Westerpark, Breda: an example of sustainable urban development

The fortified watercity of Breda lost its defensive role due to changes in methods of warfare. So in 1870 the fortifications were dismantled. This freed up a lot of space around the very dense urban core. The moats were filled in and levelled with soil from the ramparts. City gates, walls and bastions were torn down and some roads were widened. Van Gendt planned the change from city defences  into wide boulevards with villas.

As the city limits only reached to the edge of the field of fire around the fortifications, the city officials, eager to realize large-scale expansion, looked beyond at the neighbouring villages. It would take until 1927 before the villages of Princehage (= The Prince's Hague), Ginneken and a large part of Teteringen (The Polder Hoge Vught and Heusdenhout) were annexed by the central city. The local council had already had plans drawn up so building work started immediately. One of the new housing estates built was called Tuinzigt (= Garden View) named after a mansion of the same name located not far from a Kolfbaan (= Mall). The estate was developed as part of the Plan Schaap, a plan for urban expansion beyond the old city limits drawn up by an urban planner from Arnhem. Building work started in earnest in 1935, although the first streets had been developed in 1920 (within the old city limits), 1927 and 1931. Further additions were completed in 1948 and 1963. After that a 30 year moratorium on development was agreed. Thus the area west of Tuinzicht remained a lovely rural fragment within the city with scattered farms, some houses, fields, meadows and hedges.

This idyll wouldn't last, of course, as developers -with the moratorium in mind- were buying up land from 1990 onwards. The local council and central government with the standing planning policy of concentrated urban development earmarked this "unsightly semi-rural mess" as key strategic development area. At the same time plans were being made for a high-speed railway line linking Amsterdam and Brussels via Antwerp. The preferred route ran along the motorway west of Breda and required vast changes to the local infrastructure. These forces combined resulted in the development of the industrial estates of Steenakker and Baanzicht, the housing estates of Heilaar and Westerpark, and the Kruisvoort Shopping Mall. Only the hamlet of Overbroek remains as a densely built up winding street that in bound on all sides by industrial estates, the railway, the motorway and the eastern edge of the commuter village of Prinsenbeek (= Prince's Brooke).

The city of Breda comprises of the historic urban core (B) within the former city moat that was transformed into a strolling park with tree-lined belt road with adjacent the formerly independent villages of Teteringen (T), Dorst (D), Bavel (Ba), Ginneken (G), Prinsenhage (Ph), Prinsenbeek (Pb) and Terheiden (Th) and the large urbanisations -comprising of several housing estates- of Hoge Vugt (Hv), Haagse Beemden (Hb) and Heusdenhout (H).West of the housing estate of Tuinzicht (1) the Esterpark Estate (2) is situated with the Heilaar Estate (3) and the employment areas of Steenakker (4), Baanzicht (5) and Kruisvoort (6).

In the spring of 1996 work started on the new housing estate of Westerpark. This was the first such estate in Breda to be developed with maximum emphasis on durability and the environmental impact. This focus was a was aimed at generating agreement from local people who -rightly so- contested the decision to not renew the moratorium on development, as they greatly valued their greenbelt. As a result a park was included and there was an emphasis on increasing the "natural value" of the area by creating specific habitats and building a sustainable urban drainage system incorporating several streams that already ran through the area. The result was an example project, however it is much less coherent than "In Goede Aarde", a later similar development. The Westerpark Estate was developed as an annex to the Tuinzicht Estate, and has no amenities of its own.

To emphasize the ecological aspect of the development the name Westerpark (=West Park) was chosen. In addition all the street names have been named after butterflies. Some  of teh housing isn't located on a suburban street accessible to car traffic but on a so-called "woonpad" (housing alley) that is only accessible to slow traffic i.e. pedestrians and cyclists.

The Westerpark Estate in Breda is a large housing estate with both terraced housing, a few semidetached houses and villas, and flats in high apartment blocks. It is an excellent example of the mixed standard of Dutch housing estates with 34% social rented, 25% affordable and 41% more expensive (aimed at middle-income couples, so by no means upper-end). Some 3.500 people live in 1.400 houses and flats. The layout is fairly typical of Dutch urban design of the period, with housing with a postmodern flavour set along streets or in some cases aggregating around small public greens. Building height varies, so does the colour of the building materials and the roof shapes. Thus several neighbourhoods can be distinguished, each with its own set of characteristic architectural features. Another distinct feature is the excellent permeability for slow traffic combined with no through-traffic for cars in every neighbourhood. These features in combination with a rather contrived mixing of terraced housing and "linked semidetached houses" has been a feature of urban design in the Netherlands since the late 1970s.

The Westerpark Estate comprises of two sections, north and south of a central park (P) with a large artificial water retention lake (L). A stream runs through the estate -partly as a formalised canal (C)-connecting it to the complicated water system in and around the city of Breda. In the southern -more low-lying and thus originally wetter- section provisions had to be made to compensate for the loss of hydrological buffer capacity after development. Here a system of gullies (in light blue) were excavated that fill up with rainwater that in part drains away into the soil replenishing ground water levels, but in extreme weather conditions can be directed towards connected water courses. The new ring road (R) forms the boundary of the estate on the west side. Two pre-existing farms (f) were incorporated. A very notable feature is the inclusion of two rows of postmodern reinterpretations of the Mulhouse Quadrangle (M).