Curatorial Statement

The Open City

In the history of utopias, the reflection of the ideal society often takes the form of a city. In this way, we can view the Open City as a spatial translation of an open society.

The Meerpaal in Dronten, the Netherlands, is an attempt by architect Frank van Klingeren to “un-clot” society. The building, which opened in 1967, consisted of one huge space within which activities took place without visual and acoustic separation. The Meerpaal became a symbol for the “makeable society,” characterized by openness, transparency, and tolerance. The makeable society became a paradigm for social democracy, for an open society. The spatial model was the Netherlands, depicted as one large space in which the multi-cultural society could develop in openness, transparency, and tolerance, without visual and acoustic separation.

This vision did not materialize. The diverse social identities did not result in a multicolored chaos, but rather in a coexistence of communities based on differences, as elsewhere in the world. The compartmentalization of the built-up area increased, resulting in mono-functional areas with limited contacts, to which—although not formally restricted—accessibility was reserved for certain groups.

Twenty-five years after construction started on the city of Almere, Rem Koolhaas retroactively designed a new city center, known as Dutchtown. This revision is illustrative of the unpredictability of urban development, particularly for changes in the Randstad (conurbation of Western Holland) as a spatial reflection of an “un-clotted” to a “re-clotted” society. Instead of a peaceful suburbia of 50,000 inhabitants, in which the mid - dle class could live in houses with gardens, Almere developed into an archipelago of 200,000 people with ethnically dominated neighborhoods and streets with prostitution. In this way, the city became an inseparable part of the hierarchic Randstad, from “bundled de-concentration” to “carpet” metropolis, a patchwork of identities.

This condition is simultaneously threatening and promising. The threat stems from spatial and social segregation that could produce a “city as a tree,” an archipelago ultimately leading to a gated community, impeding cultural exchange and innovation. It is promising because interaction in an Open City takes place from within the community. The Randstad does not have any no-go zones. Social intercourse afforded by transportation systems and social networking is extensive. In this way, as an Open City it can function if the mobility of people, goods and ideas between communities is guaranteed.

Global networks can shape transnational communities, whereby mutual ties within a community are stronger than those with the city in which it finds itself.

In Rotterdam, for example, this is the case with immigrants. Whole streets of Turkish families originate from a single region in Anatolia, with parallel communities in Cologne and Berlin.

This, too, is simultaneously promising and threatening. It is promising because migration movements foster coexistence and cultural exchange. It is threatening because large differences between isolated communities could lead to losing interest in the community as a whole, in the Open City. These communities thrive on high quality transnational mobility while, at the same time, making it possible to misuse the Open City, as international terrorism demonstrates.

Even in conflict situations, under difficult circumstances, one can find pieces of the Open City. There is no totally Open City. By definition, it is fragmented, like weeds in the grass. On the West Bank, one finds the ultimate “gated-ness,” whereby every spatial intervention for selfprotection severs the vital arteries of the surroundings. Patrolled supply routes provision Jewish enclaves, like water pipes whose contents must be prevented from leaking. At the same time, Palestinians manage to maintain functioning transnational networks, despite impenetrable barriers. In cities such as Istanbul, Jakarta, and São Paolo, where there are few statu - tes and a viscous political structure, social differences are reflected in the spatial planning. In the absence of a public sector, people develop their own cities—the wealthy in luxurious enclaves, the poor in gececondus, kampongs, and favelas.

Despite the inequality, lack of public transportation and the wearing down of the ecosystem, these cities bubble with life and show numerous complementary symbioses between segregated city areas. The “potential difference” on both sides of the gatedcommunity wall is broken by improvised spatial structures that lift the barriers and enter into micro-economic relations.

The Open City must not be understood simply as an appealing 19th-century district with street level access, a finely-meshed network of streets, and an affable mixture of functions, where anonymity is guaranteed, strangers walk around, and pedestrians dominate—in short, those qualities that one might extract from a superficial reading of the work of Jane Jacobs*. The structure of the Open City functions as an operating system in which city life can nestle. A complex network of public spaces, physical and electronic, is the most important component of this operating system, where exchanges among people, ideas and goods can take place. The Open City is therefore not a utopia or a clear-cut reality, but rather a situation, a balance between open and closed between integration and de-integration, between control and “laissez-faire.”

Kees Christiaanse curator 4th IABR

* In 1961, urban writer and activist Jane Jacobs published her best-known book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities. It remains one of the most influential commentaries on urban development and city planning.