City of Almere and MVRDV present Vision 2030 (NL)

Dutch new town Almere plans to grow with 60,000 houses, 100,000 work places and related facilities. Consequentially Almere will become the fifth largest city of the Netherlands in an effort to relief and to offer new qualities to the urbanised west of the Netherlands.








MVRDV

MVRDV Almere structure vision seen from the north-west



MVRDV

MVRDV Almere structure vision schematic overview.


MVRDV was commissioned to collaborate with the city to design a concept structure vision to accommodate this growth. The growth will take place in four main areas: Almere IJland, a new island off the coast in the IJ-lake, Almere Pampus, a neighborhood focused on the lake and open to experimental housing, Almere Centre, an extended city center surrounding the central lake, and Oosterwold, an area devoted to more rural and organic urbanism. Together the proposals form the new framework to accompany the growth of the city until 2030.

Together with the entire board of city councilors and the mayor, Adri Duivesteijn, city councilor of Almere, and Winy Maas of MVRDV, presented the concept structure vision to the ministers of Transport, Public Works and Water Management (V&W), Camiel Eurlings and minister of Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment, Jacqueline Cramer (VROM) on June 26. The design of IJland has been a collaboration with Adriaan Geuze of West8 and William McDonough of McDonough and Partners.

"The structure vision for Almere is more than an urban masterplan," said Adri Duivesteijn, city councilor of Almere, "...it describes how the city can develop in economic, cultural and social terms. The expansion is not a quantitative effort. Even though the number of 60,000 new homes is impressive, the main objective is the addition of new qualities. Almere wants to serve the demand of the Randstad and at the same time needs the chance to develop into an ecologic, social and economically sustainable city".

The Axis
Nowadays Almere is a city with 185,000 inhabitants, 30 years ago it was an empty stretch of land reclaimed from the sea. The growth will preserve and further expand Almere's model of a poly-nuclear city. It will diversify the existing city by adding various densities, programs and characters that do not yet exist in the current situation.

The vision consists of four major development areas, each with their own character, logic and identity. These new area developments are linked by an infrastructural axis which connects the metropolitan area of Amsterdam with Almere. Between the two cities Almere IJ-land (referring to IJ-lake) is a connector, liter

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