This is an essay I wrote for my Urban Political Ecology class, for which we were tasked to exemplify how Amsterdam’s wealth was built (and is maintained) through local and global relations of environmental exploitation (past and present). The example I chose was the BIjlmer neighbourhood, as I had become fascinated by its history after working there and watching this youtube video.

Thus my goal was to explore how the Bijlmer is a microcosm of the social and environmental relationships that shape the city of Amsterdam, and it made me realize how many places that are part of my everyday life relate to these complex and global phenomena.

It is important that we make light of these relationships because this knowledge fertilizes the ground that allowds for new ideas to grow. By knowing that the Bijlmer’s reputation comes from the fact that Surinamese migrants were pushed to populate it, you can make the conscious choice to not uphold this idea. It is through the knowledge of the architectural choices made during the Bijlmer’s construction that we realize what a neighbourhood needs in order to promote social relations.

The case of the Bijlmer exemplifies how the Amsterdam city demands the metabolic and social transformation of nature for its expansion and wealth accumulation (Kaika 2012). Named after the former Bijlmermeer lake, the area reflects the city’s historical manipulation of landscapes, as the lake was drained in the 1620s for population growth and grain production, only to be refilled and redrained repeatedly based on urban demands (Amsterdam Cultural Historical Association 2023). The Amsterdam of the 1960s once again relied on Bijlmer to fulfil its expansionist plans, which lead to 30 hectares of grassland being expropriated and raised with 11,500,000 cubic metres of sand (Amsterdam Cultural Historical Association 2023). The area was promoted as a modernist dream: honeycomb buildings with park-like spaces between them and elevated traffic flow (Wassenberg 2021). However, the modernist architecture created dangerous blind spots instead of cosy spaces, fostering pollution, degradation, vandalism, and lack of safety. Moreover, the envisaged inhabitants, middle-class families, wished to stay in the more classical Amsterdam homes. Because of the 30% turnover rate, the dwellings were allocated to the thousands of recently arrived Surinamese migrants (Wassenberg 2021).

This history still lends Bijlmer the reputation of the only “Dutch ghetto”, even though its reality has much improved (Aalbers 2010). The area is safer and part of Amsterdam’s circular economy programme, and grassroots initiatives are revitalizing its green spaces, once blamed for facilitating crime (Mazzarella and Remoy 2021; Wassenberg 2021). Residents of Kleiburg building formed neighbourhood ties and care for a shared urban garden, while the VBAZO Project in the K-buurt has created an urban food forest, fostering community ties, safety, and biodiversity (VBAZO, n.d.). In the H-buurt a Community Land Trust (CLT) association is also fomenting the relationship between residents between each other and the neighbourhood by giving them a voice in rules about, among other things, allocation policy and sustainability (CLT H-Buurt, n.d.). With 80% of the Bijlmer now comprising green and public spaces, such initiatives are helping to address its legacy of environmental exploitation and are viewed by residents as the area’s greatest asset (Nieuwe Instituut 2021).

Moving forward, the environmental impact of the community initiatives in the Bijlmer could be explored and promoted by the city. At the policy level, there should be a serious push towards lowering Amsterdam’s carbon emissions to stop the ongoing atmospheric colonialism to at least compensate for the environmental exploitation of the past.