The product of one week – final presentations

I’ve been lagging behind on this blog for a few days now, but the final presentation for the workshop was on 11 December, 2013. As predefined, the presentationpresentations took place in two rounds, with four presentations in each round. The idea behind it was that each round will present the solutions in four different presentations; however the combination of the four presentations should give a full picture of the entire workshop.

Photo Credits: Alexandra Tsatsou

Photo Credits: Alexandra Tsatsou

For the first round, the presentations started with the concept of exposing a hidden identity of ZoHo. This concept elaborated on the idea of presenting a one year calendar of food related events to continuously strengthen the position and identity of ZoHo within Rotterdam. The next presentation in this round, revolved around the idea of skill development with the concept called ‘you don’t have to move out of your neighbourhood to move into a better one’. The skills of the local people, both existing and new skills that can be taught, would be used in this concept to bring the local community to participate in placemaking in this area. The presentation continued with the concept of ground floor, or ground level, redevelopment. The concept here was that the lack of life in this area was most conceived at the ground level and the only way to address that was to work on the ground and not on the 15^th floor of some office building. So this idea proposed better utilization of both private and public spaces at the ground level, by active participation from the occupants. Round one ended with the proposal for the concept of ‘the Healthy City’, an idea that offers to exploit the closeness of ZoHo by offering its premise to people who wish to recover through eco therapies. This idea proposes a new identity to ZoHo as a holistic place where people recovering from alcoholism, addiction and other illness could recuperate using non-conventional methods such as therapy using gardening etc.

Photo Credits: Alexandra Tsatsou

Photo Credits: Alexandra Tsatsou

Photo Credits: Alexandra Tsatsou

The second round began with the concept of ‘A Walk in ZoHo’, the idea was to open up certain places and use elements such as light, to present ZoHo in a more attractive ‘light’. This was a spatial intervention, whereby the space was to be more active, simply by inserting commercial activities in the arches below the rail line and proposing certain recurring events to promote the place. The idea of opening up ZoHo was taken to the next level by the second proposal of the second round which proposed the making a student hostel at ZoHo, aiming towards bringing in students to live near the centre of the city and with their presence bring in all other activities and uses as well. This would in turn make the place more active. The activities were again taken further by the third presentation which proposed a yearlong calendar of events in their theme of ‘ZoHo Year’ with cooking/eating competitions to cultural festival spanning an entire year to bring ZoHo in focus. The entire workshop concluded with the presentation on creating more awareness on the things happening at ZoHo by creating a facebook group and a magazine, the idea was titled ‘Ik Ben ZoHo’ or ‘I am ZoHo’.

Photo Credits: Alexandra Tsatsou

The most interesting fact about these presentations was that, on some level, each of the presentation corresponded with the others and in fact many of these ideas and their pilot projects complimented each other. Also the presentation took place at Roodkapje, at ZoHo and was attended by representatives of all stakeholders thus the feedback on the projects was very interesting as well.

In the next post, I will try to incorporate the comments and perceptions of different people, regarding the ideas presented and the workshop as a whole. As of now, this was an extremely interesting experience, and the final presentations not only gave the story of the week, but rather presented our experience of ZoHo, in all its glory and all its tragedies. And I believe I speak for everyone when I say, it was an extremely interesting experience, but we will get more into that in later blogs. 

Photo Credits: Alexandra Tsatsou

Photo Credits: Alexandra Tsatsou

Photo Credits: Alexandra Tsatsou

Photo Credits: Alexandra Tsatsou

ZoHo Day 4 Part 1 - The Actions Continue

Four days into the workshop, we are now preparing for the final presentation tomorrow. Tomorrow we prepare posters of our findings and ideas and present them, not to an academic jury, but to the stakeholders of ZoHo. Since the work today was basically building up on the ideas from the last three days and since tomorrow is our last day at the site, I thought it would be a good idea to talk to some of the people working in this action plan and find out what they feel is going on here. And, needless to say, the thoughts and opinions were interesting, at the very least.

So, let us not talk about who is planning to do what, we shall come back to that tomorrow. Instead let us see what people have to say about this place and this workshop. It is really amazing how, when you bring in people from different countries, from all over the world, to work on a project like this, everyone seems to have a different perception. This project shows the perception on the concept of problem, (in) security, informality and opportunities. The problem, many perceive, comes from abandonment here, and they feel that abandonment of areas could give rise to problems, similar or dissimilar, in their home countries as well. Denada Veizaj from Albania and Emina Ahmetović from Bosnia agree to this, as they feel the primary problem in this area is that of abandonment – an issue that could easily surface back home. However, the approaches of working would be rather different. But then again, some of us perceive this abandonment as a challenge only because there are very few people in Rotterdam. In Africa this wouldn’t be an issue, says Benjamin Animpa Osei from Ghana, as it will be impossible to find such abandoned place. A building, once abandoned, will be occupied as a squatter settlement thus the problem, the issue, may be rather different there.

Moving on to the security issue, Argel Joseph Tria from Phillipines, shares his initial surprise, where he didn’t see any insecurity here, however after talking to people around here, the perception of security became clearer as an issue. Andrés  Salazar from Colombia agrees that the issue here is more of the perception of security rather than the actual security; you simply don’t see people in the streets, so there is no interaction between them, which causes the sense of abandonment, therefore giving the perception of insecurity. Perhaps it is true, as Hugo Herrera, also from Colombia, puts it; “Insecurity is not really understood here, they should come to our countries to understand what insecurity really is”. However, these issues are not really seen as problems by Mikel Alvarez from Spain, the fact that there are more young people attracted to work into ZoHo and that there is a high percentage of young people in the neighbourhood (as compared to any other age group) is seen more as an interesting opportunity for civil participation. Adding on to that, Andrés Cevallos from Ecuador, feels this place is interesting as even though he doesn’t feel this place is bad to begin with, he does find it interesting to see that negative areas are perceived as a potential area for unrest and crime.

There is just so much more to work with…

 

ZoHo Day 3 - Idea Presentation Crit 1

Photo Credits:  Alexandra Tsatsou

Two days of work and one weekend later, today we came up with our preliminary ideas for ZoHo. What does ZoHo need? There were many ideas, many concepts, but the core of each idea, at least for what I felt, was that the place needs life. In our attempts to breathe life into the place, we presented the ideas of different activities, small endeavours to large interventions, all focusing on the potential of what ZoHo could be…

The attempts were varied, from with-in and from with-out. Some wanted to open the place up, bring in people from the outside, while some wanted to bring the place to the people inside. In either case, each attempt wanted to make sure the space turned into a living breathing place. The challenge in this was not just rejuvenation, rather rejuvenation in a limited budget. I don’t think I have mentioned this in my previous blogs, but the challenge in this action plan is to make sure the first stage of intervention can be done within a budget of 5000 Euros.

So let us see what kind of interventions we have thought of, that can happen within this budget. Of course, it is not a long term budget, in some of the ideas this initial budget is just to be used for establishing contacts with stakeholders who are expected to be interested in sponsoring the actual intervention.

As some of us think of spatial interventions to open the place up, others think it will be a good idea to insert new activities into this area, and some of us even think adding some activity in this place will give it a new, improved identity. In the long run we are all trying to make sure the place doesn’t deteriorate and is transformed into a breathing part of a living city. So, one of the most important considerations in proposing the idea was to understand what challenges were present on site and which of these challenges we wanted to try to resolve.

Photo Credits:  Alexandra Tsatsou

Like, in the spatial intervention, the very fact that the place was not visible was the challenge and the use of the potential was proposed by making the physical space inviting by the use of interesting facades and lighting. Similarly, the deadness of the streets and nodes was challenged in the ground-floor revitalization program, where the interesting features for the streets and squares would be due to the activities in the ground floors of the surrounding buildings. Other ideas were to keep the location hidden and turn it into a healing space for people suffering from addictions and physiological illness, thus using the current characteristics of the space to the fullest potential. The current characteristics of the space were also an important aspect in the proposal for development of student hostels and accommodations, whereby these facilities can be available in the centre of the city and at lower rents. Some groups wanted to make sure the place became visible by creating a hype based on events, culture, food etc. and some groups wanted to go from one small intervention to another, working towards an organic development triggered by familiarity and interaction within the community.

The ideas have been presented, discussed and preliminarily critiqued. Tomorrow’s task is to develop from these starting points, the interventions that will be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound, or in abbreviation SMART. These SMART interventions shall be presented on Wednesday to relevant stakeholders, and perhaps the ideas with feasible interventions shall be applied. As of now, we have a big day tomorrow, and since everyone will be busy working on the presentation for Wednesday, I hope to get some comments from people who can spare 5-10 minutes of their time, for the blog tomorrow. The final interventions, we will talk about them on Wednesday.

ZoHo Day 2 – Already we know what has been going on!

Things are already moving so fast. We started this yesterday and already today we had our first set of presentations. We call it mapping. So, the last day and a half we were divided into multiple groups and were looking into different aspects of the site. Walking, looking, interviewing, and taking pictures…a lot of work, a lot of fun. And today we presented all of our findings.

Photo Credits: Alexandra Tsatsou

We were all together nine groups working on three different divisions, with nine sub-divisions. Let’s run through the findings of us all. First, we look into the physical mapping of the area. Like mentioned in the last post, the section of ZoHo is surrounded by roads, and also a water canal. The question however was, is the area limited by these features or is it actually connected to the rest of Rotterdam by them? What was found was that, this section, although it is in the geographical heart of the city, actually has an issue of connectivity. It is intersected and surrounded by streets and roads but the cross linking of these spaces is not present. Also, there is a huge difference in the use of the space, there is un-comparable contrast in the way different nearby sections of this neighbourhood are used. Certain areas have too much space, unwanted and unneeded space even, but these areas are not well lit, therefore the abundant space is unfortunately dead.

But that is not to say there is no potential, the area is close to the central station of Rotterdam, it is near the tram line so this space really has good connectivity potential. The physical deadness of the area can in fact be tackled if functionally it is made more connected and coherent.

Moving on to the second aspect of this space, the socio-economic parameters are also very varied and in some cases non-complementary. The social, commercial, institutional and official areas are neither segregated nor co-working, thus, you find a lot of commercial activities besides a children’s football ground. Buildings as well as the voids between them are huge, however some streets are narrow and both cars and bikes use the same space creating traffic problems. Looking at the residential environment, majority of the houses are social-housing and have good location and good prices, so the tenants are satisfied by the neighbourhood but, there can be seen these problems of coherence. The people who live in this area have other problems like, the population of young adults of working age is very high (as compared to the rest of Rotterdam), however their skills are low and the current demand in the area is for high skill workers. Also, there is high percentage of people in this area, who are categorized as low-income group. This is also linked to the education in the area; there is an air of low education and career aspiration amongst the community. This may also be due to the communal and cultural differences as well as due to differences seen in gender related issues. Most educational institutes and community centres are in an area outside their immediate boundary, and perhaps also outside their comfort zone. The main barriers for this may be language, culture and ethnicity. There are also some environmental issues that were found in this area, foremost amongst them are the facts that although there are many open areas, they are mostly hard-paved, uninviting spaces. Due to the presence of industrial activity and roads, there is also a mixed feeling on the noise pollution in this neighbourhood.

A challenge felt here is on the security issue. There are mixed reactions when it comes to this. The overall reputation of the place gives an insecure feeling, however on the ground; people do not show the practical implications of insecurity. However, if you ask different people, they tend to have a mixed reaction. One can find people walking around the neighbourhood at the dead on the night without the feeling of insecurity, but, there are also incidences of anonymous attempts, and success, in breaking windows and the like.

When you talk to the people, the people living here as well as the people who are in some ways involved in the area, one can find that stakeholders like the municipality are very interested to improve the area. There have been many rules imposed on these sections in the past, but the municipality is trying to be flexible in order to involve development in these sections. Many private organizations have worked together with the government to initiate potentially sustainable programs in the neighbourhood. However, it is sometimes felt that these initiatives are not exactly what the residents are interested or invested in. There are artistic communities and environmental initiatives taking shape in and around the area, but not all of these are initiated or in some cases even appreciated by the residents. The civil society is more concerned about employment rather than art. There seems to be a vertical relation amongst the stakeholders rather than a horizontal one. There are multiple barriers, but there are multiple initiatives as well as opportunities also.

Perhaps we can see this situation as a ‘water and oil’ kind of a situation, where things are there but just not mixing. We have looked into whatever we can within this one short day, and now our task is to try and mix things together to make a difference. The next step is to brainstorm, and look for potential ideas. And we have another short time to do that….looking forward to the presentation of the ideas on Monday!!! 

ZoHo begins

This is just a start, but perhaps it will get much interesting after a while. Today we start the new action plan, and our plan is to put ideas in ZoHo. Quite a weird name ZoHo you say? Yes, well it wasn't always ZoHo. Zomerhof Kwartier has been an interesting part of the city of Rotterdam since very many years ago, and now we are trying to make it even more interesting, ergo this rather interesting name too. Before getting into the action plan itself, lets first get acquainted with the location. ZoHo is a neighborhood in Rotterdam that has been neglected, abandoned, or perhaps just forgotten for some time.

ZoHo is a very hidden section of the city. Roads go around it and not through it, people don't come here because they don't have to. Yes, there are people living here, there are small businesses, like any other neighborhood. But again, it was also so different from any other neighborhood. At one point there was a half-way home for recently released convicts. This place had an air, a reputation of being unsafe.

During the 1990's the Dutch social housing agency, Havensteder, bought five buildings around this area with the intention to demolish and rebuild into housing units. However, thanks to the economy, rebuilding was almost impossible and thus the idea was dropped. This brought about new challenges, as the buildings were deteriorating and the tenants were moving out. As the original settlers moved out, the area kept degenerating. There was an urgent need for low-cost interventions to keep the area intact. So, there is an ongoing effort by many communities and organizations together to invest not just finances but rather ideas, and look for potentials to organically develop this area, while keeping its interesting history alive.

A part of this effort is the Action Planning workshop with the students of Urban Management and Development (UMD10) at IHS, Erasmus University. We are working on this site for a week, in the hopes of figuring out this very complex situation and neighborhood in this very limited time and finding some very interesting possibilities.

How this moves on...we shall know in a week's time. As for now, we are all just happy to experiment!