This final year project presents a strategy that is to enhance the future value of the so-called 'cauliflower resorts' or 'easytowns' of the 1970s with their labyrinthine residential areas (home zones), so that they stay popular instead of falling into disrepair. These districts, which constitute almost a third of the entire Dutch housing stock, have been having an increasingly difficult time of it after a period of success. They are accused of having a one-sided housing stock, being difficult to find and then to oversee, and being too small-scale in layout to include the likes of comprehensive schools and health centres. Their key quality of being freely sited on the edge of town is no longer the case since the arrival of new outlying developments. On the positive side, you do get a house and garden - the suburban ideal! - for a reasonable price.

The strategy is translated into a spatial plan for the Haagse Beemden district in Breda. It proposes an overarching hierarchic spatial structure acting as a framework for future spatial issues. An optimistic future for the district is conditioned by the following interventions at three scales:

• Leftover space in the district is to be used to create a rural quality. By taking these residual tracts of land, which are difficult to manage and have little to link them, and welding them into a high-powered landscape park, the pledge of living in the landscape can be redeemed. Landscape and amenities alike will impact positively on the region as a whole and draw the district out of isolation by making it more accessible, repositioning its amenities and programming the landscape.
• The district's structure needs strengthening. The current indistinguishable mass of housing needs to be organized into readily identifiable neighbourhoods. This can be done by breaching the road network at various points, thereby simplifying it and making local destinations as easy to find as before. This intervention involves replacing much hard landscaping with meaningful greenspace, with the option of giving priority to the rural cycle paths cutting through the district.
• The suburban ideal needs enhancing. This can be done by giving residents greater freedom on their own plot so that homes can be better tailored to individual domestic requirements.

These interventions will give the landscape an urban use and shape the district's suburban character with more green in the predominantly brick neighbourhoods; living amidst nature instead of alongside it. Of course the design for Haagse Beemden is specifically for this district. Practice has proved that the future of such 'easytowns' does not lie in an across-the-board response. Having said that, the themes addressed in this design, such as scaling-up versus small scale, urban versus suburban and growth centre versus context are eminently applicable to other '70s districts. The thing now is to assess these districts without delay so as to develop appropriate strategies to secure the future of this home zone heritage.

Place of education: AvB Rotterdam
Specialization: Urbanism
Tutors: Jaap van den Bout, Arnold Reijndorp, Nicola Körnig