In the coming years, Rotterdam’s neighborhoods will switch from conventional to renewable energy one by one. The energy transition will be the largest conversion the city has faced since its post-war reconstruction. However, many of its neighborhoods also face other challenges – ones that their residents often consider much more urgent. Unemployment, school dropout numbers, debts and public security: these are the themes vulnerable neighborhoods set store by, not the energy transition. Other neighborhoods have yet other questions, such as how to climate-proof the neighborhood or how to find space for new dwellings.

Bospolder-Tussendijken

^{picture: Frank Hanswijk}

Towards Energy Districts
It is on the scale of the district that large systems touch people’s immediate living environments. The energy transition will have consequences at the level of the neighborhood, the street and the dwelling. Fortunately, collective action can be organized at that very same level, that of the neighborhood. Is it possible to use the energy transition as a lever for simultaneous, solution-oriented work on other challenges in neighborhoods? To develop collective strategies that ensure that the large investments necessary for the energy transition also serve other goals, strategies that provide social added value in and for the neighborhoods themselves? This is the central question of the IABR–Atelier Rotterdam’s project Energy Districts, which examines and tests how urgent challenges can be addressed coherently and how the energy transition can thus be used as a lever for a more socially inclusive form of urban development.

Testing and developing in and with the neighborhood
The IABR–Atelier Rotterdam is testing and developing the concept of the energy district in Bospolder-Tussendijken (BoTu), working together with local stakeholders and using the local dynamics in and opportunities of the neighborhood. The aim is to develop a working model that can also be used in other neighborhoods as well as more widely, outside the city of Rotterdam.

Workshop in Bospolder-Tussendijken

^{picture by Frank Hanswijk}

In the program of the recently elected Municipal Executive, Bospolder-Tussendijken is designated one of the neighborhoods eligible for an ‘integrated sustainable area approach’. In the coming years, plans will be drafted to make the neighborhood gas free. But BoTu is also a ‘vulnerable’ neighborhood that faces urgent social challenges. Therefore, and together with local stakeholders, the IABR–Atelier is now investigating how the energy transition can contribute to making BoTu a more inclusive and resilient neighborhood.

For more information about Bospolder-Tussendijken click here

Space for Energy in Rotterdam

^{picture: Frank Hanswijk}

The energy transition is one of the key challenges of the coming decades. One important issue is how the transitions will actually take shape. How the advantages and disadvantages will be distributed is not yet clear. The energy transition will involve more than infrastructure and the most important question may well be: What kind of new urbanity will the energy transition allow us to create?

The IABR–Atelier Rotterdam will turn the opportunity created by the energy transition the city and port face into a driver for inclusive urban development and an engine for other important challenges regarding food, the productive city, living, social equality, and others.
This means the Atelier considers energy transition not only a goal, but also a means to work on an attractive future and a resilient and inclusive Rotterdam.

Bospolder - Tussendijken

^{picture: Frank Hanswijk}

The Energy Transition as an Urban Project
The energy transition is a technical challenge, of course, but at the same time it is also a spatial challenge that we have to integrate into a social agenda. After all, the reduction in the consumption of energy and the transition to renewable energy impact every aspect of daily life. From the way people travel to more energy-efficient dwellings and energy-producing neighborhoods. But is there a level playing field for everyone involved, can everyone keep up with the changes or even benefit by them? Energy poverty as a consequence of the energy transition is already imminent, especially in the more vulnerable neighborhoods.
Given the right approach, conversely, the energy transition can contribute to a high-quality, attractive future if it is used as a means to work on a resilient and inclusive Rotterdam in which citizens are enabled to be not only energy consumers, but also energy producers.
The question the IABR–Atelier Rotterdam raises is about what this new urban quality is that the energy transition will allow us to achieve. What ecological and social added value for the city, its neighborhoods, and every individual citizen will the energy transition be able to generate?

Experiment, Test, Develop
Against the background of the challenge of the energy transition the IABR–Atelier Rotterdam tests new methods for inclusive urban development and generates concrete spatial proposals with the intention of eventually realizing them. In the period between 2017 and 2020, research by design is used for different lines of action and at various scale levels.
At the building level, the Atelier has focused on the development of new building typologies for the energy transition, the results of which were presented at IABR–2018. At the district level the Energy District concept is tested. While Test Site M4H+ highlights integral area development.

The platform of IABR–2018 has mainly been used to present and exchange expertise and knowledge and to actively involve partners and actors (from the city and region as well as beyond) in shared knowledge development.
We are now working on further developing the "energy district"–concept, specifically in Bospolder-Tussendijken. The results will be presented at the IABR–2020, after which they will have to be implemented.

The IABR Atelier Rotterdam: Energy Transition is a collaboration between the IABR, the City of Rotterdam (Urban Planning Department and Resilient Rotterdam) and, at Test Site M4H+, also the Port of Rotterdam Authority.