{"id":2296,"date":"2016-12-14T12:00:56","date_gmt":"2016-12-14T10:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stealth.ultd.net\/?p=2296"},"modified":"2018-05-29T12:12:43","modified_gmt":"2018-05-29T10:12:43","slug":"city-in-the-making-entering-the-limelight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stealth.ultd.net\/?p=2296","title":{"rendered":"City in the Making entering the limelight"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over the last \u2013 now almost three – years, we have kept a rather low-key profile with the activities of City in the Making in Rotterdam. This started on a very pragmatic note, for the ambition to bring \u201ctoxic\u201d (that is stalled, disused and economically problematic) buildings to life again has been an unprecedented challenge for the small team taking up this task. No success guaranteed.<\/strong><\/p>\n

However, while figuring our the basics in a learning-by-doing way, we started understanding that the challenge exploded far beyond activating stalled real-estate, and have put our minds to contemplating a contemporary model to provide for affordable living and working spaces in a largely \u201ccommons\u201d based approach. Something we have set out to persistently explore and bring into practice in the years to come. No success guaranteed here either \u2013 a sobering observation that brought us to keep that low-key profile for the time being.<\/p>\n

However, that period has ended, on the 24th<\/sup> of November, when City in the Making<\/a> received the Job Dura Award in a packed auditorium at the Theatre School in Rotterdam. The award – given every two years to a Rotterdam based initiative putting the built environment to an exemplary socially relevant use \u2013 brings a fair amount of financial resources, but moreover, propels City in the Making in the limelight. And likely, at a good moment in its trajectory.<\/p>\n

The “Stoking House” (Stokerij)\u00a0at Pieter de Raadtstraat<\/p><\/div>\n

Shifting the position\u00a0of real-estate in our economy<\/strong><\/p>\n

It is not so difficult to understand why City in the Making has started from opening urban spaces \u2013 vacant buildings, to be specific \u2013 to the urban community under very affordable conditions. For one, these are the spaces where we as physical entities need to operate from for our daily lives, whether we live, work or interact with each other. But secondly, these very same buildings are of crucial importance to the current economy, which understands them as commodities, as investment vehicles in a rather speculative real-estate market. The last is that same set of expectations that brought the financial crisis of 2008, for instance, with in its wake the foreclosures, the large amount of empty buildings, and that pool of \u201ctoxic\u201d real estate.<\/p>\n

Over the three past years, City in the Making has been putting this \u201cfailure\u201d to use, bringing a hand-full of buildings back to use (seven, as of date of writing) and has created a mix of living, working and commoned spaces in each of them, with the aim to set up self-reliant communities that are also economically more robust. Not just for their own sake, but equally for street, neighborhood and city. The buildings are for a limited time (3-10 years) at our disposal: a period we see as a training ground, brought to us as collateral \u201cfavor\u201d of the crisis. Hardly a sustainable position, though.<\/p>\n