The river project turning Breda from grey to green

For nearly 40 years, councillors in the Dutch city of Breda who belonged to the D66 political party ended every council meeting with the same message: “We think the harbour and the River Nieuwe Mark have to be reopened.”

The harbour and river in question are the confluence of the Mark and Aa Rivers, which give the city its name: brede Aa in Dutch means the “wide Aa” or “broad Aa.” The river and its harbour were once the lifeblood of Breda’s steel industry, but priorities changed with the advent of the automobile in the post-war era. In the 1950s, city leaders chose to pave over the harbour and divert the river to man-made canals. In 1966, Breda became home to Europe’s first underground parking garage.

With their constant refrain, the D66 councillors were early adopters of what later became a common attitude. “At the end of the last century, people realised they had made a planning mistake,” said Roel Klei, project leader for the municipal effort to daylight the River Nieuwe Mark. “You don’t want cars in the city centre.”

Green gateway

In 2007, the persistent councillors got their wish. The Dutch military vacated an installation along the paved harbour and the municipality moved to correct its nearly 60-year-old mistake. The River Nieuwe Mark saw daylight once again and began flowing freely through the centre of Breda.

“For our city, it was a special thing to do because you don’t make a new river every day,” said Klei. Over the decade since Breda residents could stroll the banks of the River Nieuwe Mark once again, the city centre has blossomed with new residential properties, hotels, cafes, and restaurants along the river. Small boats dock in the harbour and locals recreate on stand-up paddleboards from an artificial beach. The increased street life and economic activity has diminished drug trafficking and city centre violence.

“The whole west side of the city centre came to life again,” said Klei.

But uncovering the river was not enough to satisfy Breda residents, who clamoured for more nature in the city. The typical Dutch waterway is lined by stone quays with hardly a plant in sight. Stef Goedhart, a 39-year-old multimedia designer who lives in walking distance of the riverfront, was one of those critics. “The city centre is the hottest place in town in summer and also one of the hottest places in Holland,” he said. “For a city, Breda is quite green, but there is also a lot of stone. There is more need to green up areas.”

The call for more greenery was heard loud and clear at city hall. “When the city was criticised for too much stone, it changed the mind of our designers and we searched for funding and design partners to help us with a more green, climate-adapted, biodiverse design,” said Klei.

Living wall

Thus was born the Green Quays Breda initiative in 2018 under the auspices of the Breda Department of Spatial Planning. The municipal agency forged a partnership with the Delft University of Technology (TU Delft), the country’s leading technical university, to design a quay that could accommodate vegetation growing vertically along the stone wall. TU Delft ultimately came up with a design that layers sheetpile, a concrete wall, and stones on the wall. There is a substrate between the stone and the concrete to nourish plants and seeds.

“This is a paradigm shift, the first time that we look not just at the water but regard the walls along the water as a potential new vertical ecosystem,” said Netherlands-based architecture critic Tracy Metz. “The typical urban quay is a hardscape made of bricks. And indeed, just like with dikes, the traditional response has been to keep them free of vegetation, as roots can undermine the structural integrity of both the innards of the dikes and the masonry of the quays.”

With centuries-old water infrastructure beginning to crumble across Holland, Metz believes that Breda’s innovation could be broadly applicable for public works across the low countries.

The design is currently in a test phase, with 12 panels installed along the river for one year to observe how well they both nurture plant life and maintain their structural integrity. In May 2021, the test was about halfway complete. The 12 panels cost €200,000 (S$233,000) total. Breda has a goal of expanding to a length of 175 metres along both sides of the river at a cost of €2.5 million. The total project cost is estimated at €35 million, with two-thirds of the funding already allocated by the European Union and local government contributions.

Metz questions this potentially high cost. “Of course this is innovative, and experiments are always expensive, but I still can’t help wondering whether the ecological contribution of these green quays merits such major expense,” she said. “We have to ask ourselves: what other climate mitigation or adaptation investments could we have done with big bucks like this?”

For everyday citizens, however, the benefits so far outweigh the costs. “It’s nice to see how it’s growing even though it’s just an experiment,” Goedhart said. “With the new green walls, you can bring wildlife back and cool down the area with the new green quays.”

Breda is one of 15 finalists in the Guangzhou Awards. The winners will be announced later this year. The biennial Guangzhou Award was launched in 2012 and is run in partnership with the City of Guangzhou, China; United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG); and the World Association of the Major Metropolises (Metropolis). It recognises innovation in social, economic and environmental issues and aims to share best practices between cities globally.