CU2030 restores Utrecht
Tjerk van Impelen
I would like to explain something about a history of the city by addressing a few issues of the past. First of all the city has simply grown. It has grown in numbers. We have doubled in size over up to 50 years. From the 60‘ on we have grown. Now we are a city of over 350,000 inhabitants and we need to welcome these inhabitants in the central part of our city. But we not have one central part. We have two central parts which we are trying to combine as one area in the center of our city.
Our actual old town is historical part of the city where we have the old housing, the old shops, the old city squares, and the old city canal running through it. Next to this piece of water we have got a highest church tower of the country. It is called Dom Church Tower. It is 112 meters high. We are very proud of this tower. It is also a landmark, very visual mark of the old town area. It stands very solid and alone in the center of an entire old town area. We decided not to develop anything higher that this church tower. We agreed on this with our citizens. It is the highest church tower. Nothing will be build higher than this particular tower. It is surrounded by very old city centre area, old housing, old infrastructure with small roads, small streets, small alleys. We decided to protect entire area.
So we have grown as a city in amount of citizens but also we have a lot more visitors from the outside the city because we are one of the most important cities of the country. We have got a four very important cities. We have got of course official capital city Amsterdam with an airport, with a tourism, with all the big events going on. We have got a Hague with the goverment and also the International Court on Human Rights. We have got Rotterdam where are the see havens located. And we have got Utrecht where the most important train station of the country is situated. And these 4 cities combined have a same funcionality as a larger capital city of another country like England with London, France with Paris, Germany with Berlin. We have the same funcionality spread out over four cities combined.
We are focusing on the implementation of public and train transport through country via a bundle of train tracks along with a local transport of buses, with a car traffic, with pedestrians, with cyclists all in one very crowded area. This particular function also has an affect of atrracting other people from outside the town like a lot of tourists from Amsterdam, all the students who come here to study in a very specific area. We have a quite young population over here. And all this people are visiting and old town area in growing amounts.
And this old town area should be upscaled. We need bigger shops. We need bigger cinemas. We need bigger theaters. We need bigger city squares for events. We should have a new bus lane. We should have better parking facilities. We need more space to walk around, but we can not organize it in this area because it is protected because we are so proud on the historical value of this area, the old housing, the church tower, etc. So this is why we are looking for better place to implement the upscaling of inner city area. This is why we are moving on to the area where we have got the most important train station of the country namely The Utrecht Central Station. And around the station we have a very important area with the business district, a shopping mall, a leisure area. We try to relocate important facilities of the old town and upscale them in our station area. But the station area itself has got some challanges as well. This is where we find a piece of infrastructure that we have built for car drivers and we decided to change it into a water route. Once it was already a water route in a sixties but the cars were comming up. In a seventies everyone could affort the car. More and more people started to drive cars. So we changed pieces of water into a highway through a city. We changed these pieces of water in a city and we regreted the mistake five years later. Because this piece of highway was downgrading the area and made an experience of area lower. People did not like this concrete, the asphalt, the greynees of the area.
We missed the water and we kept on missing the water for 40 years. Now finally 40 years later our politicians and our companies decided that it is time to restore the water and make the area more lively again. So on the one hand we try to relocate important facilities from inner city and give them a bigger place around the station area. But between the station area and the old town we also find a very important route which is now a very big and uggly highway and we decided to change it into a piece of water. How to combine the upscaling of area with big locations and in the same time also transforming the area in a more lively area with green and water sites? It is hard to combine it and to try to figure out which parties and which companies will profit from this idea.
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