Blood, Sweat and Tears (City of the Future, Part 2)

99% Invisible · Feb 28, 2018 · 33m

The Bijlmermeer (or Bijlmer, for short) was built just outside of Amsterdam in the 1960s. It was designed by modernist architects to be a "city of the future" with its functions separated into distinct zones. To Modernists, it represented a vision of the city as a well-oiled machine Upon completion, it was a massive expanse of 31 concrete towers. There were 13,000 apartments, many of them unoccupied. Just sitting there, totally empty.

Listen to Part 1 of this story here.

In Part 2, we look at how the migration of tens of thousands of Surinamese Dutch began to give the empty place life where…