Meeting Point: Het Industriegebouw, Goudsesingel 66, 3011 KD Rotterdam Ending point: Jonker Franshof
Service courts are the hidden backstreets of the center of Rotterdam. They are part of the post-war city-block where living, working and shopping were interwoven in a new typology. On the scale of the inner city the service courts form a circuit of supply roads and transhipment areas. With the shift from goods to services and new urban logistics, the supply function has become less dominant. This, in combination with the trend to give cars less space, calls for a re-evaluation of the service courts; as a reservoir of public space for climate adaptation and encounters. During this session the participants will explore Rotterdam in a totally different way and we will collectively discover the potential of these public spaces by questioning: How can these underused spaces, with a total area of 25 soccer fields, be used to increase the diversity of public spaces, routes and living environments? We end the tour in a service court which functions as one example of temporary activation; we will discuss the strong points of this interventions and the points of improvement. This reflection will be a valuable part of our overall evaluation of this pilot project (running during the month of September).
