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Dossier Social Engineering in the Amsterdam Metropolis Office for Social Engineering What makes a good society? What makes people happy? Can societies be engineered for the better? Addressing these existential questions eventually implies taking position in the debate on ‘social engineering’. Essentially it boils down to this: do you believe in it, or not? For starters, could we categorize happiness in a universal fashion so it transcends earthly time and space? And if we believe so: which set of perspectives, methods and tools should be applied to realize this enlightened state of being? Furthermore, who should we sanction to sit in the social engineering cockpit, geared to improve the human condition: politicians, architects, scientists, the market, god…? Or even ordinary people? Quite a fashionable line of thought, since the postmodern nebulous concept of diversity, individualism and relativism has thrown dust in the eyes of 20th century high modernist planners, who were devotedly striving to homogenize subjects, standardize practices and centralize power to enfold their totalitarian blueprints of utopia. So now what? Is it ‘all individuals now’ (like Margaret Thatcher enjoyed to proclaim) engineering their own micro–utopia’s of living, working, culture and identity?
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‘Laissez-faire was planned, planning was not’
From a social engineers point of view: the point is taken. Many 20th century schemes to improve the human condition have failed, dramatically; to paraphrase the anarchist anthropologist James Scott, whose volume Seeing Like a State has functioned as ‘deathbed’ literature for the creature of social engineering. And indeed, often springing from an amalgam of benign intentions and high modernist hubris, we have witnessed efforts to ideologically engineer public and private life turn into megalomania and misanthropic projects. In the process, taking democracy and freedom as its first victims, usually at the expense of the general population. So, has social engineering died? The answer irrefutably has to be: no way! Nor the desire (ideology) for, nor its apparatus (centralized power) of interventionist politics has died. The reality of the ‘end of ideology’–era has been pulled over our eyes to hide us from the truth – to paraphrase character Morpheus from the movie The Matrix. For example, the very tombstone under which the USSR was buried was in fact a clear cut case of classical social engineering: the 100 days of liberal-economic shock therapy by which the 80 year old soviet command economy was to be replaced by one run by the free market. The economist-philosopher Karl Polanyi catches it beautifully: ‘Laissez-faire was planned, planning was not’. So if we bear in mind that planning is intrinsic to human behavior, and we take into account that social engineering is of all times and places and will continue to occupy the wishful minds of society’s most smart, determined and powerful. How can we best cope with it? How can we deal with the eternal wish to intervene in society based on a particular idea to make society better? And again who should be at the steering wheel, and with what perspective, method and toolkit at hand? Social engineering 2.0
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Significant questions that need to be scrutinized in a meaningful way, in order to set the beacons for a new, 21st century style of social engineering. Doing so would imply a combination of critical reflection on existing practices and action research exploring new ones. And that is what we did. Our first act was the founding of the Office for Social Engineering (OSE), in an effort to dust off, reclaim and operationalize the concept social engineering for future use – a provocation, that too. The OSE set out to spark the discussion on social engineering: if we are disposed to engineer everywhere and all the time, we might as well discuss the most suitable ideas, methods and instruments. For one reason: to do no harm, and for the second: to maybe even succeed. That’s when we determined to search for a new, less disaster-bound type of social engineering, compliant with and respectful of specific political and cultural contexts as well as with technological standards. In order to achieve that end we realized we needed fresh minds and an open learning environment, with the daring to jump in and stumble on practical experience.
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Taking it home: Social Engineering in the Amsterdam Metropolis
With the aim to jump, stumble, learn and improve we decided to initiate a course in social engineering. In
order to gain critical mass we decided to compile an interdisciplinary team of students that would search, with us, the limits of the possible of social engineering in a concrete context: the city of Amsterdam. We contacted the Institute for Interdisciplinary Studies at the University of Amsterdam. Our experimental learning scheme seemed to be right up their alley, so the course: Social Engineering in the Amsterdam Metropolis was born. Then we selected our critical crop from the many student applications for our course, and then, in our search for practical cases, went to the municipality where, after some autistic responses, we kicked in the right door. The former city manager got fired up right away, this project symbolized the freshness of mind he fancies. So the aim of the course was to have students from various backgrounds (sociology, architecture, history, economics, anthropology, arts, etc.) engage themselves in real, existing ‘puzzles’ of social engineering provided by the municipality of Amsterdam. These are either social or physical spaces that do not ‘work properly’ in the perception of the city government, or that demand further research. In the end we collected four compelling puzzles: Damrak street as a ‘trashy’ entrance to the city; ‘Invisible’ Moroccan girls in the northern city peripheries; ‘Hangsters’ in neighborhoods old and new; The creative challenge posed by dangerous and dirty ‘ghost spaces’ in Amsterdam The multi-disciplinary student teams ‘made camp’ on site and effectuated a ‘laboratory for social engineering’. For 16 weeks they got embedded and engaged with the aim of designing a concrete intervention (not another report, please!). The student teams were lectured and supported to be able to do this in a meaningful and academically sound manner. In this case it came down to ‘reading’ their puzzle in a multidisciplinary fashion with no underlying interest but to find out: ‘what is actually happening here?’. On the basis of thorough analysis of the data they would strategize and design an intervention that would be implemented during the course! ‘Masters of Intervention’ were invited to advise the students with respect to their research (‘reading the field’), and possible interventions, but also to contribute to the public debate on a particular site or problem area. Masters of Intervention included Yale professor James Scott, Saatchi & Saatchi creative mind Dick de Lange, P2P guru Michel Bauwens, architect working with McKinsey: Michael Shamiyeh, and creative media mind Andrew Bullen. Curious whether our new school of social engineers pulled it of? The preliminary results can be found in the dossier below.
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Case # 1 The Decay of Damrak Street
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Case # 1 Damrak Street is the gateway to the city of Amsterdam, an urban canyon through which 100,000 commuters and tourists enter and leave the city on a daily basis. Recently, both mayor Job Cohen and his deputy Lodewijk Asscher embraced the idea of a drastic facelift of the degraded street. The Amsterdam local government wants to get rid of its visual vulgarity and image of snacks, beer and tits. The urban developers of the Project Management Office, a subsidiary of city hall, consider its esthetization fundamental in the branding of Amsterdam as a top-notch city. The redevelopment of Damrak Street amounts to the creation of an envisioned self-image. But which self-image do we desire? Options range from excessively sleazy cheapness to posh consumer decadence.
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Contractor Project Management Office (PMB), municipality of Amsterdam Assignment How to turn Damrak Street into a gateway worthy of the Amsterdam Metropolis? Student team Eline Veninga, Richard Nooij, Jasper Overweg, Jort Schuitemaker, Jenne Meerman LAB Beurs van Berlage Context city branding, esthetization
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The Damrak Reconquest Amsterdam’s Damrak is a transit port through which some 100,000 people pass every day. On the Damrak people don’t live with each other, but alongside one another at stampede tempo. The City of Amsterdam has already declared that a sense of community is missing and has sought control in the form of surveillance cameras. Now the city has opted for a fundamental, spatial, functional make over, after all, ‘A degraded environment will attract more unwanted behavior. By the same token a well tended appearance will generate more desirable behavior and developments.’1 Is this measure patronizing or is it really necessary in order to provide citizens and visitors a better Damrak? The current selection of stores provides for a number of basic needs: eating and souvenirs. The city classifies these as ‘low value’ functions. Yet must it be well-known, expensive store front signs that will soon determine the street’s look? ‘Low value’ is a qualification which fails to consider the preferences of a large part of the population plus those who disdain regulations. Charm can also be found in those places that don’t fit in such as street musician James, artists Ori and Jan and their friends who amuse themselves in the Sex Museum. In ‘The Generic City’ Rem Koolhaas wrote about representation: the old city is becoming a caricature, a kind of open air museum.2 When you simplify an identify there is an appreciable chance that it then becomes generic. The city’s plans attempt to create an identity which is not representative of the street or its users. The danger is that this will kill the city’s true dynamism. We Damrakkers have the ambition to ensure that a particular cadence comes into being in the development of the city. As regards physical shape and functionality, we share the city’s opinion. It takes effort to find the west side of the Damrak pretty. If you examine how the buildings are used, you see that some are empty, others abandoned, a kind of lassitude. But look at how public space is used then you see vitality, an enormous difference and a pleasing dynamic. Just as with architect Le Corbusier’s plans, we are scared that visitors to the Damrak will be expected to find pleasure in fitting logically into a rational plan, a plan that must give Amsterdam a high-quality image. A place where there is no longer a place for a mishmash and a kind of autonomy.
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Back to cadence
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We feel called to reconquer the Damrak in order to cultivate a new feeling of ownership for tourists and Amsterdammers. The city must not be the only one to lay claim to ownership of the street. The Damrak is generally known and many have memories of it. This can be a source of strength for the transformation of this street. The Damrak can see a new day via the organization of events and positive publicity. This can make people aware that it is their street, that it is worth the effort to think about modifying the street.
This consciousness appears to be missing at the moment among those who, in addition to the city, play an important role on the Damrak. It is the art of activating a feeling of responsibility within citizens, visitors and entrepreneurs. The Damrak lacks political representation. Amsterdam’s Department of Research and Statistics reports that attendance at information and participatory meetings has fallen.3 The attendance percentage for the city center district is a distressing 7%. Have people lost their belief in these participatory meetings? One explanation is probably that citizens are involved in the transformation process only very late. Much more than marginal adjustment is thus no longer possible. For this reason we argue for a multimedia, interactive participation machine in the form, for example, of a wandering tree. The challenge is to find a form with which you can once again address citizens in their role as critical citizens and bind them to the space. ‘Neighborhoods decline when the people who live there lose their connection and no longer feel part of their community. Recapturing that sense of belonging and pride of place can be as simple as planting a civic garden or placing some benches in a park’ (Jay Walljasper, 2007). Citizens as well as the government are actively involved in transformations of public space. As street photographer Theo Niekus says: ‘becoming conscious only penetrates where “consumers” are “citizens” again.’ The city ought to be civilized disorder. ‘The city is a threshold world between order and chaos, between the private and public spheres, between market forces and government, between the masses and the individual, between legality and illegality, between home and strangeness’. (René Boomkens in de Volkskrant, 29 March 2008). A top-down approach which tries to run things will not work. The Damrak is a typical example of this civilized disorder. It disguises an attraction for the visitor, but also a danger. Freedom must be treated with respect. The Damrak is the welcome mat into the city’s living room which means: feel at home, behave likewise. Finally we turn our attention to the entrepreneurs. They play a major role in the physical as well as the functional use of the Damrak. This group does not appear to understand that they can mobilize for the street’s improvement. A cultural reversal is necessary. Entrepreneurs and the city are not all that informed as to the possibilities for the advantages of working together. As ‘Team Damrak’ we have two advantages: an uncontaminated reputation and an independent position. At the beginning of June we will organize a forum with entrepreneurs, city representatives and external experts. An improved awareness of other people’s desires and space for accommodation (on both sides) are the keys for entrepreneurs to feel that they have a valuable position play on the Damrak. Thus it must be made clear that prosperity can only be achieved if it is shared.
1 2 3`
Nota Uitgangspunten Rode Loper, May 2007, p. 15. Rem Koolhaas, Bruce Mau, S,M,L,XL, New York (Monacelli Press) 1995. Amsterdamse Burgermonitor 2007.
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Case #2 ‘Invisible’ Girls in NieuwendamNoord
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Case #2
Contractor Sub-council North (Amsterdam) and housing association Ymere Assignment What’s the meaning of the invisibility of Moroccan girls in Nieuwendam-Noord? Student team Sanne Schot, Katusha Sol, Mandy Lauw, Paul Adriani, Lydia Sprenger, Tanja van Nes LAB IBAN (Individual citizen advisory body Amsterdam North) Context social integration, framing of good citizenship, cultural diversity
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The Dutch government wishes to help its subjects on the road to happiness and successful coexistence. The Amsterdam North sub-council sees young Moroccan women as being isolated from social and economic life, even invisible, and wishes to elevate this supposed ’disadvantaged’ group to active and successful citizenry. The results so far have not been encouraging. Benign community workers packed with dropout- and unemployment rate statistics visit these women in their homes, only to leave disillusioned since they find nothing but perceived incomprehension. What’s going wrong here? The sub-council’s slogan is ‘social participation’. But the question remains: participation in what, what for, with whom and to whose benefit? What do these stimuli mean for the specific group of Moroccan women? How do they experience attention (or intrusion) from above? What do they make of the relation between government and citizen, between public and private? In short, what lies behind their veil of invisibility?
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Invisible or Unnoticed People do not resist change; people resist being changed
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As regards integration, the Nieuwendam-Noord district of Amsterdam has dedicated itself to the participation of immigrant groups according to the 2003 policy document Integration: work in progress. One of the groups the district is concerned about are ‘invisible’ Moroccan girls. We are dealing here with second generation Moroccan girls between 18 and 26 who have not completed high school. The term ‘invisibility’ is used because these girls do not show up in statistics. They neither work nor receive government payments and are thus not ‘seen’ by government agencies. Most are drop-outs who are no longer obliged to attend school by virtue of their age and are thus no longer enrolled in one. The Dutch government’s campaign for equality, participation and control is the basis of the need to make difficult-to-see groups visible. The NieuwendamNoord district’s campaign to improve its residents’ socio-economic position via participation in education and working life can be seen as a component of the national program. Their motto is: ‘Be part of society’. Although the district acknowledges that the number of Moroccan women who experience their lack of socio-economic participation as a problem is unknown, they nonetheless want to chart this specific group. We note, however, that this continuous charting of these people emphasizes their position as immigrants and/or minorities. If we closely examine young Turkish and Moroccan women they do much better at school and in the labor market than their parents. In an article entitled ‘For new citizens it’s not about culture’ (NRC-Handelsblad, 12 April 2008), Tariq Ramadan wrote that it mustn’t be forgotten that these women live here and are as familiar with the laws and history of the Netherlands as other Dutch. By focusing on those women who are less successful in this regard attention is placed on less good examples of integration within an already tense public debate. Ramadan says that just as ‘you start getting the feeling that you belong when integration is no longer the topic of discussion’ women will feel less left behind when the district does not classify them as invisible. What is at stake here is that categorization is used as a ‘public accusation’. The complex network of supporting social agencies forms another aspect of this case. That complexity prevents the city from seeing these people. In Amsterdam-Noord too is there an excess of (mostly municipal) agencies which target various groups. Because these target groups have overlapping fields a complicated network of communication and rules arises between the city and its agencies. This results in much energy and money being lost. A lack of coordination within this network appears to the problem and it is this which has made this
target group invisible to the city and the city invisible to this target group. A number of our observations are summarized below: · Interviews have revealed that it is better to look at all women in Amsterdam-Noord rather than focusing specifically on problem cases or ethnicity. · Some girls report that trust between a social worker and those in need of help is essential for the admission of a problem. · Social organizations report that the bond between individual girls and social organizations is formed more quickly with someone who has had similar experiences rather than with someone who is an ‘outsider’. · It is important that the environment of ‘the example’ matches that of the person to whom the example’s story is being told. A girl who had been in this situation, Khadija Aulad-Achmed, reported that someone struggling with school, possible unemployment and financial problems was not waiting to hear the success story of someone who had started his own firm. They are waiting to hear someone say, ‘I am familiar with your problems, for I’ve had them myself. I then went there and they helped me.’
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Case #3 Ghost spaces in a crowded city
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Case #3 Large parts of the area neighboring the Amsterdam city ring highway are mainly suburban, residential mixed with large office spaces. Shops and cultural facilities are scarce and at first sight the area lacks any ‘hot’ spots for grass root creative enterprises. This has serious consequences for the area’s local economy and quality of life. How can functional diversity and socioeconomical dynamics be improved, when logistical conditions and exploitable space seem to be lacking? Startgoed Amsterdam B.V. is a corporation driven by the municipality and market participants to develop creative small businesses in unexpected and unused spaces. They explore vacant or ‘left-over’ spaces under bridges, railroads, highways; even the exploitation of old tunnels is an option. These places are usually dirty, smelly, shady and rather unsafe corridors connecting different areas and neighborhoods. By turning these vacant spaces into ‘hot’ spots the benefits could vary from increased quality of life, safety and work, or meeting space for creative minds. From hell to ’hot’ spot?
creative enterprise to a crowded city? Student team Nick Naber, Ruth Stoffels, Lynn Koppe, Iris Pauw, Socrates Schouten, Björn König LAB at Startgoed Amsterdam B.V. Context Urban planning, functional diversification, creative industry
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Contractor Startgoed Amsterdam B.V. Assignment How to add new fragments of
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Tunnel visions Central Amsterdam – the historic city including its 19th- and early 20th-century expansions – is a walled city. It is surrounded by an almost perfectly circular mound, a six meter high dike on top of which the Amsterdam ring road (A10) has been constructed. Beyond this highway lie the post-WWII extensions. Numerous viaducts and tunnels allow for passage between the new and old city. Most of these tunnels are robust and efficient. Their definition is spatial, logistical, functional and transitional; although people use them, the tunnels lack a distinct social dimension. They have no emotional, historical or social value. They are junk space: residual space in the liminal zones of highspeed infrastructure, consequential by-products of high-tech and high-speed modernization. We focused on the throughways under the western ring road as well as the metro and train tracks parallel to it, in particular the more open ones that, upon closer inspection, stimulate many fantasies regarding their potential. What is the potential to activate these non-places?
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Speed, function and ownership
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First, we set out to read the places. The layers of meaning are not so much a consequence of use, but rather of speed, function and ownership. The elevated highway is designed for high speed. That speed has induced a high level of simplicity. Contextuality and complexity have been reduced to rules and signs. The freeway is highly systematized and does not allow for much variation or dissent, but a different speed can be found in the adjacent urban field. A reduced speed makes for more variation, complexity and social interaction. It allows for various directions and activities. Because of the difference in speed and its consequences, the freeway and the city are two distinct worlds. The tunnels, the ring road, the city extensions are all part of the general outline of the post-war suburbs and strictly separate functions. They constitute a grand design, attempting to divide the area’s possible uses: living, recreation, shopping, work and transportation. Whereas the original design has been slightly tampered with by residents, resulting in overlapping functions to some extent these days, the tunnels have remained true to their original design and are still highly singular in function. Upcoming plans for the New West, the western district outside the ring road, include massive demolition and densification. Space, air and green are being sacrificed on the altar of the ‘living city’. Separation of functions is to be avoided. The first combinations are living with working and recreation; we are curious where and how social collaboration with the infrastructure will be achieved. Apart from speed and function, the area can be read through its different owners and users. We identified an initial level, the government, a second, the district, and a third (least involved) level, that of the neighborhood and the people using the passageways. For the government, in this case the national
bodies responsible for transport, these residual spaces are literally gaps in their plans, unaccounted for spaces. To make sure they do not interfere with the larger plans, they would rather have them boarded up or fenced off. One of the means to promote the quality of living by the sub-council is to promote small scale business. Residual spaces could be interesting to such business. Finally, we have the neighborhood, the actual users of the tunnels. For most of them the tunnels were transition spaces where one never lingered because there is nothing there but occasional trouble. A fourth level of use: tunnel visionaries
These tunnels are nothing, yet can become anything, everything. In a city as clogged as Amsterdam, we found that merely pointing out the presence of empty or junk space provoked a cascade of ideas and positive reactions. We would therefore like to bring in a fourth level of users, the creative class; the introduction of new ways to use these spaces can serve as a platform for other potential users to reassess and develop the tunnels. The ring road is a rupture. It is a symbolic and social barrier, and as such a rupture in the urban fabric and the social continuity of city life. How can transitional space be transformed into meaningful space? How can a pasture be made from a desert? We saw three ways to proceed. The first option was to take away the need for a tunnel by removing the ring road. The second option was to take away the negative consequences of the tunnel by raising the city level and bridge the road. To carry out either of these solution would consume considerable political and financial assets, which we don’t have. That is why we will be working on option three. Make these tunnels into an attraction, a destination. Key to this transformation is a social program to fill the social vacuum. Through a process of co-creation on different levels we need to make the city engage with these spaces, so light won’t be confined to the end of the tunnel, but be brought right in.
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Case #4
Contractor Zeeburg sub-council, Spatial Planning Department (DRO), Social Development Department (DMO) and housing corporation Ymere Assignment How to deal with outdoor meetings of youngsters in the city? Student team Maaike Poppegaai, Annemarie Niks, Leonne van Vlimmeren, Martin Gevonden, Johan van Breda, Olivia Somsen LAB a former shop on the corner of the 2e Atjeh Street and Sumatra Street Context quality of life, public nuisance, youth policy
The sign says: Agreements between youngsters, residents and sub-council Zeeburg: 1. The square is for adults and children 2. No noise after 10 pm 3. Speak and act with respect for each other 4. Don’t shout, talk 5. No scooters or cycling on the square 6. Throw garbage in the garbage cans
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A clear-cut example of supreme social engineering: the municipality reflects on methods to anticipate and intervene in the prosaic act of kids hanging about in the streets. Youth-policy usually tends to be reactive and therefore approaches problems on the basis of symptoms. But who or what exactly is the problem? There seems to be no mutual goals, ambitions or culture shared by youngsters and the municipality. The ‘Indische buurt’ or Indonesian quarter is a typically old, ‘blue collar’ neighborhood, with many immigrants, youngsters and a vibrant street life. The local government and housing association Ymere recently decided to give the area fresh stimuli. Timor Square in the heart of the neighborhood can now boast a Stay-OK youth hostel, as well as Studio K, a cinema/café run by students. These initiatives aim to revive the area and facilitate, integrate and regulate youngsters’ behavior. Do we need to fear a pre-emptive strike on real, existing urban loitering? To what effect, how and more importantly why?
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Criminal Act or Social Affair?
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The Indische Buurt or Indonesian quarter is an old neighborhood within the eastern district of Zeeburg in Amsterdam. Most of the housing dates from the 1900s; the population is generally made up of poor, large families of non-western, mostly Moroccan background. This neighborhood has undergone a scheme of radical renewal in recent years. Almost a third of the current housing stock (all social housing) will be ‘upgraded’ to more expensive housing, resulting in an influx of young urban professionals. We focused on hangsters, a neologism created from the Dutch word hangjeugd (kids who hang around) and ‘gangsters’. We examined their place in the neighborhood and how the ‘youth problem’ should be addressed. The sub-council told us they ‘had had it with seventies-style pampering’. As a consequence, the welfare system in this district has been outsourced to a commercial group. Three takeovers in less than five years sacrificed all but the local welfare workers. Neighborhood centers were closed, their knowledge, archives and hard disks got lost. ‘No loss at all’, according to one bureaucrat, because ‘kids wouldn’t be found in there dead.’ After the destruction of the old infrastructure, a new system was designed and implemented. Loitering young people are dealt with through what is known as the Ferwerda method. Ferwerda, a criminologist, was called upon to deal with what otherwise could have been understood as a cultural, social, educational or even leisure issue. His method takes a tough approach. Police and private security personnel (euphemistically called ‘neighborhood coaches’) surveil the neighborhood at night collecting data and photographs in order to build dossiers on the young people. Every square and most streets have CCTV all wired to a 24/7 monitored video wall. On many streets you can find public notices detailing the things for which you can be fined. Against this background of an urban war against loitering young people, we decided early on to work beyond the stigma and the stereotype. Inspired by the work of American urban ethnographers, we plunged into our action research. To understand the area and the kids at stake we felt we had to engage their world and feel what they feel. For several nights we loitered on the other side of the rift. We got to know some of them, an experience which turned out to be far less exotic and dangerous than we had been led to expect from the public opinion of them. We conducted research using participatory observation, interviews and meetings; the output was organized and classified online. Are they disturbing the peace or are they reacting to the perpetual high-tech observation of their peace? These young people are encouraged to turn their back on the police, the neighborhood and the municipality. Even more, we found that the neighborhood, the former social workers and the young people had become more frustrated and distrustful. We could feel the atmosphere of despair and distrust.
One of the profound problems we identified early on is the total lack of communication between policy makers, neighbors and young people. We found that the (mis)communication between the involved parties – residents, policy makers, implementing organizations and young people – centered along two main themes: trust and control. The parties involved all have a radically different outlook as to where the neighborhood should go, who should be trusted, and how control should be organized. At the same time, everybody seems to agree that young people should be allowed a place in the neighborhood. It struck us that many young people want nothing more than a place they can call their own, a neighborhood house they can be proud of. It almost sound pathetic but most of them just want to hang out with each other, very much like old people, truckers, students or church-goers. A youth center, to our surprise, is also just what social welfare workers in the area would like to see. They see it as a place they can meet, keep an eye on things and facilitate. According to one social worker, ‘in here, the laws of the street do not apply. If you have them in, you can get to know them. If you get to know them, you can influence them.’ A simple place – a squat, a mobile unit, an antisquat – should make use of a combination of push and pull. It should be built through participation, a combination of self-organization and regulation, of freedom and responsibility, of support and sanctions. A simple plan that can be backed by a number of comparable and very successful youth centers in other parts of town. Centers that in addition to their social function serve as a place for debate, entertainment and production. Municipal affairs cannot be a zero tolerance business. It should be grounded in education and upbringing, a combination of sticks and carrots. Yet it seems policy makers have a fiercely negative stance toward a possible youth center and are most likely unwilling to cooperate, let alone facilitate. They seem to be missing the point altogether. In a city space is limited per definition. However every group should find a place that is respected by others. At the heart of the ‘youth problem’ lies a rather fundamental question of mentality. Some perceive loitering as a criminal act, others as a social affair. Avoiding rigid group-think is most important. Participation by all concerned is key: address what people want, not what you want.