Projects

From busy to bustling

Masterplan Centrumontwikkeling Bussum

Urban planning shapes the lives of residents, potentially influencing generations to come. Sustaining a vibrant city center necessitates consideration of demographics and social factors. We go a step further by incorporating a dose of inclusiveness into our approach. And in the town of Bussum, we did not achieve these efforts alone.

Client
Gemeente Gooise Meren

Location
Bussum, NL

Partners
Sweco

Size
104.000 m2

Status
Masterplan

Approach
Imagine
Navigate

Discipline
Participation
Research
Urbanism

Typology
Government/Civic
Social-Infrastructure
Urban

Partners
Sweco

Why

Preparing the future

In Bussum, a quiet, leafy commuter town midway between Amsterdam and Utrecht, the Netherlands, the local city council is carefully anticipating an upgrade of its city center. Key to this process is a roadmap for coherent center developments for the years to come. This process is being led by consultant Bureau Stedelijke Planning. Apart from the economic infrastructure of the city center, the roadmap also needs to take the social infrastructure into account. For the latter, we jumped on board the consultancy train and teamed up with Bureau Stedelijke Planning (an agency for strategic consulting, programming and project management of project and area development) to add our focus to this endeavor.

"Our contribution was to spice up the economic and demographic insights by Bureau Stedelijke Planning with our knowledge of inclusive social places."

Tessa Wennink

includi

Bussum's Renewal

Urban Revitalization

In Bussum the local city council is thoughtfully preparing for an enhancement of its city center.

How

Led by data-driven maps

Our contribution to the journey was to spice up the economic and demographic insights by Bureau Stedelijke Planning with our knowledge on inclusive social places. We created a set of data-driven maps to showcase the city center in a new light.

As we know from our heroes such as William H. Whyte (urbanist, sociologist, organizational analyst, journalist and people-watcher), Paco Underhill (environmental psychologist), Kevin Lynch (urban planner), Ray Oldenburg (sociologist), B. Joe Pine II (the author who coined the term ‘experience economy’) and many others, it’s all about the mix of ingredients that makes a city center tick.

Diverse Perspectives

Comprehensive Vision

Looking at a problem from as many different perspectives as possible, that is what we’re aiming for.

What

Social synergy

Armed with this knowledge, we created maps to show where people tend to hang out, how architectural quality is distributed throughout the center, the anticipated average time spent in various facilities and so on. These maps helped to distill a heat map of the social infrastructure – adding extra value to the report of Bureau Stedelijke Planning.

Finding a solution is best done with triangulation, or looking at a problem from as many different perspectives as possible. Adding our view on things allowed for a coherent study together with Bureau Stedelijke Planning. This study enables the city council to develop a road map with the next steps towards a more durable social infrastructure and therefore a more inclusive city center for Bussum’s community.