change in the discourse on urban iconographic research was brought about by cognitive geographers becominginvolved in the urban landscape. How do visitors and residents experience the city? It is not the city itself that is the object of research, but the experience of the viewer of this city. In Kevin Lynch’s 1960 work, The Image of the City, the city was dissected and reduced to generally valid spatial and morphological categories, which formed a mental image in the minds of the viewers. Thecategories were ‘paths’, ‘edges’, ‘districts’, ‘nodes’ and ‘landmarks’. As cases, the cities of Boston, Jersey City and Los Angeles weremapped and compared with each other with these categories. Lynch explained the relationship between how people experience a cityand the morphology of its buildings and urban spaces. Lynch’s analysis is about the ‘public image’ that precedes the personalexperience of the city, he argued that: ‘Every citizen has had long associations with some part of his city, and his image is soaked in memories and meaning.’ (Lynch 1960: 1), ‘This book will consider the visual quality of the American city by studying the mental image of that city which is held by its citizens.’ (Lynch, 1960: 2), ‘The image of the Manhattan skyline may stand for vitality, power, decadence, mystery, congestion, greatness, or what you will, but in each case that sharp picture crystallizes and reinforces the meaning.’ (Lynch, 1960: 9), ‘There seems to be a public image of any given city which is the overlap of many individual images.’ (Lynch, 1960: 26). However, a general picture such as that of New York or The Hague with its ‘distinguished-village-in-leafy-green’ ismuch more difficult to grasp with this method. The greenery is everywhere in the city and has no specific place, just as the urbanqualities of New York are not reflected in the suburbs. Lynch also ignores the difference between residential buildings with arestrained image and public buildings that must be representative and often look different and are emphasized by their position inurban space. These ‘architectural icons’ and ‘flagships’ of yesteryear often dominate cities.
The imagined city
Nancy Stieber (2006) gave an analysis about ‘image’ and ‘city’ in her article ‘The City of the Mind” in the book The City (2006). Thecity is turned into a metaphor, which is one of the transformations that we can make the urban fabric undergo in our mind. Accordingto Stieber, Ed Taverne showed in his studies the broad palette for approaching ‘city of mind’. The field of research can be approachedin three categories: ‘the image of the city’ (het beeld van de stad), ‘the imagined city’ (de verbeelde stad) and ‘the imaginary city’ (de denkbeeldige stad). The image of the city is the representation that individuals or collectives build up. The conception that evokes the experience in the mind. This performance is based on the real city that can be experienced in all kinds of ways. The imagined city isthe physical city as represented by artists, architects, planners and others in art, film, literature, music and advertising. This is relatedto the first category, but here the emphasis is on the representation of the city by specialists. The position of the creator of the imagesis of crucial importance. What were the motives? How was the city represented? Which target group did they have in mind? Was itart-loving audience or did they want to influence opinion? And what was the connection with the first category? (The subject of thisstudy). The third category of the imaginary city are the fantasy cities that have been detached from any attempt at a representation ofactual urban conditions. The City of God of Augustine or the cities of Italo Calvino. These three categories also reflect the degree of transformation of the present urban fabric in the mind. The first category mainly shows the layering but is not focused onrepresentation or influence. It has no audience. The second and third categories are intended for a particular audience. They want toinfluence opinion. ‘The image of the city, the imagined city and the imaginary city are by no means mutually exclusive categories, butheuristic tools to distinguish between the city as it is experienced, imagined and fantasized. The City of the Mind is a complex and comprehensive subject and our mental representations of the city are a richly layered palimpsest or montage.’ (Stieber, 2006: 253).Based on a cartoon from 1916, Stieber exposes the concerns that exist around the expansion plan of Amsterdam-Zuid, but above allshe shows how powerful the ‘City of the Mind’ can be. She concludes her article with: ‘It confirms the meaning of the research into the image of the city, the imagined city and the imaginary city, as a means of revealing hidden, but indeed effective visions of the city.'(Stieber, 2006: 261). She concludes her article with: ‘It confirms the meaning of the research into the image of the city, the imaginedcity and the imaginary city, as a means of revealing hidden, but indeed effective visions of the city.’ (Stieber, 2006: 261). This study deals mainly with the imagined city and the motives of policy makers and interest groups.
The three layers of a normative city image
Iconic urban ensembles
The guiding theme city image used in this study is normative and concerns the built urban ensembles, the image of these ensembles and the imagination of these ensembles by those involved. The relationship between an urban ensemble and the image of a certain period is emphatically central. Normally, these city images are self-evident, but precisely because of conflicts about this, these cityscapes come to light. In architecture and urban planning, the image plays an important role in production, resulting in a close interweaving of presentation, built objects and urban space, and their subsequent representation. In these professional groups, it is often not the acquisition of knowledge about a condition or situation from the past that is central, but the knowledge about the interaction between image and reality. Image (design drawings) and word (design notes) precede an urban development. They present an architectural or urban design plan to influence reality and afterwards images (photos) or texts (plan explanations) are made that represent the plan. In this ‘architectural’ sense, a city image can no longer be clearly separated from the urban ensembles built. Words, images, buildings and squares are interrelated, and causality seems to be lost.
Interaction as focus
This study aims to gather knowledge about city images in The Hague: the complex process in which the interaction is central between the real material urban ensembles with their architectural icons and the mental representation of these urban ensembles in words and images by those involved. This concerns cases from the past; recent cases are also studied. In the phenomenon of a city image, the interaction between reality and image formation is much more refined than in a mechanical representation of reality in word and image. The interplay is crucial to gain insight into the deeper layers of an architectural and urban design tradition in a certain time.
Universally applicable method
The research method used in this study of urban images should be universally applicable to any city. The phenomenon of the city image is defined in this study as an image-determining urban ensemble, which presupposes an interplay between urban space (size, scale and design), buildings (typology, material and design) and underlying ideas, especially the motifs and associated imagery (both presentation and representation). When ideas, architecture and urban planning are in line with each other, they can reinforce each other. In order to indicate this interplay at a specific moment, this study refers to a normative city image.
The three layers of the normative city image: the urban space, the buildings and the motifs
In order to disentangle the complex whole of built urban ensembles and mental representation in word and image, different cases are analyzed in three layers: urban spaces, buildings and manner and content of representation by those involved. It is assumed that those involved had or have a motive for the image and wanted to influence the urban spaces and buildings built. The (re)presented images in words, paintings, photographs, notes, council documents, articles, etc. are therefore not seen as value-free opinions or opinions, but as part of the mental image that preceded the planning and implementation. But the images and descriptions afterwards, which in turn perpetuate the mental image, are also important; often these form the prelude to the following projects.
The interaction between the mental image that those involved formed and the built reality of the city is central to this study. The first two layers, urban spaces and buildings, have already been mapped with typo-morphological research, and the third layer, the motives of those involved and the manner of presentation, has been described with architectural-historical and historical research. At the end of the twentieth century, coherent historical, typo-morphological and architectural-historical research into the urban spaces and buildings (and their inhabitants) in The Hague was increasingly carried out. With typo-morphological research, physical and visual similarities and differences in a certain period can be identified and named. This method is synchronous and organizes the research objects, abstracts them and compares them with each other.
Historical research is being done into the third layer, the presentation and representation in word and image, the mental image that is formed. Questions about the motives for the respective cityscapes and the mutual influence of the real city and the mental city are more difficult to answer, literature and archive research is required for this. The historical research takes place on the one hand based on historical maps and images, material that presented or represented a plan afterwards, and on the other hand on written sources such as archives or source research carried out by third parties. This concern analyses of material from the present period that can be used to explain the cohesion and dynamics of a cityscape. The boundary between an urban ensemble, design drawing, painted cityscape, historical map, engraving or etching of this map is not always clear. Architects from The Hague such as Post, Van Bassen, Marot and Reijers, who were talented draughtsman and painters, were not only concerned with the presentation of the building plans, but also with the representation of urban ensembles as in the description of the city by Riemer in the eighteenth century.
Criteria for a normative cityscape
When is an urban ensemble part of a normative city image? The following categories emerged from the preliminary investigation. The presence of a motive among those involved who (re)presented the ideas in words and images. Motives must be found in the plans that are drawn, suggestive sketches, notes that are written, explanations from directors, visions, poems, books, paintings or newspaper articles. These are not the dreams of a few, but necessarily documents that were widespread or part of public life. The recognizability of the separate city image with which it stands out against the rest of the city. These are ensembles that are still recognized and that have been endlessly reproduced in overview books or on postcards of the city. Within a city image there can be a number of scale levels that are connected to each other. Ideal images have been presented at the scale level of the city region up to and including the architectural detail in quality documents. However, an important criterion here is that there is a coherence and interplay between buildings, urban spaces and the reasons why they were created.
The sources used
This study is not a historical study but investigates the guiding theme of ’the city image’ in its historical context. This research is based as much as possible on primary sources, often archives, council documents or publications from the period in question. From the second half of the nineteenth century, municipal documents such as acts of the council and later memorandums, policy visions, reflections, descriptions, information brochures, newspaper articles and maps for tourists appeared, in addition to the endless series of municipal publications. The problem with this extensive literature is mainly to find the common thread and to recognize the guiding theme the city image. Much historical research has already been done into the being of The Hague. These secondary sources provide a lot of background and insight into the processes that are going on. The first thorough source research into the development of The Hague was undertaken in the eighteenth century by the lawyer and civil servant Jacob de Riemer (Riemer, 1730, 1739). In that study, the guiding theme of city image of The Hague as a village in leafy green was also immediately described.
In the nineteenth century, interest in research into the city increased, for example with the observations of the journalist Johan Gram in the fin de siècle about the nature of the city, or the historical research of Hendrik Enno van Gelder (1925, 1934, 1937), in the interwar period, or the architectural and urban planning research of Rein Bleistra (1964, 1967, 1968, 1969. 1970, 1971, 1973, 1975) in the seventies, or of the architectural historian Victor Freijser who as editor and initiator of Het veranderend stadsbeeld van Den Haag: Plannen en processen in de Haagse stedebouw 1890-1990 (1991) gave the floor to various authors, and in the 1990s, whether the series of studies by city architect Maarten Schmitt in the new millennium with which he visualized the DNA of the city (Schmitt, 2002) (Schmitt, Harskamp, Jansen & Ridderhof, 2004) (Schmitt, Bosma, Jansen & Ridderhof, 2006) (Schmitt, Bosma, Jansen & Ridderhof, 2008) (Schmitt, Bosma, Jansen & Ridderhof, 2000). Numerous publications were also published by the Monument Preservation Department in The Hague, including the VOM series of books, (Strengholt, 1981) (Rosenberg, Vaillant, & Valentijn, 1988) (Hoeve, Lankamp, Rosenberg, Vaillant, & Valentijn, 1992) (Koopmans, 1994), (Valentijn et al., 2002).
The publications of the Hague Municipal Archives, such as those by Kees Stal (Stal, 1998, 2005) (Stal & Kersing, 2004) (Stal, Groenveld, & Penning, 2007) and Maarten van Doorn (Doorn, 1991, 1998) also provided a good picture of the historical development of The Hague. Furthermore, the publications of employees of the Haags Historisch Museum: (Haer, 1968) (Stokvis, 1987) (Lit, Pluijmen, & Mast, 1989) (Hoenstok, 1999) (Dumas, 1991) (De Regt, 1986, 1987) (Wijsenbeek-Olthuis, 1998). The series of books The Hague History of the City (three parts) in the new millennium in particular was a source of information about the development of The Hague: (Smit et al., 2004), (Wijsenbeek-Olthuis et al., 2005) (Nijs & Sillevis et al., 2005).
Other historical secondary sources have also been consulted, some of which are only indirectly related to The Hague. Biographies about master builders such as Huygens, Van Campen, Post, Van Bassen, Marot, Reijers etc. who were active in The Hague or buildings or urban services: (Moll, 1954) (Vijfvinkel, Companje, Geus, & Hegener, 1986) (Ottenheym, Terlouw & Zoest, 1988) (Keblusek & Zijlmans, 1997) (Meischke, Rosenberg, & Zantkuijl, 1997) (Blom, Bruin & Ottenheym, 1999) (Strien & Leer, 2002) (Blom, 2003) (Ottenheym & Tussenbroek, 2011) etc. Or certain periods in which the Netherlands lived: (Bank & Buuren, 2000) (Lintsen et al., 1992-1994) (Lintsen, Rip, Schot & Alber de la Bruhèze, 2002) (Lintsen, 2005).
In addition, there are secondary literary sources such as interviews, articles, books and autobiographies or diaries by Lindo, Bakker Schut, Van der Sluijs and Duivesteijn, among others. The danger of autobiographical material is that those involved paint a one-sided or biased picture of the situation. These secondary sources have been studied with great care and skepticism. Interviews are preferably used as a source if they were conducted in the relevant period. Later interviews, so-called retrospectives, are informational and will only become interesting if more sources confirm them.
The mission with this study was to use this overwhelming number of sources to describe the guiding theme ’the cityscape’ in itshistorical context and to draw conclusions about the nature of the modern city.
My guides
In addition to the sources used, the guides who guided me through history, urbanism, architecture and municipal politics were of greatimportance. That was necessary given the overwhelming number of documents available. A long time ago, I was a student assistantand later an employee of Alexander Tzonis and his partner Liane Lefaivre. There my eyes were opened, and I saw that the urbanlandscape and its architecture should be seen in a broader spatial and historical context.
For my thesis, my supervisor, Professor Henco Bekkering, was first and foremost important. He guided me with great patience andshowed me the complexity of urban being. I remember Henco and I talking about Detroit (he was working on a publication aboutDetroit) and the book Die Stadt by Hermann Hesse in which the life cycle of just a city was beautifully described and depicted. Everytime I see hills in the flat land somewhere in Turkey, I imagine that there was once a huge city there. A city of which no one knowswhat it is called anymore, but which sings around in our heads as a primal image when the name Troy falls.
Secondly, of course, my co-supervisor who suggested stacks of books that I have yet to read. Dr. Herman van Bergeijk became myco-supervisor when it turned out after a year that I had to make a clear methodical choice. But instead of purely historical research, hetaught me to look at cities as the slavist Karl Schlögel does, as an observer and narrator about cities.
Of course, I would also like to thank my two paranymphs who assisted me in my defense. Veterans from The Hague who wereintensively involved in urban development, urban design and cultural politics: Ruud Ridderhof and Martin Verwoest. Ruud Ridderhofgave me a stack of boxes with the archive of The Hague art historian and civil servant Victor Freijser.
Archivists Kees Stal and Koos Wentholt of the Hague Municipal Archives were also very helpful and taught me the profession of archival researcher and introduced me to the extensive archives of the city. Thijs Bosma introduced me to the cultural politics of TheHague as an international city, nowhere are architecture and politics as riveted together as diplomats speak out. And then there wereall the officials of the city and the Government Buildings Agency who told me about the complex relationship between urbanism,architecture and policy such as Askon Eden, Bram Harkes and Eva Blitz.
Having studied original sources for a long time and having completed the concept of my dissertation, I was allowed to interview thoseinvolved, especially from the last period. I already had an extensive network among architects and urban planners from The Hague.For years I worked in the architectural practice at KCAP in Rotterdam, Geurst & Schulze architects in Scheveningen and later whilewriting my thesis at the Hague atelier PRO architekten. Especially in the urbanised Dutch landscape, countless new Vinexneighborhoods were built at the time.
From 2008 to 2016 I was also chairman of the Haags Architectuur Café (HaAC), the local architect’s organization, and editor-in-chiefof the magazine and later website HAACS that showed The Hague architecture and urban development in words and images.Especially the debates that we organized between 2010 and 2014 together with Stroom, BNA and Nutshuis on all kinds of issues inthe city open my eyes and I realized that urban planning and architecture are not isolated phenomena but the product of society.
Interviews with fellow architects from The Hague, often with an activist signature, have opened my eyes further to the complex relation between urban development, architecture and politics. I spoke for a long time with Hans van Beek, Joop ten Velden, JoopBolster (my colleague), Peter Drijver and Jan Brouwer. She explained to me in detail how ‘it works’ in The Hague.
However, the interview with the perceptive and highly aged Rutger Bleeker, among others the supervisor for Mariahoeve, was a lesson in cultural politics, architecture and urban development in the post war period. Important is that no reports or notes are madeof conversations between aldermen (in this case with Feber) and supervisors about strategies, he confided to me and the architectNiek van Vugt and artist Anneloes Groot. The ideals as with his neighbor in Wassenaar and Delft School former professor GranpréMolière were only shared in confidence. It was only during that period that I realized that architecture, urban planning, local politicsand interests of stakeholders were riveted together, and that the city image plays a crucial role in this.
During my PhD many local politicians were helpful and patiently guided me through the complex considerations that municipalitiesmust deal with a limited budget. Long conversations with Gerard van Otterloo, urban planner and former alderman, confirmed all mysuspicions that I had after reading all the documents. He also put the political disputes between parties in the college into perspective, sometimes these disputes are played up in the media, but they already knew what to do and the cooperation was constructive.
Furthermore, former alderman René Vlaanderen taught me the liberal political principle of letting go and giving pushes. Ultimately, itis the chemistry between the municipal executive (mayor and alderpersons), the signature and quality of the municipal council thatdetermine the success of policy. I am also grateful to the members of the working group City of the social democrat PvdA for the insights they brought, former council member and architect Joop ten Velde, architect Madeleine Steigenga, and here partner the architect Niek van Vugt and former alderman of Delft and director of the urban development department Hans Reijnen. Councilmembers from this period such as Lobke Zandstra, Martijn Balster, Bülent Aydin and Jeltje van Nieuwenhoven (who once studied arthistory in Utrecht) were of great importance. In this working group City, I only learned what making politics is with urban planning, architecture and especially the city image. How refined and compelling language and cityscape can be when it comes to imagining acity of the future.