Staging Urban Experiences in Suburbia:The Case of Citadel, Almere

Urban design provides props, requisites and decors for staging the users' performances in space. Design may facilitate or impede specific ways of moving around, interacting with objects and other people, feeling, learning and sense making.The actual design may very well contradict the explicit intentions of decision makers when commissioning, financing or planning new urban environments. Our case, the building of a new city centre for the Dutch city of Almere, illustrates this point. The project was supervised by Rem Koolhaas (OMA) and aimed at branding the city as a truly urban environment with a metropolitan-like allure. The realization og the design nonetheless favors suburbanite qualities of experiencing rather than urbanite ones