WiMBY! Renewing a New Town

The International Building Exhibition (IBE) Rotterdam-Hoogvliet opened in 2001 with WiMBY! as its leading theme. Hoogvliet, a satellite town near Rotterdam is a model for the urban planning ideals during the period of post-war reconstruction in the Netherlands. However, the latest developments in the field of urban planning demand a far-reaching restructuring of the original layout of the town. One of the biggest obstacles for contemporary urban planning and urbanism is the NiMBY phenomenon (Not in My Backyard). This stands for the urban dweller’s individual fear of collectivity, of everything that is strange or new.

WiMBY! (Welcome into My Backyard) is the motto of a new design and organisation culture that seeks out this very complexity in order to realise new possibilities. It stands for an urban ethics in which changes and additions are seen as a potential source of enrichment for the resident. The objective of the Rotterdam-Hoogvliet IBE, which will continue through 2010, is to increase international recognition for Rotterdam’s urban planning and architecture, and make a potentially crucial contribution to the redefinition of Hoogvliet as a sustainable and attractive living and working environment. The scale, complexity and duration of the urban restructuring of Hoogvliet make it unique in the Netherlands and exemplary of many urban conditions throughout the world. That is what makes WiMBY! a quest to discover a potential future for all those New Towns, satellite towns, Trabantenstädte, Garden Cities, Villes Nouvelles and growth hubs that have been built in the twentieth century.

Michelle Provoost
was trained as an architectural historian and co-founded the Rotterdam-based office of Crimson in 1994. She wrote articles for national and international magazines and was auhor and/or editor of the Crimson-books "Re-Arch", "Re-Urb", "Mart Stam's Trousers", and "To blessed to be depressed". Recently she became a Ph.D with a publication on Hugh Maaskant and Dutch modernist architecture from the fifties and sixties. Since 2001 she has been one of the directors of WiMBY!, a social and physical developement project in a sixties New Town near Rotterdam.