Heiloo Zandzoom (local authority)

The Zandzoom (sand ridge) is an elevated part of the landscape that includes a number of villages, among them Limmen and Heiloo. To meet the demand for a green residential environment, the provincial and local authorities decided in 2004 that the agrarian area between the villages should be transformed into a residential landscape. The provincial authority also wants to invest the revenue from this in the rural area (red for green).

In 2013 we drew up a plan for Zandzoom Limmen, a new residential district between the existing ribbon strips in the village of Limmen. Inspired by this plan, the Heiloo local authority invited us to draw up a plan for the agrarian area between Heiloo and Limmen, the Heiloo Zandzoom. The local authority has based the idea of this residential landscape on the concept of organic urban design, which means that the tempo of development depends on market demand. This calls for a flexible spatial framework to safeguard the spatial quality while leaving sufficient scope for investors to develop initiatives. To ensure that the separate plans to be developed for subsidiary projects have sufficient quality and coherence, an urban development plan is required that forms a bridge between the current directive plans and the specific filling in of the subsidiary areas. This urban development plan must be flexible enough to accommodate changes in the future, bearing in mind that Heiloo Zandzoom will probably be developed over a long period of several decades.

Strootman therefore drew up an outline urban development plan, combined with a toolkit in a visual supervisory plan containing rules of play for the development of four secondary areas. This makes it possible to respond to the situation each time a subsidiary plan is developed without making concessions to the quality of the whole.

The new residential neighbourhoods to be built beside and between the historical ribbon development of Heiloo are explicitly designed to match the quality of what is already there. This means that the address of the new neighbourhoods is situated as far as possible on the ribbon development, but also that the layout of the neighbourhoods is strongly inspired by the qualities of that ribbon development. Agrarian fields remain in use between the new neighbourhoods. These landscape windows and the large green zones in the neighbourhoods themselves will ensure that there is enough open space in Heiloo Zandzoom. The area will thereby retain the character of an agrarian landscape.