FREELAND AND THE VERTICAL METROPOLIS
At first glance, one may not see many similarities between the Netherlands and Japan. Strict social protocols found in the land of the rising sun seem inherently opposed to the ubiquitous cultural informality found in many Dutch cities and towns. The historical influences of the Netherlands, with its complex role in the history and development of Europe, is far removed from Japan’s lineage of militaristic city-states. Tower-filled urban centers such as Tokyo seem at odds with canal-punctured cities like Amsterdam, both in atmosphere and urban density. Yet both Japan and the Netherlands are two of the most densely-populated countries on earth: Japan with an average density of 338 people per square kilometer, the Netherlands with an average of 496. For the Japanese, that amounts to an average of three square meters per resident, and just two square meters per resident for the Dutch.
These densities are similarly awe-inspiring, but each countries’ approach to achieving this spatial density is wildly different.
In Japan, world-topping population densities are obvious. Arriving in Tokyo, it is immediately apparent that no square centimeter of space goes unused. Program overflows from every skyscraper and every metro station, all seemingly indifferent to their relative location above or below street level. One may visit a favorite restaurant on the twenty-seventh floor of a skyscraper, or spend hours shopping in small boutiques which parasitically invade a subway station. Apartments within the city seem impossibly efficient in their layout, and astronomical rent prices reflect the inescapable lack of space within the city center. The Japanese countryside, however, is largely untouched: urban density is confined to large city centers, leaving much of the rural landscape untouched by metropolitan sprawl. One can see many parallels (on the surface) between this typology of city-making and that proposed by great Modernist architects: Corbusier’s Radiant City, similarly, compresses urban development to mega-high-rise towers, leaving Nature to flourish in-between hyper-dense developments.
The Netherlands, on the other hand, seems an ideological opposite. The urban intensity seen in Tokyo is not to be found anywhere in Holland: rather, the Netherlands achieves density by filling its borders (major cities included) with a sea of medium-rise development. Residential housing blocks blanket every inch of the Dutch countryside, punctuated by fields of flowers and gardens. In comparison to Tokyo, the Netherlands lacks any “extremes” in spatial compression––it is an endless carpet of “the middle.” Moreover, there is no center; a pattern of idyllic boulevards and greenhouses simply repeats indefinitely, carpeting the landscape with Dutch urbanism. One may see this model of city-making as OMA’s La Vilette when compared with Tokyo’s Radiant City; it is congestion in only a planametric sense, creating impossible density only in a cartographic view, leaving vertical urbanism largely unexplored.
The Netherlands' approach to density is mirrored in MVRDV’s Freeland proposal for the 2012 Architecture Biennale in Venice, where we see a “new” urbanism produced through an endless repetition of medium-rise buildings and idyllic green spaces. It is a proposition for a quasi-utopian urban condition, where residents live in a fantastic suburbia, devoid of the pollution, congestion, and craze associated with the vertical metropolis. In a style typical of MVRDV, Freeland is also an inherently sustainable proposition: where New York serves as an idealism for the late twentieth century, Freeland orients itself toward the sustainability-conscious twenty-first. It is a proposition for a never-ending village, an ocean of small-scale sustainable development. By its serene nature, it affords all residents access to light, air, and (perhaps most importantly) a release from the frenzy of the metropolis.
As an idea, Freeland sounds wonderful. But what of the experiential consequences of such urban strategy?
The built environment of much of the Netherlands is ideologically similar to that of MVRDV’s Freeland, and, like Freeland, it is unquestionably idyllic: I find myself easily seduced by small-scale row houses, tree-filled boulevards, and the seemingly endless proliferation of green spaces throughout the country. It does, however, lack one important component (as mentioned in previous articles on this blog): excitement. I find myself longing for the congested, frenzied streets of Tokyo, if only momentarily. The Vertical Metropolis exceeds in producing the urban spectacle, creating ever-new strains of organized chaos. By comparison, the streets of Rotterdam or The Hague seem placid, lacking the urban frenzy found in the world’s largest (and most experientially intense) cities.
Roger Ebert recently posted an article on Twitter, wherein he advocates the necessity of the world’s population to abstain from the consumption of meat products as part of a balanced diet. Instead, he writes, the world’s populous must move towards vegetarianism in order to prevent impending global food shortages and ecological catastrophe. Though surely pleasurable for many, the consumption of meat on a global scale, he argues, is simply unsustainable: the global public may have to voluntarily cease raising animals for the purposes of ingestion, if only to avert a future lack of nutriment worldwide. The Spectacle Cities of Tokyo, New York, and Hong Kong are conceptually similar to Ebert’s view of carnivorous habits: though Vertical Metropolises provide unending stimulation for inhabitants, they are increasingly unsustainable, and draw on a disproportionately large number of resources to support their compressed populations.
A new breed of sustainable urbanism may thus emerge, similar to Freeland, which blankets large areas with low-impact development––a long-term alternative to a twentieth-century urbanism which compresses a maximum number of people, events, and amenities into a minimum of space.
Will urbanites accept such placid urban spaces, or do growing numbers of the global population crave the instability, spectacle, and tumultuous atmosphere associated with the world’s largest (yet inherently unsustainable) cities?