Kerkrade-West as a place to test another future
(re)CYCLE Limburg documents the first phase of an intensive design and research process in Kerkrade-West. Developed through an interfaculty project at Zuyd University of Applied Sciences, the booklet brings together early reflections, analyses, maps, drawings, collages and design strategies from students in Built Environment, Facility Management, Social Work and Health & Care. We approached the neighbourhood not as a finished physical object, but as a place with rhythms, life cycles, losses, traces and room to be reimagined.
The work grows from Limburg’s wider transition after coal mining declined. Kerkrade-West faces population decline, ageing, unemployment, outdated homes and vacant shops and houses. It also has residents, shopkeepers, entrepreneurs, a municipality and a housing corporation with local knowledge and a willingness to act. We saw that top-down redevelopment can struggle to support local initiative, so we used a living-lab approach: research by design, tactical interventions and active involvement to test a future with people, not merely for them.
Public space as a shared resource
Public space became our central lens. In many twentieth-century Parkstad neighbourhoods, outdoor areas are maintained but mainly serve traffic, parking or visual greenery. Their social and cultural potential can remain unused, or even become associated with nuisance. We argue that a genuinely shared and attractive public realm can support social interaction, wellbeing, local identity, sustainability and community resilience.
We selected three locations in Kerkrade-West for closer analysis and design testing. The workshop asked what residents mean by public space, which forms it has now, how it could change, what new identity and functions might emerge, which barriers stand in the way and who can take action. Mapping across scales was combined with creative, socially aware proposals. The interventions were deliberately light and low-cost, but designed to create lasting effects.
The booklet is not simply a collection of student projects. It positions Kerkrade-West as a place for real tactical-urbanism experiments, where ideas can be developed and built with the community. For us, ‘recycling’ means more than materials: it means working with buildings, infrastructure, vacant sites, public spaces, local knowledge and daily relationships that already exist.