Where it’s legal to turn a footpath into a garden

World Half Full
May 13
5 min read

ENVIRONMENT/COMMUNITY

Unadorned houses and grey pavement slabs line a street in the Katendrechtse Lagendijk neighbourhood in the Charlois district the Dutch port city of Rotterdam. The very dreariness is interrupted only by a few puny trees. In summer, the street heats up quickly, and in heavy rain it’s often flooded. “It will look very different here tonight,” says Boris Stein. It’s Saturday morning and on the footpath are wheelbarrows with shovels and spades, a trailer with plants and construction sacks full of topsoil. By evening, with the help of numerous neighbours, Stein and fellow coordinator Raymond Landegent will have completely transformed this stretch of footpath. Their task: to unseal paving slabs and replace them with flower beds across a 100-metre stretch.

In the Netherlands, residents regularly tear up sealed surfaces and plant flowers in an effort to combat overheating and flooding. The government not only accepts this practice — known as tegelwippen — it supports it.

Tegelwippen is about more than just planting pretty flowers. As more and more of the planet is being sealed over — new housing estates, carparks, roads, shopping centres, airports and commercial buildings — less rainwater can seep into the ground, making them prone to flooding. And in summer cities become hotter due to the heat island effect. The European Environment Agency reports that between 2000 and 2018, around 16,000 square kilometres were sealed in the European Union, more than twice the area of the London metropolitan region. Though the annual increase has fallen slightly in recent years, around 700 square kms are still added every year — the equivalent of more than 90,000 soccer pitches. In Asia, the growth rate is even higher. And in North America, the area covered by impervious surfaces nearly doubled between 1985 and 2020.

The more cities are paved over, the greater their need for cooling and areas where rainwater can seep away and be stored. This is why in The Netherlands, residents are taking matters into their own hands.

‘Tegel’ means tile in English. ‘Wippen’ means rocking or picking up. In the last five years, Tegelwippen has developed into a mass movement across the country. The aim is to unseal as many surfaces as possible, whether in private gardens, schoolyards, driveways, public squares or footpaths.

Landegent reaches for the chisel to lever up the first paving slab. “Give me the spade, please, so I have better leverage,” he says to Stein. Then the slab comes loose. With a groan, Landegent lifts it and sets it aside. “The first paving slab is always a special moment,” he says with a smile.

Gradually, more and more people arrive. Neighbours with children come out of their houses to lend a hand, as do two young men who’ve just moved into the block.

As neighbours pass by to do their shopping, they offer friendly greetings or snap photos. A friend arrives on a cargo bike with a sound system mounted on it, and loud reggae bass creates a party atmosphere. The group of helpers becomes more and more colourful. Charlois is an immigrant neighbourhood, as evidenced by Polish grocery stores, kebab snack bars and stores selling Turkish bridal fashion.

The piles of paving slabs on the side of the road keep growing. The city council collects them free of charge. Private garden owners as well as institutions or neighbourhood groups can call up to have them taken away “All it takes is a phone call or an email,” says Landegent, the city’s representative for Tegelwippen, helping volunteers procure gardening tools, topsoil and plants at the city’s expense.

Residents can ask him for help with Tegelwippen. But they don’t have to.

In The Netherlands, anyone is allowed to clear and plant a strip of paving slabs up to 50 centimetres away from the house wall without asking the authorities. “We want as many people as possible to take responsibility for making cities greener,” explains Landegent as he rolls up a blue fibre optic cable that was buried in the sand bed under the tiles. Later, he says, they’ll lay the cable back in the bed. Doesn’t the network operator have to agree to this? Or send a fitter to supervise? Or doesn’t the homeowner at least have to be informed? Landegent smiles and shakes his head. Dutch people — who are accustomed to taking matters into their own hands — would never ask such questions, he seems to think.

Landegent’s employer, the city of Rotterdam, is among the almost 200 other cities and municipalities in the country that have taken up tegelwippen.

The practice first came about thanks to the creative agency Frank Lee from Amsterdam. “We developed the tegelwippen during a brainstorming session,” explains co-founder Eva Braaksma. “When covid broke out, the whole thing took shape. People were at home more often — and therefore in the garden a lot.” There were also no soccer matches during this time. Why shouldn’t the rival cities simply compete with each other for the number of tiles lifted? Frank Lee organises the ongoing competition, now with the support of the Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management. Locally, there is often help from cities and municipalities as well.

According to Frank Lee, nearly 13 million tegel have been removed since 2020, equal to about 235 soccer pitches’ worth. Last year alone, around 5.5 million tiles were removed, equal to the area of 100 soccer pitches. The removal of asphalt or concrete surfaces also counts; the square metres uncovered are converted into tegel.

In Rotterdam, 250,000 tegel were removed last year. This would not have been possible without people such as Cato de Beer and her neighbours. Just like Katendrechtse Lagendijk, a five-minute walk away, the neighbourhood of Moerkerkestrat is home to a colourful mix of residents. There is a street party atmosphere here, too. “We’re doing this for the second time this year, the first time was in the summer,” says de Beer, who’s the local cultural manager. A lot has happened as a result of the tegelwippen. “I’ve got to know a lot of neighbours through it,” she adds . De Beer only moved into the street a year and a half ago.

Miriam Watson nods in agreement. She has lived in the area for some time. “It’s considered a problem neighbourhood here,” she says, “but look how well everyone works together.”

And now tegelwippen is starting to be replicated in neighbouring countries.

“We want to take up tegelwippen,” says Susanne Dickel on a tour of various squares in Düsseldorf on the Rhine, Germany. Her initiative “Platzgrün!” has unsealed, greened and redesigned these squares in cooperation with the city. There are now lawns, flowerbeds, park benches and even some boules courts on former carparks, abandoned areas, dog waste grounds and traffic islands. The city has financed equipment, soil and plants, and the Platzgrün! initiative organises volunteers for landscaping.

Tegelwippen is now due to start on six areas in Dusseldorf this year. Hamburg will also pick up the idea. “Hopefully it will also trigger an anarchic, grassroots democratic mass movement in Germany, as it did in the Netherlands,” Dickel says.