The curriculum included Sociology as part of the skills that students should learn. It included subjects like geography or âSociology and hygiene. Union life - workerâs needsâ. Nowadays there are no sociology courses in the schools of architecture of Spain.
âIs this vandalism or art?â asked Bezirk following one of Berlinâs most infamous guerilla art attacks. After a yearâs reflection, the answer may be âbothâ.
The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces, by William H. Whyte
This highly influential film in architecture and planning circles by William H. Whyte analyzes the success and failures of urban spaces. Observing the natural order of spaces and the way people move through them, Whyte provides an intuitive critique of urban spaces and ways these spaces can be improved (IMDb).
Creativity is fancy, glamorous and desirable. Who can be against creativity? At the same time it is used selectively for economic purposes and consists of precarious and hard work.
In this film, the search for creativity is linked to existential struggles for affordable housing and working space in Amsterdam, such as temporary accommodation, squatting, anti-squatting and some institutional synthesis: "breeding places" Amsterdam.
This film is more than a local documentary on Amsterdam. It explores the latest urban re-/development pattern in advanced Western capitalist cities. The hype around the creative city began already a decade ago, it is global in scope and about to reach its peak. After Richard Florida's influential book "The Rise of the Creative Class" (2002) creativity has advanced to be the role model of urban regeneration:Â The New American Dream.
What is new about this dream? What happens when the hype is over? Housing as a job or the Right to the City?
Featuring big names like the economic geographer Jamie PeckÂ
For more information visit creativecapitalistcity.org
A video-collage from the collective Left Hand Rotation for their project âDisplacedâs Museumâ, mixing bits of movies that talk about gentrification and displacement.
(In Spanish)
Woonerf: tactical urbanism for more livable streets in the Netherlands
Via Woonerfs were tactical urbanism before there was âtactical urbanism" by Mike Lydon and Anthony Garcia
The Dutch woonerfâa street that accommodates pedestrians, bicyclists, and people recreating, in addition to carsâwas first developed by residents who took it upon themselves to slow traffic in their neighborhood.
The invention of the Dutch woonerf stands out because unlike many street design innovations from the last 100 years, it did not originate from the profession of traffic engineering but from citizens seeking to slow traffic in their community.
Dutch for "living yard," the woonerf is a residential street where people who are not in cars are given priority over people who are. This is accomplished by using physical design to slow drivers down to a near walking speed so as to not crash into strategically placed trees, bollards, bike racks, and other amenities.
A woonerf. Photo by Dick van Veen from Tactical Urbanism.
The woonerf was created when a group of residents in the Dutch city of Delft grew frustrated with the growing problems related to safety, congestion, and pollution as car use increased in their compact and otherwise walkable city. The municipality's lack of response inspired a group of neighbors to tear up portions of the pavement on their street in the middle of the night so that cars had to maneuver around the resulting obstruction at low speed.
This citizen-led, bottom-up initiative introduced a new street type to international audiences, one that returned the street to the citizens for playing, walking, and bicycling and did not give the automobile priority.
With little evidence that the intervention disrupted daily life, the municipal government quietly ignored the citizen-led initiative and advocates pursued its formal acceptance. In 1976 the Dutch Parliament passed regulations incorporating the woonerven (plural) into the national street design standards.
Today the woonerf, or a similar form of shared space, is an increasingly accepted traffic-calming measure outside North America, and it is understood by international bodies using standards and engineering practices based on common professional practice.
Carefree vacant property (Leegstand zonder zorgen)
Seven Dutch people of the two largest anti-squat agencies, Camelot property management and Ad Hoc property management, are followed to investigate what are the consequences of not having renters rights.
Who are using the services of anti-squat agencies? and how do politicians, housing experts, lawyers and others involved judge this rising phenomenon.
Anti-squat:Â squatting in the age of neoliberalism?
This article was written for the course âThe Political Sociology of the Cityâ
Introduction
ââProtectionby occupationâ â what could this possibly mean? Well the nexttime you walk past what might look like a vacant building; takeanother look it might not be as empty as it seems. People are in needof affordable housing and property owners need to deter vandals andsquatters. Property Guardianship is the answer more and more peopleare turning to.â
Camelot news release (Camelot , 2014b)
When I moved to Amsterdam finding a home was a nightmare. Housing is one of the major problems that people arriving to the Netherlands have to face. Tenure is dominated by owner occupied houses and specially by housing associations, based on a system of overcrowded waiting lists. The average waiting time for an apartment in Amsterdam has risen to eleven years (Van Zoelen, 2012). Together, owner occupied and housing associations account for 75% of the total amount of houses. And this will increase since in 2020 the municipality estimates that only 15% will be private rent (Municipality of Amsterdam and Woonbarometer as cited in Van Gent, 2012). But the last five years another option has been growing. It does not appear in statistics yet, but it hosts tens of thousands of people. In Dutch is known as antikraak (âanti-squatâ), but in the UK it is known as property guardians (PG). The mechanism is simple: empty buildings -that their owners do not want to or can not rent, sell, renovate or demolish- are set as temporary housing. âA win-win solution: [âŠ] secures and maintains property whilst providing affordable, temporary accommodationâ (Camelot, 2014b). But this story is not as simple, and not free of controversy at all.
This article aims to present the anti-squat phenomenon, unknown outside the countries where it exists, and look at its relation to the hegemonic neoliberalism. Both things are important, first because, even after 25 years of existence, there is an important lack of knowledge to understand how PG companies operate and its consequences, specially available in English. Second, because it is a market in expansion that could have a deep impact in places like the impoverished countries from Southern Europe, with both lots of empty buildings and people needed for home, and weakened governments looking for innovative and low cost solutions for their social problems.
The article has four parts, the first one presenting squatting and its relation with anti-squatting, the second describing anti-squatting, the third looking at the connection of PG with neoliberalism and a closing section for discussion. All the data was obtained from PG companies in the Netherlands and UK, as well as media reports from the UK, the Netherlands and France. For a better clarity they are cited in the same format as academic cites and they can be found in the reference list at the end.
Squatting
Squatting in the Netherlands
Before looking at anti-squatting it is necessary to see how squatting has evolved the last decades, since both are intertwined as we will see. It is no casual that this story starts in the Netherlands. The country is renown worldwide for its progressive position in matters like prostitution, drugs and same-sex marriages. And this also applies to squatting. Not only the official tourism office uses it to promote the country openness and idiosyncrasy, but the country can be seen as a real-life laboratory to explore what is possible in squatting. This is because affordable housing shortages were persistent, while between 1971 and 2010 it was possible to squat without breaking the law (Pruijt, 2013). In 1971 a Supreme Court ruling found that breaking into an unused building was not trespassing. The thinking was that it was humane, or at least pragmatic, not to evict poor or homeless people living in a building that was not being used. So at that time the legal right to housing was heavier than the property of the owner to leave its building empty. Since the verdict of the Court of Appeal in 1971, the squatter movement grew, at first without much publicity, since squatting was not a criminal act under certain circumstances (Raad van Kerken as cited in Draaisma & Hoogstraten, 1983).
It is hard to give precise numbers since there was not official record, and even the municipality and the police tends to refer to the data given by the squatters. In the 80s, at the movement's heyday, there were about 20.000 people living in squatted houses in Amsterdam, and about the same number of people in all other Dutch cities and villages (Draaisma & Hoogstraten, 1983). In 2010 estimates talk about 200 to 300 squats and 1.500 to 2.000 squatters in Amsterdam.
In 198, during the crowning of Queen Beatrix some squatters launched the campaign âGeen woning, geen kroningâ (No home, no crowning)
Why is 2010 a major year for squatting? In 2010 a new regulation was passed in the Netherlands. It was a double-edged law: on one hand it made illegal squatting empty buildings, but after the demands of the left parties, pressure on the owners was also introduced. The legislation explicitly recommended anti-squatting as a win-win solution to longer-term empty properties and a deterrent to squatters and vandals. After the new legislation passed, the market for PG companies expanded, since municipalities and owners had bigger responsibility in empty buildings. âAfter the squatting ban we have increased turnover within a few years from five to thirty million", says Bob de Vilder co-founder and chief marketing officer at Camelot. In the Netherlands, the value of Camelot between 2009 and 2013 increased by 342 percent, to nearly 15.5 million (Van Eijck & Naafs, 2014).
The new law that came into force on September 2012 in England and Wales criminalised squatting in residential buildings, including social housing properties. Squatting was already a major criminal offence in Scotland. However the act does not make squatting in a commercial or non-residential building a criminal offence, it remains a civil offence. As a result squatters have sought out commercial properties. Now 70 per cent of properties requiring guardians are empty commercial properties such as retail stores, factories or offices (Orbis, 2014).
Anti-squatting
Although it has existed before in different forms, the contemporary trend of Property Guardianship began in the Netherlands in the 1990s. The first company to introduce the concept in 1990 was Ad Hoc (n.d.), but nowadays around 50 companies operate in the Netherlands (BPW, 2014), and between 25 and 30 in the UK (Orbis, 2014). Camelot, established in 1993, is probably the best known vacant property management company. Nowadays they also operate in the UK, Ireland, France, Germany and Belgium.
Guardians are not tenants
Even if for many people PG is the only affordable option to find a place to live, it did not emerge as a housing solution, but as a security product. âProperty Guardianship is a security option, where instead of paying for traditional security such as boarding or CCTV [âŠ] Guardians [are placed] to live in the property as they would anywhere else they were renting. While living there the Guardians prevent any damage to the building and report maintenance issues whilst also finding themselves a more affordable accommodation solution than traditional rentingâ (Camelot, 2014b). It is not only a good deal for tenants, also for owners: âcompared to the cost of using manned guards to protect a property, guardians are considerably cheaper and often more effectiveâ  (Orbis, 2014). This solution might reduce by up to 90 per cent the cost of securing their buildings (ibid.). The question of the owner costs will appear again latter.
That contract form is conceived using the legal basis for the lending of stuff, and so, according to the PG companies, the rules of rent do not apply. PG companies base all their activity in the fact that people are not renting the place, so they can not be considered tenants or have any tenant right. They avoid words like âtenantâ or âdwellerâ, instead they always use âguardianâ, and they explicitly make clear that the license they sign is not a tenants agreement.
Another problems found is the actual conditions of the buildings that people find when they move in (due to the high competition to get a place there are no prior viewings). All the companies assure they only provide safe spaces, only accept buildings in good conditions and install showers and other equipment, but again it is easy to find stories with old electric wires causing fires, presence of asbestos and so on (see Kleinfeld, 2014). And some more clauses worth to mention restricting the life of the guardians: they are not allowed to leave the apartment for more than two nights, invite people to sleep over, have pets or have more than two guests at the same time. Camelot has 13 minutes video explaining their basic rules:
The reason they can not leave their houses more than two nights in a row is because their role is to keep the property. Guardians are not tenants, they are guardians, that is security members. But securing the property is not their key priority or field of expertise; they are not trained security professionals. Neither are they paid for it, on the contrary, they are the ones paying a fee every month. This question is been mentioned by some as unpaid labour and the unauthorized practice of a profession (PGRC, 2014).
Guardianship is usually presented in the media and by the same companies as some kind of bourgeois lifestyle decision; an adventure for those with an appetite for urban shabbiness. Being always ready to move or to loose the house is required, so young people without much obligations are encouraged to apply. This brings two issues to be considered. First, only a selected group of people is indeed able to apply: you need to demonstrate a continuous source of income, leaving out the most needed. Also children are not allowed so, if you get pregnant your license is terminated. The second thing that should be taken into account is that lot of people do not have other choice. This is specially visible in cities like London, where first-time buyers are spending 14 times their salary on homes on average (in 2014 in London, according to the Office of National Statistic, the average house price was ÂŁ485.000 while the average annual earning was ÂŁ34.200). It is not surprising that the past year has seen an upsurge in the number of people interested in property guardianship in the recession: in London there has been a 30 per cent growth and in the Midlands a 40-50 per cent growth (Orbis, 2014).
London campaign against housing prices
One sentence that different managers of PG companies repeat when they are interviewed is that âpeople are not forced to sign, we don't put a gun into their headâ. The same sentence was replayed again and again by bankers the last years in Spain, when defending themselves from the mortgages they offered and that many European and Spanish courts eventually declared to be unfair and with illegal clauses. With the situation in places like the just mentioned London, anti-squatting could be the only choice for a big part of society to live near their jobs.
But yet, they are tenants
As we saw before, at the same time the PG companies insist to disassociate anti-squatting from the renting, they offer themselves as a more affordable accommodation solution than traditional renting, framing themselves in the renting market again. When looking for guardians they advertise that you can save âmore than 60% on rentâ (Camelot, 2014a). Several tenants and organizations complain that the rents and fees charged to the occupiers are, indeed, not insignificant and sometimes guardians do not know what exactly are they paying (see Peaker & Hunter, 2013 and Heijkamp, 2010 for details). Yet every now and then goes wrong for PG companies and the judge considers the loan payment as rent, especially if the amount is high. This happened last year in Amsterdam to the corporation Stadgenoot. According to the judge, guardians had the right to security of tenure (Van Eijck & Naafs, 2014).
According to Peaker and Hunter (2013) given the requirement in the Guardian licences that the guardians must reside at the premises, they seem to fall squarely within the definition of a âresidential occupierâ. Then, the UK housing regulations like the Housing Act of 2004 and the Eviction Act of 1977 should apply to PG. Thus any attempt to evict out with the provisions of the 1977 Eviction Act would be an illegal eviction and a criminal offence. Also, notice to determine the licence must give four weeks notice in writing with the prescribed information. In general, more than 30 rules of the âlicence agreementâ might violate the European Convention of Human Rights (Heijkamp, 2010), like the right to privacy. As an article in The Guardian said (Finchett-Maddock & Bowring, 2010), âit appears that squatting is more within the law than any guardian property contractâ.
It is paradoxical that, in some aspects like privacy and eviction, squatters still have more rights than guardians. As Tijana, activist in De Hallen says, âanti-squat is not a solution, because then your rights are in such a low level that you can't actually use the buildingâ (Buchholz, 2011).
Anti-squatting and neoliberalism
The way that anti-squatting operates nowadays and its effects can be explained by the influence of neoliberalism from two sides of the story: the relation of the government with social housing and the interests of the real estate market. As Peck and Tickell (2002) state, neoliberalism inhabits ânot only institutions and places but also the spaces in betweenâ (emphasis in original). Here the security and the real estate companies were able to take one of the most âanti-neoliberalismâ ideas, squatting, and turn it into a useful tool for their purposes.
Anti-squatting and social housing
After WWII, the European countries devastated by the war faced a big housing problem. At that time it was solved with big projects of public housing, that not only provided shelter to thousands of people, but it also boosted their economy. Today, neoliberal ideology asks for a non-interventionist state. The government decided to sell their stock to companies in the UK, or to the tenants, in the Netherlands, where they also stopped giving benefits to housing corporations. This lead to their privatization and to the selling of dwellings to compensate their looses. Indeed, in Amsterdam social housing is seen as a burden for the intentions of the municipality to attract households with a higher income (Van Gent, 2012).
Housing is then given to the free market. What is the role of anti-squatting in this situation? A main danger is that this leads to a secondary housing market with less rights for the most needed, connected to what is happening with labour in different countries, like the zero-hours contracts in the UK and the mini-jobs in Germany. Again, the repeated mantra is that it is âbetter than nothingâ, but it drives us to even further deregulation of the conditions under which temporary rent (or temporary jobs) is permitted, decreasing the housing (or working) conditions of many.
But critical sociologists and political scientists have pointed out that as neoliberalism has developed, the role of the state has not been not diminished, but transformed (Harvey and Martin as cited in Dowling & Harvie, 2014). In one hand processes of economic management are increasingly technocratic in form and therefore superficially âdepoliticizedâ, acquiring the privileged status of a taken-for-granted. Meanwhile, a deeply interventionist agenda is emerging around âsocialâ issues like crime, immigration, policing, welfare reform, urban order and surveillance, and community regeneration (Peck & Tickell, 2002). As we saw in the 2010 Dutch law for anti-squatting, while in one side squatting was more punished, on the other private companies were boosted to manage empty buildings and turn them into temporary housing.
Not only governments do not counteract this process, but they contribute to it since many public or semi-public institutions use PG. From local governments to housing associations, ask to these companies to manage their empty properties. In 2014 it was found that 200 buildings from the Dutch government, 900 from the biggest Dutch municipalities and 1.100 dwellings by the five main housing associations were given away as anti-squats (Van Eijck & Naafs, 2014). In these cases the public and semi-public organizations do not know or control what agreements do the PG companies take with the guardians (Heijkamp, 2010), and in the license agreement the guardians are explicitly forbidden to contact the owner.
Although there are many cultural, social and political dimensions to the squatter movement, its existence is in the first place connected with the housing shortage. Even if there is no long-term strategy to solve the housing shortage (Draaisma & Hoogstraten, 1983) it managed to give a temporary house to thousands of people. And some squats have become permanent homes through legalization. The Municipality of Amsterdam bought 200 buildings that were occupied by squatters (Duivenvoorden as cited in Pruijt, 2013) thereby legalizing them. Also in the beginning of the 80s, where government institutions failed to avoid a rise in the number of empty dwellings and failed to build a sufficient number of new ones, the squatter movement provided some answer (Draaisma & Hoogstraten, 1983). Yet anti-squatting industry is being used as a tool to stop squatting as an alternative housing strategy, destroying all potential opportunities for new occupations.
It is also important to note that squatting and neighbourhood activism has been traditionally very connected (Uitermark, 2004), but with the agreements signed by anti-squatters and the life control that they are subjected to, it is very easy to get rid of the undesired political active people that could interfere the goals of the company.
Anti-squatting and the real estate market
Real estate does not want empty buildings, not because it is a social problem, but because it damages the real estate market of the area. The problem with empty buildings is that vacancy breeds vacancy. When one building stays empty it leads to a decline in both rental value and property value of the surrounding buildings. Therefore avoiding squatting, empty buildings, and its dilapidation is also necessary for keeping the value of the building and of its surroundings (both are, indeed, interrelated). Then PG facilitates speculation, since it is easier to have empty buildings for longer and in a bigger concentration, without fearing of loosing its value. In some cases the guardians attracted are artists and people from the creative sector, so the area is not only controlled but also it actually becomes a desired enclave, gentrifying the neighbourhood (Hackworth & Smith, 2001). So anti-squatting can be also part of the process of gentrification, one more variation that should be considered to explain locally this global phenomenon.
The most evident sign that PG companies and owners are not interested in providing a housing solution is the fact that they never offer all the space available. They just open the minimum space to guarantee that the whole building will be under surveillance. In a case included in the Guardians White Paper by Orbis (2014), the solution for an empty âsix-storey, 4.800 sq m office building in central Londonâ is presented: âthe landlord replaced the 24-hour guard with six live-in guardiansâ. That makes an entire storey and 800 square meters for each person. With this measure, the landlord saved âthe ÂŁ150,000 cost of a manned guard as the guardian service works out as cost neutralâ (ibid.). In a Camelot presentation (Woods, 2012) this âneutral costâ is more specified. There, another real example is shown where owner costs for securing a building fall from 155.000⏠to 28.000⏠per year using PG. Surprisingly the owner actually pays to rent its premises.
In the Netherlands, an immense housing shortage exists side-by-side with an abundance of office space. Today there are 40 million square meters of vacant real estate, including houses, offices, hospitals and shops. 16% of all office buildings are empty which is almost 8 million square meters; after Greece the highest rate of vacant offices in Europe (BPW, 2014). According to the city of Amsterdam, a healthy office market should be between 4-8% empty (Orangemaster, 2013). The Nederlandse Vereniging van Makelaars published in 2013 that 43% of the vacant properties have been empty for at least three years, compared with 36% the year before. The ageing office buildings are neither demolished nor converted, leaving hundreds of thousands of empty square meters scattered around the country. Ironically, new office real estate is a booming market. There is no competition between new development and older buildings: everyone wants something new (Keeton, 2014). All these empty office buildings can be surveyed using guardians while the market continues creating new office spaces.
We see a transfer of the risks of the real estate market to the precarious tenants. Now, not only the owner of a building is expecting for the best moment to sell or renovate its property, also its guardians depend on that to know if they will not be needed any more so they will have to move out in two weeks loosing their home.
All the mentioned here is not to say that temporary housing in vacant properties is a bad idea. I do think that, in those cases that buildings in good conditions have to be empty for a while they better serve a social cause, being the home for those who need one. But the fact that this business is today controlled by security companies willing to serve the interests of the real state, leave the housing needs (privacy, security, own space...) out of the equation. The waste and threat of empty buildings is actually more important than the waste and threat of poorly-housed people.
Property guardianship is today a form of highly proscribed, insecure arrangement which can be likened as much to unpaid labour as to poor housing. It does exactly the opposite of what we need to do with buildings, which is to use them to provide affordable, decommodified, dwellings with security of tenure, available to a wide range of people.
As I pointed out at the introduction, it does not exist academic research looking at this phenomenon while many relevant aspects of anti-squatting need from further analysis. First the relation between property and squatting laws and the the PG companies here is been only mentioned, but it is clear that the sector profited from the recent legal changes and that lobbies to get new regulations. Second, the use that public and semi-public institutions do of anti-squatting. Journalists like Van Eijck and Naafs (2014) did a first query to the government and the biggest municipalities and housing corporations, showing the first concrete numbers of PG. Because these institutions are forced to be transparent are a good gateway to study the way PG companies operate. Third, the link between anti-squatting and gentrification, and how it might be used to gentrify, either keeping the environment, value either using the creative sector to upgrade an area.
Other interesting research could be done in other fields too, not only related to economic or politics. For instance studying the way that guardians must adapt so they can stay in the anti-squat system, and the impact that this makes in their life.
To know more about it I recommend you the documentary Carefree vacant property (Leegstand zonder zorgen)
References
Ad Hoc. (n.d.). About Ad Hoc. Retrived from: http://adhoc.eu/great-britain/about-ad-hoc/
ASS: Advisory Service for Squatters. Â (2011). Anti-Squat Security Companies: Protection by Occupation?. Corporate Watch Magazine 50/51. 21-22 . Retrieved from: http://corporatewatch.org/sites/default/files/Magazine%2350-51.pdf
BPW: Bond Precaire Woonvormen. (2012) âInspections no more, change the locks on your doorâ. Retrieved from: http://bondprecairewoonvormen.nl/2012/04/inspections-no-more-change-the-locks-on-your-door/
BPW: Bond Precaire Woonvormen. (2014). Accusation of Camelot Europe by Bond Precaire Woonvormen. Retrieved from: http://bondprecairewoonvormen.nl/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Netherlands-accusation-Camelot-12-3-2014.pdf
Buchholz, T. (dir) (2011). Creativity And The Capitalist City [movie]. Retrieved from: https://vimeo.com/49254956
Camelot (2014a, April 2). Save 60%+ on rent - become a property guardian. Retrieved from:Â http://uk.cameloteurope.com/4/0/news/save-60-on-rent-become-a-propertyguardian.html&nid=1107
Camelot (2014b, October 24). Property Guardians - getting away from it all. Retrieved from:Â http://uk.cameloteurope.com/4/0/news/property-guardians-getting-away-from-it-all.html&nid=1277
Dowling, E. and Harvie, D. (2014). Harnessing the social: State, crisis and (big) society, Sociology 48(5): 869-886.
Draaisma, J., & Hoogstraten, V. P. (1983). The squatter movement in Amsterdam. International journal of urban and regional research, 7(3), 406-416.
Finchett-Maddock, L. & Bowring, B. (2010, July 10th). Who's guarding property guardians? The Guardian. Retrieved from:Â http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/libertycentral/2010/jul/09/housing-property-guardians-squatters-rights
Hackworth, J. and Smith, N. (2001). The changing state of gentrification, Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie 92(4): 464-477.
Hajer, M. (2003). Policy without polity? Policy analysis and the institutional void, Policy Sciences 36(2): 175-195.
Heijkamp, A. (2010). Leegstand zonder zorgen (Carefree vacant property) [movie]. Retrieved from: Â https://vimeo.com/9649993
Keeton, R. (2014, June 5). Rotterdam Is Drowning in Empty Office Space. Nexy city. Retrieved from: http://nextcity.org/daily/entry/rotterdam-is-drowning-in-empty-office-space
Kleinfeld, F. (2014, September 25). The UK's 'Property Guardians' Live in a World of Constant Anxiety. Vice. Retrieved from: https://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/guardian-schemes-kleinfeld-gentrification-homelessness-761
Orangemaster (2013, September 19). The Netherlands is European prince of empty office space. 24 oranges. Retrieved from: http://www.24oranges.nl/2013/09/19/the-netherlands-is-european-prince-of-empty-office-space/
Orbis (2014). Property Guardians White Paper [PDF]. Retrieved from: http://www.orbisprotect.com/discover-new-guardians-service-download-white-paper/
Peaker, G. & Hunter, C. (2013). Who guards the guardians? Journal of Housing Law 297
Peck, J. and Tickell, A. (2002). Neoliberalizing space. Antipode 34(3): 380-405.
Peck, J. (2012). Austerity urbanism: American cities under extreme economy. City, 16(6), 626-655.
PGRC: Property Guardian Research Collective. (2014). The Temporary Home: Live-In Guardians In The Neoliberal City. The New Left Project. Retrieved from: http://www.newleftproject.org/index.php/site/article_comments/the_temporary_home_live_in_guardians_in_the_neoliberal_city
Pruijt, H. (2013). The logic of urban squatting. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 37(1), 19-45.
Tonkiss, F. (2013). Austerity urbanism and the makeshift city. City, 17(3), 312-324.
Uitermark, J. (2004). Framing urban injustices: the case of the Amsterdam squatter movement. Space and Polity, 8(2), 227-244.
Van Gent, W.P.C. (2012). Neo-liberalization, housing institutions and variegated gentrification. How the âThird waveâ broke in Amsterdam, International Journal for Urban and Regional Research 37(2): 503-522.
Van Eijck, G., & Naafs, S. (2014, October 13). Helaas. U heeft getekend. De Onderzoeks Redactie. Retrieved from: http://www.onderzoeksredactie.nl/artikel/helaas-u-heeft-getekend/
Van Zoelen, B. (2012, August 22). Actieplan tegen hoog opgelopen wachttijd sociale huurwoning. Het Parool.
Woods, D. (2012, July 27). Is the temporary use the answer to keeping empty properties from falling derelict in an economic downturn? [Powerpoint presentation]. Retrieved from: http://www.slideshare.net/Camelot_Europe01/camelot13ieservicecorporate-presentationvacant-property-management
Figuring out how to walk quickly from A to B is easy. Just plug two addresses into your favorite map app, and off you go. But sometimes getting to a place as quickly as possible isnât the priority. At least, so thought Barcelona-based Yahoo! Labs researcher Daniele Quercia. Along with two colleagues, Rossano Schifanella and Luca Maria Aiello, he decided to try and code a mapping algorithm that could recommend a âhappyâ route.
City agencies have access to a wealth of data and statistics reflecting every part of urban life. But as data analyst Ben Wellington suggests in this entertaining talk, sometimes they just don't know what to do with it. He shows how a combination of unexpected questions and smart data crunching can produce strangely useful insights, and shares tips on how to release large sets of data so that anyone can use them.
We can easily observe them in the natural areas, for instance when people take shortcuts to the sinusoidal paths that go up to a hill. It is more difficult to see the actual lines in the city, where the hard pavements cover most of its surface. Albeit they are there, visible or invisible. We can see them with our bare eyes when there is grass, soil, sand or when it snows. Or if we look closely when there is mud or dust that make our footprints show up in the asphalt and the paving stones. And even when we can not see the traces we have tools to record and represent it. Jan Gehl, an architect famous for his studies about public space, encourages the use of these techniques (see Gehl & Svarre, 2013), either tracing the lines or looking for traces.
In the natural parks pathways are often draw to dissuade visitors to step on areas where their presence would damage the terrain, the flora and the fauna. In the city people (and vehicles) are driven for security purposes: to prevent accidents, congestion,... From the design point of view I would say there are two strategies to do so: a soft one, inviting and suggesting a certain route, and a hard one, blocking and prohibiting all the rest. Landscape architects use different tricks (landmarks, information panels, benches,...) to keep them people on the road. When this is not enough, fences, walls, canals and trenches are used. Urban designers constantly employ subtle techniques to separate and lead different kinds of traffic. A color or material change might be enough. A small level difference, like the kerb or speed bumps. Lines, arrows and words painted on the floor. In Amsterdam a simple ceramic tile is able to avoid people park their bikes where they are not supposed to. When things get more complicated, specially when it involves motor vehicles, traffic signs are needed, as well as bollards. Finally, if we definitely want to keep people out we would use fences and walls. Its height will tell us how badly we want to avoid people breaking in, like the barriers separating the train rails are taller than the few ones protecting some tram rails. Here we stay in the material level, but obviously there are many laws (more and more) regulating public space as well, and actually some of these objects are its representation.
Desire Lines (English subtitles) from Jan-Dirk van der Burg
We can see these mechanisms the soft mechanisms at Jonas DaniĂ«l Meijerplein. If you are biking the North side of Nieuwe Herengracht., once you reach the square you are âinvitedâ to get off. The street pavement stops and small gravel covers until almost the border with the water, making it  unpleasant and harder to bike, but most people still do. When you arrive to Weesperstraat you will find no zebra crossing, no traffic light, not even a ramp to come down from the pavement. But still, people bike through Jonas DaniĂ«l Meijerplein. You can easily recognize the traces in the gravel and you do not have to wait more than five minutes to spot a disobedient. Sometimes ethnographer's work may be not very distant from a biologist in the forest, looking for footprints or waste to understand the animals.
While doing the observations I realized that there is another way to find these desire lines: looking for the obstacles employed to prevent these routes. In the movie by van der Burg (2011), the alderman for Environmental Issues in Leusden shows how they dug a âanti-tank ditchâ (sic) to block a path that people was using. People continued to use it, climbing the dike, and finally a path was created. First public resources spent to prevent people's will and finally more resources spent to do what they are (silently) asking for. In the same movie an architect suggests that in construction some budged should be saved to improve the space after its opening, based on people's use. Or as the cooperative of architects LaCol (2013) proposes, spaces should be seen as unfinished projects, always evolving.
Amsterdam does not use much fences to arrange the public space, but I came across some that are hard to justify. One of them is placed in the bridge over the Kostverlorenvaart next to Surinameplein. If your intention is to continue walking or biking next to the canal you won't have it easy, no matter your way of transportation. You will have to make a long cut to one side or the other to find your way to cross the street. Not only there are no zebra crossing, but a railing would block you to do so. Only on the Est side bikes are allowed to cross, without any apparent explanation.
The railing is actually broken at one point, that matches exactly with the crossing if you want to continue Baarjesweg-Amstelveenseweg. My first idea was that it would be a case of DIY urbanism, and I pictured an annoyed anonymous citizen sawing the pipes in the middle of the night. A quick query to the historical images of Google Streetview took apart my romantic theory. At least until August 2009 the space was occupied by a traffic sign reinforcing the fact that cars can only turn right at this point. On the May 2014 image the post has disappeared, reason unknown. It could have been still an angry neighbor, but also a car accident or just the lack of maintenance.
Whatever is the explanation of the disruption in the railing, the fact is that the aperture is there and it can be used as a gateway to cross the street. But in my observation I could not see anybody crossing it (besides me). One explanation is that  the aperture is not big enough for a bike and there was very few pedestrians in the intersection, most of the people who were potential users were biking.
In the same intersection what I did observe was the fact that people bike against the traffic to cross the bridge when coming from the Baarjesweg. It actually was the majority of the routes and even a policeman in his motorbike crossed contraflow. In one hour observation I only saw two people getting off the bike to do so. On the other side, when coming from Surinameplein, if you want to turn left to take Derde Kostverlorenkade, you also have to choose between biking a little bit more or use a zebra crossing intended only for the other sense. This creates small conflicts among people, since you do not have any traffic light to know when you are able to cross and there is no waiting space for those not following the rules.
Even if the disruption is not that big, there is no apparent reason for urban designers to block this crossing. One explanation would be to improve the car flow from Overtoom and Amstelveenseweg to Surinameplein. But a zebra crossing would cause any inconvenience to cars if the traffic lights were well coordinated.
My observation in this intersection was only one hour one morning during the weekdays, and without precisely counting how many people was doing what. But Te Brömmelstroet (2014), using the tools from the danish studio Copenhagenize (2014), has recently traced almost 20.000 cyclists movements in 9 intersections in Amsterdam to analyze their behavior. This kind of studies could improve our cities by making bike lanes more safe, but they can also break some prejudices, like the often heard image of Amsterdam rogue cyclists. In average 87% of the cyclists conformed to all rules, and 7% are âmomentumistsâ: cyclists who follow their own route and adapt certain formal rules to suit their own ends, without causing any dangerous situations or conflicts.
The desire lines could be compared to De Certeau's (1984) tactics. A group of unorganized citizens using âthe art of the weakâ: creating paths just walking or biking again and again on the same place, facing the strategies that were decided for them. Everyday small acts of resistance challenging the powerful, those who use machines, technical skills, resources and authority to impose their vision.
De Certeau, M. (1984). The practice of everyday life. Berkeley: University of California Press
Gehl, J., & Svarre, B. (2013). How to study public life. Island Press.
LaCol & Medina, N. (2013). Assaig sobre assaig. [Movie] [available in: www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFw-yOzB9YQ, in Catalan, English subtitles available]
te Brömmelstroet, M. (2014). The Desire Lines of Bicycle Users in Amsterdam. Universiteit van Amsterdam / Copenhagenize Design Co. [available in: www.copenhagenize.eu/dox/Copenhagenize_Desire_Lines_Amsterdam.pdf]
van der Burg, J. (2011). Desire Lines. [Movie] [available in: vimeo.com/33178440, in Dutch, English subtitles available]
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