Netherlands, Nijmegen
FC-01x Future Cities (Self-Paced) - Exercise 1 : "Making the Invisible - Visible"
Uploaded on 2017-04-05 by Frank de Gouw
The picture visualizes a street in the Bottendaal neighborhood in the city of Nijmegen. This neighborhood is situated directly south of the old city center and once was one of the older parts of the city. In recent years, however this neighborhood transformed to an area with renovated 19th century apartments and houses with a diverse offering of cafes, amenities, greenery etc. Moreover, the older industrial areas moved to other parts in the city. The visible information show these transformations and renovated houses. Very interesting and important invisible information can be related to the Dutch elections from the past week. These elections were tense because of the splintered Dutch opinions regarding which party should become the largest one. Despite this splintered environment there are however also recurring phenomena, regarding voting behavior. In Dutch cities in the past, the labor party (PVDA) often ended up to be the largest party. This was mostly due to the deprivation of the cities and the occurrence of suburbanization, where the richer, higher educated people relocated in the towns surrounding the larger city and the labor class remained in the city. However, in the past decades a (global) trend is visible in which many Western city neighborhoods, including the Dutch ones are infiltrated with students, the creative class and higher educated people. This triggered the process of renovation, gentrification and an upgrading of neighborhoods (for instance in Bottendaal). With this change the voting behavior also shifted. Were in the former elections the labor party in many cities became the largest party, now in many Dutch cities the democratic progressive party (D66) and the green left party (Groenlinks) became the most popular parties. This clearly brakes with the current time period in which extreme right populist parties are becoming increasingly more popular, in the Dutch situation the Party for Freedom (PVV) of Geert Wilders. Bottendaal itself is due to its changes now the neighborhood with relatively the most voters for the Groenlinks party in the entire country and can therefore be called the most progressive, green oriented Dutch urban neighborhood. For city planners this data, derived from the past elections, is vital information in order to understand the neighborhood and its developments. Where formerly the inhabitants of Bottendaal mostly identified themselves with the labor class these new inhabitants have other needs than the former inhabitants. They care for other subjects, like sustainability and climate change, have a completely different lifestyle and probably use other facilities and amenities. So, this information, derived from the data of the past elections, could become knowledge, by understanding the ‘new’ neighborhood and its changing needs.