City in the Making celebrated its tenth anniversary in 2023! We celebrated this by emptying our storages and sharing our adventures and expertise in a book. Just before the summer of 2024, Magazijn was (finally) completed and furnished; a 320-page book and repository of all our stories about cooperative living and ‘commoning’ in the city.
Magazijn tells about a decade of City in the Making. About the small group of firebrands who, at the time – in the middle of the Global Financial Crisis – started to get vacant buildings back into shape and made them available for living, working and as collective spaces for the neighbourhood. And how this grew into a foundation that ensures that an alternative way of living is possible, next to the social housing with its long waiting lists and the speculative market of private rental and owner-occupied homes.
Commons on the rise We notice that cities are now ready for an alternative form of living, working and living together. Where 10 years ago terms such as commoning, shared households, and community were quickly dismissed as ‘communes’ and looked at with disgust, today the collective management and ownership of buildings, shared living and commoning are a desirable scenario for both residents and developers. This book contributes to an answer to the search for a way to make alternative, affordable and social living possible in times of a housing market that excludes many home seekers and lifestyles.
Stories, vision and photos It turns out that there is so much more to tell than we have done – with our hair covered in (re)construction dust – in recent years. The book is therefore a good opportunity to share our experiences with alternative vacancy management, with unconventional living and working programs and with commons and commoning, to tell about our vision on alternative and affordable living in the city, housing cooperatives and alternative neighborhood facilities. In addition, we show how the ideas of Stad in de Maak have enriched themselves over the course of that ten-year adventure.
The photos taken by Hans Werlemann in the early years capture this development. In addition, the portraits of the current residents by Frank Hanswijk show how lively our community is. In the interviews by Daphne Koenders you can read what our buildings mean to our residents and users. The interviews with the board provide insight into the activist, yet collaborativeattitude that Stad in de Maak characterizes. Of course, it also finally becomes clear what we actually do, among other things through the fold-out map (back of the dust jacket around the book) by Nadia Nena Pepels of all our buildings through the years.
Ambition We also take you along in our ambition to not only offer temporary housing, but to establish one or more permanent housing cooperatives. You will of course also read about our vision, mission, milestones and plans for the future and we will reveal big news: our first own building is a fact!
More about this soon in a next blog. For now, we hope that this Magazijn may enrich ‘home’ for you just after the summer break.
Magazijn, available and for sale Magazijn can be picked up for free by all (former) residents and workers of City in the Making from Thursday 5 September at Kiosk (Pieter de Raadtstraat 35B) as long as the – quite large – stock lasts. For opening hours (mostly Thursday, Friday, Saturday) see the website of Kiosk Rotterdam.
For others interested, Magazijn can be purchased at Kiosk Rotterdam and at NAi Boekverkopers / Booksellers (Museumpark 25) for € 29.50
Magazijn – Stad in de Maak
16.5×23.5 cm; 320 pgs. ISBN: 978-90-9038724-6 Editors: Ana Džokić, Selma Hengeveld, Daphne Koenders, Marc Neelen, Katarina Popović, Piet Vollaard. With photography by the City in the Making community, Frank Hanswijk and Hans Werlemann and the map in the cover was made by Nadia Nena Pepels.
A lush green courtyard surrounded by houses, which provide an answer to the cracks that the current housing market is uncovering. A year after it was founded, the City in the Make enclave in Vlaardingen has a name: the Vlaardingen Commons (Vlaardinger Meent in Dutch). The first commons are here, the community has doubled. An update of this living research into new ways of living and living together.
In the living room of Cornelis Houtmanstraat 22, wood chips lie on the floor, with a path in between. Against the walls are bookcases with books on various subjects. From fermentation to the history of Eastern Europe, but also cheap romantic novels. Two lazy armchairs. And then suddenly there is the recognizable style of the urban nomads of Stad in de Maak, thanks to Studio C.A.R.E., who turned the communal living room of the latest project in Vlaardingen into an inn.
The Inn feeling
The rooms are furnished in a hostel style. After the lobby or reading room, in the next room – of course the doors have been removed everywhere – there is a dining table with all kinds of different chairs. A kitchen full of second to tenth chance cooking utensils and lockers complete the inn feeling.
Then the lodges. Upstairs there are a dozen bedrooms, intended for short-term stays at the inn. However, no one has been able to sleep yet. “The day before the opening, the building inspector of the municipality was at our door,” says Daan den Houter, who, in addition to his artistry, presents himself as the keeper of the commons. “Because a wall has broken through, safety cannot be guaranteed and no one is allowed to sleep.”
A downer for the inn model. And setbacks often don’t come alone. “One of the residents was getting married. There was a party that would last until 10pm. The music was already off, but at 10.30 pm the police were at the door because of a complaint from the downstairs residents.”
These are valuable lessons in research into living together and ‘tailoring the city’, for which the Vlaardingen Commons was founded. In these streets too, the residents decide and manage the whole sociocratically. “Here we are learning again what it is like when different people live together. Most problems are already solved by listening to each other,” he concludes. “And removing the fences, that also helps a lot.”
Growth and income
The Vlaardingen Commons, as the residents christened the two streets after almost a year of sociocratic consultation, is beginning to take shape. There are now 70 homes managed by Stad in de Maak, part of which consists of communal facilities and storage. About 55 houses are inhabited by one or more residents.
The rental income (300,= Euro / month / house) will be split into three pots: a third will go to Overhead and Research & Development of City in the Making, which will pay for instance for socio-geographic research into the past, present and future of the Neigborhood; a third to the management of the street, in addition to the regular maintenance costs of the houses, facilities such as the inn and the landscaping are paid for from this; and the rest flows back into the larger City in the Making community for common wishes and projects. The same budget split-up is also done in other City in the Making projects. About one quarter of the available houses are free of rent and are used for common spaces and facilities, which is also a general City in the Making principle.
Commons
Think, for example, of the garden, where a greenhouse is now being built. Just like in the previous large project Pension Almonde in Rotterdam, there is also a space intended as a sauna. In the communal workshop everyone can borrow tools and work with machines. There is also a Wasbuur (Washing Neighbour, a space for shared washing machines and dryer), a blank space, an exchange wardrobe and two communal living rooms. .
“We have a lot of harvest from the garden and people are very enthusiastic about that,” says resident Laura, who does a lot in the garden. “For example, we distributed pesto to everyone.” Resident Romy uses a lot of the common spaces. “It’s nice to sit with a group of people in the space near the outdoor kitchen. We now use the kitchen in the inn for soup evenings. Last week the San Juan celebrated in the garden. That was an initiative of my half-Spanish neighbour. You see that there are more and more people who are taking up or organizing something.”
Now that the hostel cannot be slept in, the residents are brooding on new ideas. “It was a disappointment that this idea fell apart, but we immediately think of what we can still do with these spaces. You see that people immediately look at what is needed for the community and come up with new ideas,” says Romy. Laura: “We want to make it a soundproof space, so that musicians can record and small parties can be held.”
“Although the question remains how to properly organize a community,” says Romy. “People are integrating, people are leaving. There are tasks that are popular and often vacancies that are not always filled.” The outdoor kitchen, for example, which should initially be the heart of the street, is deserted and a bit run down. “So you see that you can sometimes think of things, but that the reality is often different. We learn from that.”
Doubling the number of residents
The community grew steadily home after home, until about 25 modern urban nomads lived there. They made contacts in the street. With each other, but also with the incumbent residents who lived in the other houses in the street with a temporary contract from social housing corporation De Samenwerking.
When they received the message last year that they had to leave, they got in touch with City in the Making. Daan: “Why would you look for a new home, if you know that there is another organization in your street that also temporarily rents out homes? Did we suddenly want to add 30 people who would otherwise end up on the street? It wasn’t really a question. It was strange for us to kick them out, as an organization that wants to make the housing market more accessible for people that fall in between the cracks, such as these people.”
“Your fence is going down”
So the old residents of the street were incorporated into the whole. There was one condition: your fence must go down and you contribute to the community. The new, old residents also became part of the sociocracy. Suddenly the meetings that were always in English because of the international mix of ‘our’ urban nomads had to be translated into Dutch.
Daan: “The needs turn out to be different. Roughly speaking: one part prefers to eat only home-grown food and lives as sustainably as possible. Then it takes some getting used to when your neighbour that rather sits in the courtyard with a frying pan of bitterballs (famous Dutch fried bar-snack) and a case of beer.”
It was exciting for a while, Romy thought. “There was some unrest in the air. That is why we as Housing & Residence Circle approached everyone personally. We introduced ourselves and told that we should do it together. You belong too. After a while, the tension ebbed away and people were more in their comfort zone. Last week we had a meeting with City in the Making and you saw that people who were definitely not going to come before, were now there.”
An enduring legacy for urban nomads
What rubs against convention can just be a breeding ground. “Ultimately, with this project we are investigating how you can make your living environment suitable for life off the beaten track. How you cohabit, share, work, live and how a home is a multifunctional source that enriches your life,” concludes Daan. “We want to adapt the standard concept of living to a new way of living that suits the needs of the urban nomad.” The idea is to leave something lasting behind in the neighbourhood, based on this research with the Vlaardingen Commons, after we have left. “That could be a guest house, or just a street sign that reminds of what once was here, but also much more.”
City in the Making has been active in Vlaardingen since this spring. A quiet residential area with 1920s homes, fifteen minutes by metro from the center of Rotterdam, is the location of the next experiment with temporary management. Welcome to the Vlaardinger Meent / Vlaardingen Commons, our latetst project and the successor to Pension Almonde. A little quieter and a little greener this time, but with the same basic principles: alternative forms of cohabitation, sharing facilities as much as possible and engagement with the residents of the neighborhood.
Cornelis Houtmanstraat
Goodbye Almondestraat The predecessor of the Vlaardingen Commons, Pension Almonde (Almonde Boarding House), was a street with 52 former social housing units. From the end of 2019 to April 2021, the entire Almondestraat in Rotterdam was managed by City in the Making as an experiment to keep the city accessible. Modern urban nomads lived there; people who fall between two stools on the housing market. Commons and low-threshold neighborhood initiatives were given a chance. Physically there is nothing left of Pension Almonde. Just an empty street with colored walls and security cameras from the new owner. Fortunately, there is still the impact: the research that was done, both as an art project and academically. The attention that came to the urban nomads and the impulse this gave to the political and social debate. There was also, of course, the Slopera, that, as part of the Opera Days, made a statement against speculation and the housing market. Moreover, people lived there, networks were created. Even in corona time, because of the emergency aid and the shared space and neighborhood facilities in the plinth. We had to continue this in a new place, didn’t we? If only to answer the question: Can the Pension itself become nomadic and move from place to place?
Outside Kitchen, Studio C.A.R.E.
Welcome Vlaardingen-East At least in part it can. Some of the residents of Pension Almonde moved to two streets in Vlaardingen: Cornelis Houtmanstraat and Nieuwe Kerkstraat. Where Pension Almonde encompassed one street, these are even two streets, of which the homes of housing corporation De Samen werking are slowly coming under the management of City in the Making until demolition, which is planned in 2023. After the loss of Pension Almonde, there is one condition: Stad in de Maak leaves something lasting behind this time, so that the memory of this new ‘pension’ will remain in the neighborhood after its demolition. Initially, we were to take over the empty houses, but after the start of the project it turned out that the sitting residents who would have to move, now also want to be part of the project. This fall there will be meetings, in Dutch and English, to inform the residents about sociocracy and the ideas behind the project.
22-year-old Noëmi finds life in the Cornelis Houtmanstraat an enrichment. In corona time she lived alone. In retrospect, that was quite lonely. She dreamed about a community. Now that she is involved in the start in Vlaardingen, she can finally live her ideals. “A crisis shows more than ever that we need each other and that we have to live as sustainably as possible.” She comes from Romania and follows her entire master education in the Netherlands. As a student of Transformative Social Innovation, living in the project is living research for her.| Together with roommate and friend Romy, she was one of the first residents. They were assigned the oldest house, which they refurbished with second-hand furniture and art from friends on the walls. Although they live upstairs, the residents share all the gardens. The balcony is full of cuttings, which are ready to go into the ground.
Noëmi
Cuttings
Across the street, in the Nieuwe Kerkstraat, Laura has the same. There are plants everywhere that need a place. Just moved in and before they – Laura identifies as non-binary – has everything in place inside, they immediately started working on the garden. First there was a fig tree, which the community thought was a great asset. “Unfortunately, the previous resident picked it up this week. However, I was able to save the berry bushes from the neighbor’s garden and plant them here.” Laura first lived in an eco-village in the Achterhoek, but through Noëmi she ended up in Vlaardingen.
A few houses away, David unloads his car. Half of the moving stuff is still there. He is moving into a house for his own for the first time in years, after his plan to sail around the world was shattered by corona. “ We are happy to contribute to social change in this way. The housing market is closed and so we are investigating an alternative. I am also very curious about the idea of sociocracy. So we’re going to find out what it’s like to invest in something, even if it’s temporary of course.”
Olaf and Paul
Pancakes and drinks with the neighbors In the house next to Noëmi’s, Clara bakes pancakes while her friend Rif packs her backpack. A lot goes into it, because without a permanent place of residence or abode, it is possible to live out of it. She is going to France today and how long she will stay where she does not know yet. Housemate Eden is sitting on a chair drinking coffee. He has to hurry to get to work, but hopes to get another pancake. Clara from Germany cheerfully tells about her move from the lively pension Almonde, in the middle of the city, to the somewhat quieter Vlaardingen. “Here you are close to the Broekpolder, nice in a natural environment. And if I want to see friends, I can be in town in fifteen minutes. We also have a lot of fun here. There is fresh energy. We can shape the community together. Pension Almonde was a standing concept, which I came to live in after it had been running for a year.” Here, too, there are jars with cuttings on the table. In addition, there are pieces of homemade soap. “From the neighbor, Linda, who has lived here for years. We keep getting in touch. She wants to know what we think.”
All in all, the newest guest house is a mix of different types of residents. The urban nomads who are not attached to a permanent place of residence because of their philosophy form an interesting combination with the old residents of the streets, who want to stay because they do attach great importance to a permanent place of residence. In addition, there is little contact with the residents of the other blocks, which are managed by a housing provider for Eastern European labor migrants. Somehow it is strange, says Noemi: “City in the Making is taking over these streets and we are forming a community. But there is already a community of people who have lived here for years.
Sociocratic Meeting @ De Stokerij
Sociocracy The residents are divided into four sociocratic circles that govern the community: program, research, administration and maintenance. The latter has two sub-circles: gardening and the new people circle, for the selection process of new residents. The basis of the system is that the circles are about a subject and suggest ideas, but that decisions can only be made on the basis of consent: the consent of every group member. The latter has two sub-circles: gardening and the new people circle, for the selection process of new residents. The basis of the system is that the circles are about a topic and suggest ideas, but that decisions can only be made on the basis of consent: the consent of every group member. Read more about this decision model of the city in the making.” “We also need to talk a lot more about the structure of living together”, says Noemi. Her proposal to also organize a meeting about this once every two weeks received sufficient support. “How do you ensure that we live together as a community, while everyone retains their freedom? That we retain everyone’s commitment when many more homes and residents become part of the community? These are questions that you can read and discuss endlessly, but what I especially want is to actually do this in practice.”
At the end of September 2020, between two Corona lockdowns, the street opera ‘Slopera, tragedy of a demolition street’ was performed in the Almondestraat. A selection of Rotterdam actors and singers, a choir from Codarts and of course the old and new residents themselves brought to life the joy and sorrow from two years of departing residents and in-moving urban nomads, from shared suffering and shared joy, and from the players and victims of the urban housing allocation system. With a summary video impression we look back at one of the cultural highlights of the Pension Almonde project.
It has been quiet on our website for a while. Not because we have been paralyzed by the Coronavirus – on the contrary, things are happening in rapid succession, and then it is vital to take the most necessary action first. But now there is some time for an update.
First of all, all of us (the community of about 80 people) are doing well so far. Especially in Almondestraat, the residents of Pension Almonde have quickly switched to the ‘new normal’:
– Online communication via various channels (WhatsApp, radio, Facebook, video-meeting tools such as Zoom, etc.) has quickly been taken. Meetings and gatherings also continue as usual. We all learn that physical presence is not always necessary. – Communication from the balconies automatically maintains the correct social distance. – There has been singing and dancing on the balconies, online raves have been organized, online yoga is practised and social-distance sports activities are held in the park. – There is a great deal of solidarity and a special Care group has been created that checks whether everyone is doing well by direct telephone contact. – The outreach to the neighbourhood has also started. After Keju Kitchen (a commons catering company in the street) first changed the weekly soup day to a takeaway soup-counter and started cooking for the street, the service has now expanded – with financial support from the municipality – to free food provision for the elderly and deprived persons in the neighbourhood.
And: the first corona-era baby in our community entered the world yesterday. Mother and child are doing well. A second is in the planning for this week.
The daily developments can be followed through various channels:
Besides, ‘the media’ have been visiting in recent days. First, a short item in an ARTE / ZDf (German television) episode of Metropolis about Rotterdam culture, in which Melle Smets takes you to Almondestraat from minute 10. The recordings were actually 4 weeks ago; another world.
We are pleasantly surprised by the resilience and adaptability of our City in the Making community. It creates hope for a better future and shows that such close-knit communities are vital not only in the days of crisis but especially afterwards when hopefully another world emerges from the current misery.
From Thursday February 6th until Sunday 9th Rotterdam was under the spell of Rotterdam Art Week / Art Rotterdam. Almonde Boardinghouse took the opportunity to lift the roof in many of the houses and spaces in Almondestraat. During the day, the apartments of our street were transformed into the Not For Profit Art Party exhibition space (in collaboration with WORM). At night the ‘Party Everywhere’-party took over and many of the living spaces of our urban nomads were transformed into informal bars, pizza-places and meditation rooms. And , of course, at night visitors could sleep in one of the many rooms that were enhanced by the artists.
The Not For
Profit Art Party showed work form about 50 different artists in many of the apartments
of the boarding house. Representatives of several Rotterdam art institutions,
like Bcademie and Printroom, as well as from national institutions and of
course our in-house artists had their work on show. National newspaper de Volkskrant and online art magazine Jegens
& Tevens gave us rave reviews (in Dutch only).
For our boarding-house guests and fort he visiting
art lovers a new reception lobby was officially opened. With their key guest
were provided with essentials like a coffee mug, a tooth brush, banana body
lotion and (on request) condoms. The spaces of Keju kitchen were transformed into a
breakfast room / Karaoke Bar. Boarding-house host Flip also ran a bookshop.
From now on the reception lobby and our nightclub Xbar will be a permanent part
of our facilities.
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On Saturday night, the cellar of our reception lobby, the Xbar (both by Studio C.A.R.E.), was the venue for local punk-blues band Sociale Onrust as well a few DJ’s. That night may doors opened for self-organized bars and meeting spaces in the living rooms; a ginger bar / monkey-cage, a pizza and tattoo parlour (real pizza’s, real tattoos), Silent Disco in a Bedouin tent, poetry from the balcony, a tea ceremony at midnight an much more. It was the place to be in Rotterdam (as it will be for the coming months.)
Nice, City in the Making is one of the 10 projects out of 44 entries nominated by the jury for the Rotterdam Architecture Prize 2017.
Our pitch: “Architecture is more than just stacking bricks neatly or the supple ordering of function and space. Architecture at its best generates a sparkling urban life and facilitates the free blossoming of human endeavours. It is the art of enabling (Cedric Price)”
And klick on the button: ‘Ik stem op dit project’ (I vote for this project). Fill in your email, confirm you are not a robot (unless you are a robot, in that case: sorry, not for you) and click ‘Stem’ (Vote).
Of course, you may choose to vote for another project. But why would you?
Since november architect/artist/cartographer Carlijn Kingma has been working on a supersize pen-and-ink drawing that positions City in the Making in the larger field of modernity and New Romanticism. Finally it is finished. The drawing, titled: The Babylonian Tower of Modernity’, is on show at Carlijn’s first solo-exhibition in Rotterdam.
We invited everybody, but especially experts and fans of Utopia’s and Ideal Cities, to join us in the celebrations next Sunday.
Sunday 12 February Proof Aliens Exist Evidence Tour.
The program (modified): The expert tracker Piet Vollaard determined the path along a straight line from the Rotterdam Zoo Observation Tower (destroyed) to the Alien Crash Site at the edge of Kralingse Plas (In an “alternative world” the Prinsenland site is allegedly a sculpture created by the artist Frans de Wit to mark the lowest point under sea level in the Netherlands. However, there are those who firmly believe this art work was part of a massive coverup perpetrated between 1992 and 1996 on the Rotterdam people. Instead it is far more likely the “true” story is that the Kralingse concrete sunken disk is actually an alien crash site astutely disguised at the time using this artistic pretext *).Continue reading “Proof Aliens Exist – Evidence Tour”
We can become “unstuck in time,” and so it goes. Was it a coincidence that the evening reserved for movie night at Stad in de Maak during “Proof Aliens Exist” week in Rotterdam happened to be February the 13th, the anniversary day of the Dresden bombing, 72 years ago? Slaughterhouse Five, the 1972 film directed by George Roy Hill, winner of the Cannes Jury Prize of the same year was selected among many other excellent alien themed films for the 9:00 pm screening. Based on the book by Kurt Vonnegut, the story is a partially autobiographical story that weaves in and out of Dresden, in the days leading up to the city’s catastrophic aerial firebombing. The main character, Billy Pilgrim, survives the city’s destruction and returns –again and again– to different episodes in his otherwise bland life. Like Voltaire’s Candide, Billy Pilgrim’s experiences unfold as random chances but entirely out of sequence: flashbacks with no present. Continue reading ““and so it goes” Slaughterhouse Five and the 4th dimension”
