Expansion plan for the Left Bank of the Maas
- Regional planning -The river Maas splits contemporary Rotterdam in two: the north bank, which includes the city centre, and the south bank. The expansion onto the south bank only began to develop when, in around 1900, building work exploded largely as a result of the construction of housing estates for labourers. Rotterdam slowly but surely expanded its city limits and swallowed up the rural areas and villages in its path. The 1921 expansion plan for the Left Bank of the Maas is one of the first regional plans in the Netherlands, which, for a long time, was intended to give direction to the expansion of Rotterdam on the south bank.
With this expansion plan, the designers, Granpré Molière, Verhagen and Kok, incorporated the expansion of Rotterdam on the south bank into the development of the entire region, collectively known as the IJsselmonde (or IJssel estuary). An essential part of the plan was to indicate the boundaries of the built-up areas and to establish greenbelts that brought the countryside deep into the city. A structure of roads fanned out over the IJsselmonde from the buildings in Rotterdam South, where the building density along these roads needed to be high. Further from the city, this density would decrease and the buildings would then become part of garden villages. Industry and trade would move to the east and west along the river banks.
Notwithstanding the fact that it is highly unorthodox for a private agency to draw up such urban development plans, the city of Rotterdam largely followed Granpré Molière, Verhagen and Kok’s proposal as a guide to its policy during the inter-war years. In 1938, the agency also played a role in the design of the regional planning for the IJsselmonde.
Request number GRAN 2x03 (pl)
Request number GRAN 2x03 (pl)
Literature
-Len de Klerk, Particuliere plannen. Denkbeelden en initiatieven van de stedelijke elite inzake de volkswoningbouw en de stedebouw in Rotterdam, 1860-1950 (Private Planning: The Ideas and Initiatives of the Urban Elite concerning Public Housing and Urban Development in Rotterdam, 1860-1950), Rotterdam 1998
-Paul van de Laar, Stad van formaat. Geschiedenis van Rotterdam in de negentiende en twintigste eeuw (City of Stature: The History of Rotterdam in the 19th and 20th Centuries), Zwolle/Rotterdam.