The fortified watercity of Breda lost its defensive
role due to changes in methods of warfare. So in 1870 the fortifications were
dismantled. This freed up a lot of space around the very dense urban core. The
moats were filled in and levelled with soil from the ramparts. City gates,
walls and bastions were torn down and some roads were widened. Van Gendt
planned the change from city defences
into wide boulevards with villas.
As the city limits only reached to the edge of the
field of fire around the fortifications, the city officials, eager to realize
large-scale expansion, looked beyond at the neighbouring villages. It would
take until 1927 before the villages of Princehage (= The Prince's Hague),
Ginneken and a large part of Teteringen (The Polder Hoge Vught and Heusdenhout)
were annexed by the central city. The local council had already had plans drawn
up so building work started immediately. One of the new housing estates built
was called Tuinzigt (= Garden View) named after a mansion of the same name
located not far from a Kolfbaan (= Mall). The estate was developed as part of
the Plan Schaap, a plan for urban expansion beyond the old city limits drawn up
by an urban planner from Arnhem. Building work started in earnest in 1935,
although the first streets had been developed in 1920 (within the old city
limits), 1927 and 1931. Further additions were completed in 1948 and 1963.
After that a 30 year moratorium on development was agreed. Thus the area west
of Tuinzicht remained a lovely rural fragment within the city with scattered
farms, some houses, fields, meadows and hedges.
This idyll wouldn't last, of course, as developers
-with the moratorium in mind- were buying up land from 1990 onwards. The local
council and central government with the standing planning policy of
concentrated urban development earmarked this "unsightly semi-rural
mess" as key strategic development area. At the same time plans were being
made for a high-speed railway line linking Amsterdam and Brussels via Antwerp.
The preferred route ran along the motorway west of Breda and required vast
changes to the local infrastructure. These forces combined resulted in the development
of the industrial estates of Steenakker and Baanzicht, the housing estates of
Heilaar and Westerpark, and the Kruisvoort Shopping Mall. Only the hamlet of Overbroek
remains as a densely built up winding street that in bound on all sides by
industrial estates, the railway, the motorway and the eastern edge of the
commuter village of Prinsenbeek (= Prince's Brooke).
The city of Breda comprises of the historic urban core
(B) within the former city moat that was transformed into a strolling park with
tree-lined belt road with adjacent the formerly independent villages of
Teteringen (T), Dorst (D), Bavel (Ba), Ginneken (G), Prinsenhage (Ph),
Prinsenbeek (Pb) and Terheiden (Th) and the large urbanisations -comprising of
several housing estates- of Hoge Vugt (Hv), Haagse Beemden (Hb) and Heusdenhout
(H).West of the housing estate of Tuinzicht (1) the Esterpark Estate (2) is
situated with the Heilaar Estate (3) and the employment areas of Steenakker
(4), Baanzicht (5) and Kruisvoort (6).
In the spring of 1996 work started on the new housing
estate of Westerpark. This was the first such estate in Breda to be developed
with maximum emphasis on durability and the environmental impact. This focus
was a was aimed at generating agreement from local people who -rightly so-
contested the decision to not renew the moratorium on development, as they
greatly valued their greenbelt. As a result a park was included and there was
an emphasis on increasing the "natural value" of the area by creating
specific habitats and building a sustainable urban drainage system
incorporating several streams that already ran through the area. The result was
an example project, however it is much less coherent than "In Goede Aarde", a later similar development. The Westerpark Estate was developed
as an annex to the Tuinzicht Estate, and has no amenities of its own.
To emphasize the ecological aspect of the development
the name Westerpark (=West Park) was chosen. In addition all the street names
have been named after butterflies. Some
of teh housing isn't located on a suburban street accessible to car
traffic but on a so-called "woonpad" (housing alley) that is only accessible
to slow traffic i.e. pedestrians and cyclists.
The Westerpark Estate in Breda is a large housing
estate with both terraced housing, a few semidetached houses and villas, and
flats in high apartment blocks. It is an excellent example of the mixed
standard of Dutch housing estates with 34% social rented, 25% affordable and
41% more expensive (aimed at middle-income couples, so by no means upper-end).
Some 3.500 people live in 1.400 houses and flats. The layout is fairly typical
of Dutch urban design of the period, with housing with a postmodern flavour set
along streets or in some cases aggregating around small public greens. Building
height varies, so does the colour of the building materials and the roof shapes.
Thus several neighbourhoods can be distinguished, each with its own set of
characteristic architectural features. Another distinct feature is the excellent
permeability for slow traffic combined with no through-traffic for cars in
every neighbourhood. These features in combination with a rather contrived
mixing of terraced housing and "linked semidetached houses" has been
a feature of urban design in the Netherlands since the late 1970s.
The Westerpark Estate comprises of two sections, north
and south of a central park (P) with a large artificial water retention lake
(L). A stream runs through the estate -partly as a formalised canal (C)-connecting
it to the complicated water system in and around the city of Breda. In the
southern -more low-lying and thus originally wetter- section provisions had to
be made to compensate for the loss of hydrological buffer capacity after
development. Here a system of gullies (in light blue) were excavated that fill
up with rainwater that in part drains away into the soil replenishing ground
water levels, but in extreme weather conditions can be directed towards
connected water courses. The new ring road (R) forms the boundary of the estate
on the west side. Two pre-existing farms (f) were incorporated. A very notable
feature is the inclusion of two rows of postmodern reinterpretations of the
Mulhouse Quadrangle (M).
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