To address the challenges in today's housing market, we are building very specifically for what we need today, observes Jan Willem van de Groep in this Sightline. But those homes will still be there in a hundred years and times will have changed.
We build homes as if we have the future at our fingertips. As if we can flawlessly predict how we will live, work, travel and grow old fifty years from now. But precisely there, in that pretense of predictability, is where Dutch area development goes fundamentally wrong.
Our current system is addicted to specification. We build starter homes, senior housing and tiny houses: residential products for one specific target group, dictated by today's market surveys. We optimize these homes down to the millimeter. Smaller, more efficient and cheaper. It fits exactly within today's business case, but it is often unsuitable for tomorrow's dynamics.
Buildings are living longer than our predictions
The homes we deliver today will probably still be there in 100 years. By then, our households and mobility will have changed beyond recognition. Moreover, we often build today with yesterday's climate knowledge. While the 22nd century calls for buildings that can withstand extreme heat, flooding and rising sea levels, we still design as if climate is a static factor. We are building for the standards of 2025, while the real challenges only become at their sharpest after 2050.
The big stumbling block is our linear thinking. We approach residential construction as a process with a beginning and an end: from drawing board to yield. In that straight line from A to B, there is no room for the circle of time. We see a building as a finished product rather than a living part of a changing city. That system error traps us in short cycles, while the city has a breathing of centuries.
To bring back that timeless quality, we must dare to make three fundamental shifts.
1. From optimization to excess
We need to stop seeing excess as inefficiency. A home that fits exactly for a current single-person household will be a bottleneck 20 years from now. By building with more height, solid support structures and flexible floor plans, we create buildings that can move with us. That is the highest form of sustainability: a building that does not have to be demolished when the family composition or function changes.
2. Designing for the 22nd century
Climate adaptation is not an extra, but the basics. It requires robustness of the entire neighborhood. We need physical margin for water collection, cooling and greenery. By reserving space now for scenarios that won't become reality for another 80 years, we build in true resilience.
3. From free market to public value
Perhaps the most important step is to move away from the idea that we can leave area development entirely to liberal market thinking. The free market is by definition focused on the now, on quick profit and maximum land exploitation. But the future cannot be captured in a quarterly figure.
Freedom from speculation on the back of the future is telling yourself that you are free now. In reality, by doing so we are organizing tomorrow's unfreedom. Every euro we save now by cutting out flexibility and quality is a bill we pass on to future generations. If we continue to maximize land value at the start, we deprive ourselves of the financial space for a robust living environment.
The real question is not how do we build as efficiently as possible for today's people. The question is: how do we build something that also works for the people we don't know today?
Let's stop building for target groups. Let's start building for time again.
