Public Space through Bijlmer

Today is the first day of our second week here and also the last day before we break from various exploration tours of Amsterdam, which made sense to me when the train took us out to Bijlmer, a rising urban community southeast to Amsterdam. Before we departed for the tour, Leon Deben gave us a lecture on public space, which is simply defined as the place where you can sit or stay as long as you want to. For the purpose of the study, space is divided into three domains:
Public domains, where strangers are present and only known by their professions (e.g. truck drivers, doctors)
Parochial domain, where people know each each other because of the common space their share; no strangers
Private domains, where is mainly family-oriented and people might act very differently under the protection of privacy.
Speaking of social actions, which was the next question Leon brought up, how do people live in public space? Scanning through four pages of notes I took, I ended up with a somewhat selfish respone: you live your own life in public space. The perfect example for our sometimes cruel personal inatenttion would be later in the day when we were riding in the train and a girl playing accordion walked passed by hoping for acts of charity but everybody immediately turned away in ignorance, including myself. Yet this is the very neccesary way we live our lives in public spaces. The less we care about what the strangers are doing around us, the more smoothly we move on with out lives.
However, we cannot ignore ALL the time, because we are part of the public space we are in. Leon illustrsted this with the question of how close someone can sit next to you before you have to leave. Hmmm…awkward indeed. Leon brought a different angel in interpreting this awkwardness other than how we feel personally: the unique type of social actions in public space. IF some family member or a close friend did the same thing, you probably wouldn’t even notice. But when private acts and ideas are brought on the public frontstage like the Gay Pride, people are entertained, amused, or maybe disgusted by such exposion of private intimacy.
Whether you like it or not, most of us do not have much to say about public spaces. It is a place to reflect the organizations of the society as well as to express individualism in front of public crowd. This is how public space is used in urban settings by its inhabitants who often pay very little of their attention to their surroundings.

The Bijlmermeer is an area within the Amsterdam-Zuidoost district, where more than 82,000 people reside and 50,000 jobs are provided. The original plan of Biljmer turned out tob e a failing tragedy when a Beoing 747 crashed into one of the high-rise buildings in 1992. No one knew the exact number of deaths casued, because there were many unregistered illegal immigrants residing in that area, which was one of the main reasons that Bijlmer was known as the “ghetto”.
The structural renovation took place after 1992, aiming to “provide specific support to residents in a vulnerable social position the opportunity for better housing within the Bijlmer itself. The various functions – residential, business, recreation and shopping – will then become more intermingled” instead of being entirely seperated when it was first built. Half of the high-rise flat buildings were demolished, whereas the other half were renovated. Shopping centers, school, medical centers, and religious facilities were built throughout the community. Leon explained to us the on-going removating plan for next coming years and its intention to attract more new middle-class residents.
Walking around the neighborhood, I admit I was impressed by its well-designed landscape. Yet something felt “off” about it which I could not specify. It is a strongly segregated neighborhood with its own subculture and identity. The highlight of my day was a miniture zoo in the middle of the high-rise buildings. The clash between country and urban, African and Dutch, even black and white was spelled out oddly by the dunkies and hens running around on the concrete ground.
What I love the most was the welcoming hospitality we encountered at the market. This Ukraine man offered us indigenous African vege products for free while he told his life story and his “American dream”. I could not help being touched by his generous act. As little as we might see his potato and plantiam as some exotic food experience on our trip, to him it might be a piece of dream carried along by couple American college students. This had nothing to do with the buildings and landscapes surrounding us, but the direct genuineness one shared with the other that ended my day perfectly.

Video coming up soon!