ADMINISTRATIVE ADVICE AND STRATEGIC NARRATIVE FOR THE MRA LANDSCAPE (2019)

Marinke Steenhuis

development cartography and visualisation: ‘The MRA in time and space’: Berte Daan

commissioned by: MRA office, Action Programme Metropolitan Landscape

The Amsterdam Metropolitan Area is a collaboration of 31 municipalities and two provinces, focusing on the major challenges for the future such as housing, energy, infrastructure, water and food. Working on the landscape is a cultural task, which over the centuries has led to a phenomenal level of stratification in the wet MRA delta, bordered by the higher sandy soils of dunes and the Gooi area. Marinke was asked to advise the administrators on the course to be followed in respect of the MRA landscape, in view of the fact that the landscape is the place where all these tasks come together. The product is a strategic narrative, an analysis and interpretation of the historical development of the landscape as designed over the centuries. A strategic narrative provides recollection, comfort, insight and interpretation, so that future assignments can be viewed jointly instead of separately. The study made it clear that revenue models and accelerations of and in the landscape have shaped the MRA, as the MRA landscape represents a succession of soil cultivations and, consequently, earning capacity – ranging from fish and peat to villa districts and solar panel areas. And the accelerations, the innovations of tow barge and train, but also canals and the Housing Act, keep creating new earning models in the metropolitan region. Around Amsterdam, the landscape ‘specialises’, tailored to the needs of the city. In 2020 the narrative will be made into a film by Museum TV.