BosBus

Mobile Nature Preserve / Mobiel Natuurreservaat

by Ton Matton, Vincent Kuypers and Wim Timmermans


Preface
by dr. André van der Zande

The BosBus (also informally called the ‘Jungle Bus’ or the ‘mobile nature reserve’) raised quite a few eyebrows during the Rotterdam Architecture Biennale in 2003. Many people took advantage of the bus as transport between the exhibitions, and many also took part in debates on the bus. School groups, pensioners and architects were all among the passengers. The phenomenon did not go unnoticed at the Guinness Book of Records.Alterra submitted the bus as the fastest nature reserve in the world.With its top speed of 85 kilometres per hour, it would surely have taken the record,but the category neither exists nor is likely to be introduced in the foreseeable future. The BosBus gives food for thought about the importance of green space in the urban environment.The Netherlands has an ambitious government policy in this area. Nota Ruimte, the 2002 policy document on spatial planning, recommends 75 square metres of public green space per dwelling in the city.The Grote Steden Beleid (Policy for Main Cities) considers green space in and around cities, in urban restructuring and in urban extension. It endorses green belts around the cities as the best urban green structure for the future.A shortage now implies high costs and huge efforts at a later stage. A working visit to Paris by Agriculture Minister Veerman together with councillors from a number of large Dutch municipalities convinced them that issues of green space are broader than the traditional environmental responsibilities of government departments. Green space can contribute to solving or at least reducing major social problems.A green neighbourhood is more liveable.The quality of a neighbourhood is vastly improved by additional greenery.A care institution functions better in green surroundings.Parc de Bercy, Promenades de Plantées and Parc André Citroën all show us that we have to invest in green pearls if we want to have a creative, and especially a complete, city.

During the Biennial, the BosBus was the vehicle for confrontations between greenery and society.The green city was probed and discussed in an atmosphere that varied from creativity to intrigue and conflict.How is the idea of a green city received by a world historian, an architect, and economist, a spatial planner or a real estate developer? This book reflects the diversity of views. It links architecture, art, society, green space and urban ecology. What meaning does nature have in the city? What happens when 75 square metres of nature are propelled on four wheels by a diesel engine?

I would like to conclude with an appeal. In his book Guns, Germs and Steel, Jared Diamond considers interactions between civilization, the development of agriculture and the way we treat nature. He points out that our modern civilization, with its agriculture and cities, has existed for no more than the last six minutes on a notional timescale of 24 hours for the whole of human evolution.The interaction between urban civilization and nature is unavoidably one that entails both minor and major catastrophes. In later writings,Diamond has argued that countless thriving civilizations have declined and vanished during that six minutes.This process results from environmental degradation, climate change,wars between states and peoples, in combination with the culture of the society.The culture is relevant because it determines whether the society recognize the threats and problems facing it in time to do anything about them.Maintaining a healthy ecosystem within the city as well as outside it is, in my view, a matter of culture.