Fellenoord is the name of a vast, largely uninhabited urban area that runs parallel to the railway tracks north of Eindhoven Central Station. As an urban connector between north and south, Fellenoord was, for almost a century, a vibrantly populated neighbourhood—until the bombings of the Second World War and the subsequent post-war reconstruction. The latter, in particular, led to the inexorable obliteration of almost all traces of the old urban fabric, in the name of the then much-coveted four-wheeled modernity. In what could be seen as an unintended attempt to repair history, this vast urban void will soon undergo a large-scale development plan, envisioning a densification from 500 to 15,000 inhabitants by 2040.

 

But what new and as yet unknown spaces will materialize in the yet-to-be-built Fellenoord and in the densified Eindhoven of the future? What will these new spaces look like? And what will it be like to inhabit this city-to-be? How do current city dwellers relate to the prospect of such a drastic transformation of their living environment? What needs, desires, and expectations will the 70,000 new residents bring into the future urban social fabric? This gigantic leap in scale within a single generation gives rise to strong emotions and deep uncertainty.

 

As Charles Montgomery observes in Happy City (2015), “Every urban landscape is a collection of memory- and emotion-activating symbols.” As this familiar terrain is erased and reimagined, what new memories will take root, and what symbols will rise from the void left by such a radical transformation?