Written by Sven Schneider
On a Thursday morning, our group explored Emmen, a municipality with different structural qualities, ranging from higher trafficked streets with storefronts hosted in modernist buildings to single-family home neighborhoods. This reflection is based mainly on material related to structures instead of interactions since we did not meet a lot of people during our fieldwork, and when we did, we also lacked a bit of experience in engaging with pedestrians in an insightful manner.
Through Emmen runs a main traffic axis, occasionally slightly elevated to the living areas. The environment and the people within it have to give way to the traffic that flows through Emmen, on a street with a gradient, leading up to the point where it meets the sky. And along the way: a notable high amount of hairdressers, beauty salons, and travel agents.
In contrast to the main traffic axis, we found a different environment in one of the living areas. It felt cleaner and quieter. But also, in this seemingly unexciting environment, there were some surprising hints.
From this experience, I take the impression that Emmen has been designed primarily to drive through but not necessarily to live in. Furthermore, the observations left me with multiple (related?) questions, with some of which I would like to end this reflection.
- How does it come that there is such a homogenous service offering? Is there a demand for that from the people living in Emmen?
- Why are some single-family homes signaling a longing to be protected?
- As some infrastructure seems poorly maintained, is there an issue related to low-tax incomes?
- And what would all that imply for a transition towards renewable energy?