A new approach is needed for redeveloping peri-urban railway stations in the Netherlands, like Amsterdam Lelylaan,to solve a set of pressing issues in their specific context: the monocentric character of many of our cities, the poor quality of public space around peripheral railway stations, and the disconnection between the local and the city scale. As our country is urbanising and the influence of Transit Oriented Development (TOD) is growing, the smaller station turns into an instigator for new urban developments just outside of the ring highway in cities like Amsterdam, where 50.000 new dwellings will be realised by the year 2030, in existing built environments.
In the peri-urban sphere, at the urban fringe, stacked apartments next to station areas are offering the density that lets many more inhabitants benefit from living in the city, through the infrastructure network: living somewhere, travelling and working somewhere else, connected on a city scale. But at the moment, these peri-urban railway stations are small and outdated, and often unattractive. Spoorbouwmeester Eric Luiten (Spoorbouwmeester, 2018) points out how changes in the transit network through the years have especially impacted smaller railway stations in peripheral areas: gradually, increased efficiency and technology have resulted in ticket offices at
these stations going vacant. No more amenities are needed today at these stations than a ticket machine and a platform. These stations show that they have no social significance or added qualities, locally, which in turn reflects onto the quality of their surrounding public space. The station areas were designed only as a necessity.
The perceived issue is that the transit oriented city diminishes local values and qualities and replaces them with infrastructure, nodes and efficiency on a non-local scale. At this moment when new urban developments focus on public transport nodes, the railway station is in the middle of this change as something that is both part of the network and part of the local built environment.
Today, contrasting developments are taking place: we are designing our cities with TOD focusing on the efficiency of the connected city, but at the same time aim to enhance the quality of local public space around station buildings and peripheral neighborhoods. We are building mixed-use buildings that are extremely well connected to amenities elsewhere in the city while also offering as much as their inhabitants need inside or near the building itself. Architects and urban planners as well as Bureau Spoorbouwmeester are looking to redevelop railway stations together with their environments as an integral master plan. This integral approach was used for the first time with the NSP program for the six largest railway stations in the Netherlands. As a result of this successful program, the interweaving of station and urban plan has become a standard in the vision of Bureau Spoorbouwmeester and the appointment of a Landscape Architect as their director ensures this new policy.
With this duality of city network and local qualities, a great challenge is taking shape for the peri-urban railway station. On one hand, there is the realisation that we need to integrate the station into its local environment to enhance the quality of the surrounding public space and liveability of the neighborhood which in many cases of post-war neighborhoods is considered an issue. On the other hand these stations and new urban developments are advertising connectivity and mobility within the city network as the new way of living, a diversification of life through the possibilities of the transit oriented city and the sharing of spaces that it offers. The station area now has these two very different perspectives, but the next step should be to study these two perspectives alongside eachother, and to start blurring them: the station as the perfect mediator, offering a place that is connected to city life and at the same time extends this city life and its livelyhood into the local public sphere.