Make your Citypaints a fascinating picture of 20 years of urban pioneering, along with the lessons that can be drawn from them.
In 1999, a varied group of people ranging from skateboarders to theatre makers and mothers on benefits move into the then abandoned shipbuilding warehouse at the NDSM shipyard in Amsterdam-Noord. Under their own steam, they develop a future strategy for the building and its environment that focuses on redevelopment rather than demolition and creates spaces for small manufacturing businesses and artists while advocating continuity rather than temporary use as well as self-management through ownership. They believe cities and buildings to be wholes: shells that can be used flexibly, their use changing time and again without the need to erase the past. Despite zealous market parties, political complications and financial problems, the initiators are still true to their objectives 20 years later.
