Leading the city; the redevelopment of Leiden Central station area based on the theory of the urbanism of networks

Planning and designing based on networks and nodes can be seen best in the bub of a railway station. The railway station area of Leiden Central must be redeveloped to incorporate a new light rail line. Therefore the station is changing, both as a node in the network of public transport and as a place in the city next to the historical centre. In this light Bertolini (Bertolini and Spit, 1998) has developed the node-place model. A balance between node and place-elements create a good working urban transport and land use system. Peek (2006) elaborates this with the types Transportation node, Connector, Urban centre and Meeting place. These perspectives equally balanced contribute to creating a coherence of node and place-elements which can lead to an increase in value. (Peek, 2006, Location synergy) The Master Thesis focuses on these four perspectives to redesign the station area in its urban layout. First they are used to compare similar station area in the network of High Speed Trains in the form of a case study and than it gives a vision to the station area of Leiden in a design as a strong urban place with a lively public space.UrbanismArchitectur