But the agenda of functional separation also resulted in the conclusion that Amsterdam’s economic center, the CBD, had to be further expanded and the old city had to be “opened up” to traffic. This vision was radicalized in the sixties, when the entire city clogged up due to the explosive rise of car traffic, and urban planners introduced a proposal for an extensive network of metro lines and highways to cut through the old fabric of the city. What was on the agenda in the sixties was a tabula rasa makeover of Amsterdam’s 19th century ring of popular and derelict neighborhoods, the Jordaan, Nieuwmarkt, Oostelijke Eilanden, Weesperbuurt and the Pijp2. A wholesale urban modernization wave that would form a 20th century version of the hitherto unrealized Hausmannisation of Amsterdam, much like Robert Moses famously used ‘the meataxe’ to make space for his parkways and causeways in New York. The Dutch planners, however, never got that far. They were soon to find a huge protest movement on their way that effectively poured sand in the machine, and finally defeated what was by then called the ‘urban bulldozer’3. Aldo van Eyck played an important role in defining what would follow.