"We didn't really plan anything in concrete detail, but instead allowed residents to build their own neighbourhoods," says Maas. "In return they have more responsibility – to plan streets with their neighbours, to arrange their own energy provision, and so on. That part sounds radical to some people – but it's really just how cities were built for centuries."
"We don't believe that any city should be the result of the vision of just one person or one organisation.”
— BBC
The designer of this year’s Floriade horticultural expo talked to the BBC about the city’s self-organized development and how it all ties into his MVRDV-designed Almere 2030 master plan that will add some 60,000 residencies by the end of the decade. Maas wouldn’t categorize Almere as an experimental city “exactly,” but said rather that he sees it as “a city in which experiments can happen […] The difference is subtle but important.”
“Successful cities always arise from the input of multiple people over years, decades, sometimes millennia,” he explained. “It's this belief that has led to Almere's reputation for experimentation – how we allow individuals to add their own vision.”
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