G.A. Hoekveld

Historisch-geografisch tijdschrift 20 (2002) 7 - 21.

De Hilversumse stedelijke ontwikkeling: een model van de ontwikkeling van een middelgrote Nederlandse stad vergeleken met de werkelijkheid

Dit artikel beschrijft het proces van het tot stand komen van een algemeen model van de ontwikkeling van een middelgrote Nederlandse stad. Dit model komt tevens tegemoet aan de individualiteit van een plaats, in dit specifieke geval Hilversum. Als het goed is kunnen aan dat model ook verwachtingen ontleend worden over transformaties van de stad in de nabije toekomst.

The urban development of the city of Hilversum: a model of the spatial form and its tranformations compared to the real situation.

The aim of this article is to demonstrate how to construct models of the spatial form and its transformations and how to test these models. Because there exist no models of relatively young middlesized cities in the Netherlands this contribution is directed at this category. The city chosen to test the model is Hilversum, a residential settlement that developed strongly after the construction of the railway from Amsterdam to the east in 1874. Hilversum attracted modern manufacturing industrics between the two World Wars. Because of lack of opportunities for extension of its build-up area and of the decline of manufacturing and growth of offices the city (now ca. 82.000 inhabitants) undergoes strong transformations. The construction of the model exists of the following steps. First, the derivation of some principles of zonation and zonal change from theory. Second, the drawing of a 'skeleton map' of the area in which the modelled city is located and which depicts some important 'given' physical geographic and infrastructural traits that exist in reality affect the spatial arrangements of the modelled zonation. Third, the theoretically modelled zonation and the skeleton map are combined (figures 2 and 3) in order to create a realistic and theoretically founded spatial model. Fourth, that model is tested with by the help of a number of maps (not all of them reproduced in this article). The model depicts and explains the spatial transformations fairly well. However, because not only marketforces, but also politics influences developments, a model predicting potential conflict and political action must be added to explain the stability of certain residential areas.