Forewords: This essay is the draft of a brief proposal for my bachelor thesis, whose word
count will be 5000 - 7500. I’m still preparing for my thesis, which will be submitted by next
summer. I can’t present the full text for the application of the conference. This is what I’ve come
up with so far.
Unlearning the LA school’s model: The Randstad as a Mutation of
Californian Postmodernity
Frank Xu
This essay is not going to address a particular urban problem such as energy or mobility.
Instead, it aims to provide a new model or perspective as an alternative to the existing LA
school’s. However, I’m not going to arbitrarily determine a specific model. Instead, I wish to
inspire reflections and criticism over the Randstad as a metropolitan ethos.
The LA school emerged at the end of the last century, challenging the concentric circle model
proposed by the Chicago school. The Chicago school could be understood as the modernist in
the realm of urban planning, while the LA school the postmodernists. The LA school criticized
the concept of CBD by the Chicago school, providing a more diversified typology of urban
spaces, such as exopolis, dual city, hybrid city, ect. (Dear, 2002). The LA school exposed the
messy, dystopian post-capitalist scene of Los Angeles and its surrounding areas in Southern
California. LA as an urban phenomenon seldom fails to touch the antennas of the Europeans,
especially in the Netherlands that is famous for its ‘sustainable, comfortable planning.’ Rather,
the Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas had felt different long before: ‘I have had the feeling that the
major Dutch cities (with Amsterdam in the lead) deny out of sentimental considerations the fact
that they are part of a larger whole (an area as large and diffuse as Los Angeles) and as such
completely ignore a dimension of an entirely different order from the one which they
traditionally know.’ (Rem Koolhaas, in Amsterdam: An Architectural Lesson, 1988: 112). The
dwellers of the low land haven't been aware that they are living in the mirage that mutated from
the Californian postmodernity.
First, the Randstad demonstrated a mutated geographic structure of LA. Edward Soja pointed
out that Amsterdam could not be seen solitarily. Instead, it should be analyzed in the context of
its surroundings, which sprawls into an area as large as LA. This idea originally came from
Koolhaas, who stated in his chapter Unlearning Holland from his book S, M, L, XL that the
Randstad forms a centrifugal, decentralized structure, with the four major cities on the
periphery and the nature, known as the ‘Green Heart’, in the center. Periphery development is
an important characteristic of LA school’s urban structure. With the relentless sprawl and
capitalization, areas like Santa Monica formed a space heterogenous to the center - ironically,
the actual center could not be identified, which, intuitionistically, does not exist. The Randstad
demonstrates a more extreme scene of peripheral development. The spaces at the peripheries
has developed into several of the biggest metropolises in Europe. However, hindered by the
border, the sea, and the Sierra Nevada, LA can’t continue its geographical sprawl anymore (in a
globalist sense it does). While the Randstad leaves its shadow on the south of the country,
leaving the north with barrenness. This is what Koolhaas called the ‘southern cities’ and the
‘point cities.’ The Randstad gathers the point cities as flourishing anomalies, while the south
gathers the southern cities, which are incorporated to a larger economic agglomeration around
the Rhine valley.
Like Los Angeles, the Randstad has produced the ‘interdictory spaces’ as well. As migration
increases, the racial tension gradually arises in the metropolises. Meanwhile, inequality and
housing crisis have also excluded some people from the most basic need: living. In 1992,
squatting was still legal and IDs were even not enforced. The absence of ID enforcement enabled
more people to access the city, such as taking a free ride of public transportation. However, as
the metropolises are more gentrified, privatized, and commercialized, the rights to city are
threatened to be deprived again. Squatting is made illegal, while the ticket price of NS is among
the highest in western Europe. In addition, the welfare system seems not to outplay the
capitalistic approach. Koolhaas ironically described Bijlmer as the Las Vegas of welfare. The
government provided all the remedies to the migrant-hub in a short time, resulting in an
aesthetically undesirable place somewhat similar to Soja’s ‘Plain of ID,’ a space without identity,
a space with extreme homogeneity. Although everything’s here, everything seemed to remain
unsolved.
While discussing the characteristics of the LA urban structure, Michael Dear also proposed three
other terms, globalization, post-Fordist regime of accumulation, and politics of nature. The
post-Fordist regime refers to the small-scale production incorporated into the economic cluster.
In LA, it was mainly labor-intensive manufacturing and high-tech corporations. There are a
considerable number of tech companies in the Netherlands as well. Nevertheless, being the
global businessman for centuries, the Netherlands gathers a lot of companies for business,
finance, outsourcing, consulting, ect. A lot of alumni of my college went to those firms and they
jokingly refer to their work as ‘vagueness and nonsense.’ As you drive along the A4 highway,
from the periphery to the heart of the Randstad, you could see such corporations spreading over
the land, just like the factories outside LA. Here, globalization and post-Fordist regime of
accumulation are intertwined. People from everywhere gather in the Dutch suburbs, working for
clients all over the world remotely. Dear also mentioned social control when it comes to the
post-Fordist regime of accumulation. In Dutch metropolises, certain communities are founded
on a big company, with which the dwellers bargain for services. The corporate culture, which
secures employment, together with the gentrification as mentioned before, leads to a tender
surrender. Koolhaas would love to categorize the Randstad as generic cities as well, where
urbanism moves toward ‘tropicality’. The confusing term, in my opinion, was elaborated later in
the same chapter: the reality that it’s always climatically ‘sunny’ in generic cities, the only cloud
being people’s anxiety. The Netherlands is notorious for its weather conditions, while it is
common to see relentless parties along the streets after work in a murky, depressing day. Yet the
anxiety due to increasing working hours and other factors is always left behind and overlooked.
The politics of nature can’t be any real here. Just a year ago, angry farmers invaded the urban
Randstad on tractors. Different from the air pollution in LA, the nitrogen crisis is not merely an
ecological problem anymore. It entails a more complex problem of equity and responsibility -
not so simple as justice vs. injustice, ecology vs. production, or left vs. right. The left struggled in
finding a balance between the environment and the less privileged farmers (well, some could be
agricultural firms.), leaving opportunities for the populist BBB. Meanwhile, ‘human-engineered’
nature has always been a controversy on nature in the Netherlands. If the human-engineered
nature could not be counted as nature, the ‘Green Heart’ might degrade into the ‘sites’
(mentioned by Koolhaas on generic cities) without all three aesthetic elements: building, road,
and nature.
To argue that the Randstad is a mutation of the Californian postmodern space, I could list much
more aspects by referring to the works of other LA-school scholars. It is not practical for me to
depict the entire picture of the mutation in a short time, and it remains controversial whether
the mutation is valid. I genuinely welcome thought-provoking discussions, where we can
discover other paradigms for the messy Randstad.
So here’s my suggestion for the workshop
Workshop: a Think Tank to frame the Randstad
1. Sharing your experience in the Randstad if you’ve ever lived/been to
2. Reading Michael Dear’s paper Los Angeles and the Chicago School: Invitation to a
Debate
3. Rethinking your experience after the reading.
4. Preparing a short presentation around 5 mins for the three questions: a) Do you think
my argument is valid? Motivate your answers. b) What else model/paradigm could you
come up with for Randstad? c) Will the Randstad be the next LA for academic research: a
prototype, a hub, and a landmark in the history of urban planning?
5. Presentation, Q&A session
References
Dear, M. (2002). Los Angeles and the Chicago School: Invitation to a Debate. City and
Community, 1(1), 5–32. https://doi.org/10.1111/1540-6040.00002
Rem Koolhaas, Mau, B., & Office For Metropolitan Architecture. (1998). S, M, L, Xl. Monacelli
Press.
Soja, E. W. (1996). Thirdspace : journeys to Los Angeles and other real-and-imagined places.
Blackwell Publ.
