Socio-economic and spatial re-organization of Albert Cuypmarkt

Abstract

The project investigates how to include the low-income groups into wealth-generating economic structures of the city and how to increase their use of the socio-economically advantaged urban locations. The investigation is carried out through re-organization and production of urban and architectural space and it aims to bring together questions of spatial quality, rental rates, working hours, flexibility, building materials, construction costs, and income levels, for the generation of a proposal for intervention. Albert Cuypmarkt in Amsterdam is chosen as the site for this intervention, since it is an important wealth-generating urban structure, which is currently inaccessible to the low-income vendors, and therefore which favors solely the middle to high-income groups. The spatial characteristics, working mechanism, economic organization and temporal dynamics of the market cause this condition to sustain. The proposal is based on the differentiation of the commercial units in their spatial quality, rental rates, working hours and temporal flexibility, which allows to differentiate the target income group for each commercial unit and therefore to create possibilities for the low-income to become a vendor. The configuration of the commercial units at urban scale is based on the principle of spatial transformation of the market at different hours of the day in order to create socio-economic and programmatic opportunities from the temporal dynamics of the market space. It is expected that as a result of this intervention, different income groups will co-exist in the same urban space generating urban wealth from one single economic structure, opportunities will be created for the low-income groups to climb up the income ladder in the society, and the economic investment made in urban space will benefit the low-income groups as equally as it benefits the others. The posters 1 and 2 should be viewed, not as one poster following the other, but as one poster put next to the other. This is important for the comprehension of the material in its continuity