Open and Closed Figures in Dutch Spatial Planning

Thanks to their strong evocative power, figures of speech—rhetorical expression that uses language in a nonliteral way—have always been part of the urban vocabulary, facilitating visions and urban projects. This chapter addresses the reasons for, and methods of using figures of speech in urban planning, using the Netherlands as a case study. The reading of the various rhetorical devices will be based on the proposed distinction—one of the many possible—between closed and open figures, that is between those figures based on the definition of shape or structure and those that instead express an open structure and a relational scheme. The figures will be described in terms of their specific characteristics, contexts and fields of action. This analysis recognises different historical tendencies in the use of figures in urban planning, strictly related to the specific need to manage or drive territorial transformations. Among the specifically Dutch-born figures, the patchwork metaphor will be analysed in depth, especially as proposed by Willem Jan Neutelings in his 1989 Patchwork Metropolis project, and further investigated in terms of the abstract model and its implicit meanings, related to a certain way of living and transforming the urban territory.