Sim City

On Thursday, our professors took us to the 'New Towns' of the Netherlands. Our first stop was the 12 year old islands known as IJburg. The city itself is even younger, which has provided the opportunity for state-of-the-art urban planning and architecture throughout the whole area. A section of the city has been devoted (few building regulations) to architectural creativity and experiments with building materials. The first picture below is one of the many floating homes. There is a whole lake which will soon be filled with floating homes similar to this one.


The next two pictures are of a neighborhood in which the owners of the land can build whatever kind of house they want. Typically people must follow a strict code and match the other homes on the street. All but one of the houses on the street are very different from the traditional look. I think my favorite is the wood and black one in the first picture.
Overall, the city was an impressive display of todays architecture and a cool city plan. I would really like to go back and explore it a little bit more, but I doubt I will have time.
The next stop was Almere. This city was born in 1984 and has grown to be the eighth largest city in the Netherlands. Its growth is still going at a steady rate and the amount of space it has to expand in has created a really impressive city layout. The city has several central nodes all connected via an extensive bus lane and bike-path network. There are many roads that only busses are allowed to take which provides for speedy bus travel. Here again was some impressive architecture as seen in the wavy building below.
The next photo is of a really neat building set-up. These white, brown, and orange-ish homes are built on a 'green carpet'. The four sections of green carpet are up on top of a mall like shopping center. One of the sections of green carpet also has a six story appartment building, while another is a big flowing hill of grass. It was a really cool idea place, and surprisingly cheap (about $900 a month for the spacious appartments and free flying lessons).I would love to return to Almere as well and I just might go back on Friday, but we will see.