Ganzeer

It seems that each neighborhood in Amsterdam Noord has a set of very unique characteristics, making Noord anything but a unified, homogeneous area. Even planned developments for Noord are masterminded according to this territorial division.

Since any group of characteristics can visually boil down to an actual character, perhaps each territory in Noord can be represented in a character.

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So if NDSM Werf for example is the hip artist hub, and home of MTV and mul- tiple “underground” festivals, perhaps it can be represented as such.

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But has NDSM Werf always looked like this?

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Perhaps there was a time when it was once entirely dominated by pirates?

By looking at the history of the different neighborhoods of Amsterdam Noord, perhaps a characteristic timeline of these neighborhoods can be represented in the form of actual characters on a map. The way each character is designed should be able to instantly express the character of its designated neighborhood.

My initial idea was to collect data on the neighborhoods by surveying people’s impressions, but with only 3 responses on my drafted survey, it seems I will have to opt for a different approach to collecting information on the characteristics of each neighborhood across Noord’s history.

Any feedback and/or critique on this idea is more than welcome.

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One last thing. Can you guess the neighborhood depicted above? :-)