Luuk Koote

De Stad van Vertrouwen

The City of Trust
 A custom-made resilience in Amsteldorp

The City of Trust shows how we can continue to trust each other in cities that are becoming increasingly dense and diverse. With Amsteldorp in the lead role, my design seeks answers to what we share and how we differ.       

Like all tuindorpen, or garden villages, Amsteldorp was built out of housing need and as a counterbalance to the impoverished city. After its construction, the neighbourhood is inhabited at once by a group that suddenly was allowed to call itself Amsteldorper. Some households work at the same factories and have children of the same age. The design of the neighbourhood is based on ideals that encourage this. Open strips of subdivision with lots of visibility in the residential streets ensure neighbours find each other in the front gardens. The neighbourhood meets in the small square with the milkman and the grocer. Child-rich households can retreat to the backyard after all this contact.      

But much has changed in the past 40 years. The families no longer live there, and the neighbourhood has half as many residents. Street life is gone, and facilities and schools have fallen over. The way people spend their day is no longer as similar as it used to be — the chat at the milkman's or the front yard is no longer a given. Loneliness, isolation and mistrust threaten to take over.      

The contrast between the garden village and the city is growing. The Amsteldorp is the front line of the garden villages (Betondorp, Frankendael) of this part of Amsterdam. City dwellers have a different conception of living together and trust in the city. There is more space for the individual and less obvious control within the group.    

This project welcomes high urbanity on the edge of the garden village. The Amsteldorp is at a tipping point where it has outgrown its ideals. It could use an influx of this vibrancy, provided the transition is carefully designed, and the neighbourhood is not disrupted.       

To do this, I developed my own set of tools mapping these different forms of trust. The design starts from the strength of the Amstel Village and uses the urban atmosphere where appropriate. The concept of "tailored resilience" sees how everyone stands differently in the tools of trust and looks at where we differ from each other and what we share.  

Graduation date: 19 December 2022
Graduation committee: Tess Broekmans (mentor), Lyongo Juliana, Sander van der Ham 
Additional members for the exam: Jerryt Krombeen, Liza van Alphen