Author: Zef Hemel
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Rich Sydney
Read in NRC Handelsblad of 16 May 2015: Both correspondents of NRC Handelsblad in the Far East, Oscar Garschagen (China) and Melle Garschagen (Australia), wrote two articles on the real estate market in Sydney, Australia. Last year, Chinese investors spent 12 billion Australian dollars on real estate in the ‘country of land and rocks’,…
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Metro mayors
Read in The Economist of 6 June 2015: George Osborne, the chancellor of the exchequer in the UK Cameron administration, called the Liverpool-Manchester-Leeds-Sheffield urban region a new ‘Northern Powerhouse’. At least he wants it to become a new engine. The Economist agrees very much on that. Great Britain, it states, is one of the…
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Flooding your city
Read in ‘Household vulnerability to climate change’ (2011) of F. Linnekamp et. al.: What about Paramaribo, Surinam? Will the capital city of the former Dutch colony adapt to climate change in time? Searching for an answer, I found a paper, written by F. Linnekamp, A. Koedam en Isa Baud, University of Amsterdam, on household…
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Third Golden Age
Heard on 3 July 2015 at the Public Library in Amsterdam: In 1864 a Christal Palace was erected on the Frederiksplein, Amsterdam. The great tall building of glass and steel contained a huge space for exhibitions, showing all kinds of innovations of the industrial capitalist era. The Jewish entrepreneur and medical doctor Samuel Sharphati initiated…
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Being successful
Read in The Washington Post of 31 March 2015: One of the questions the students, following the course on Cities in Transition at the University of Amsterdam, were asked was: by comparing Moscow with Istanbul, what are the similarities and what the striking differences? Similar is the heavy traffic congestion, for sure. Moscovites complain…
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Next mobility
Read in ‘Nieuwe mobiliteit’ (New Mobility) (2015) of Arie Bleijenberg: Reveiling long term trends. Important news. They sent me a copy of ‘Nieuwe Mobiliteit na het autotijdperk’ (New Mobility After the Car Based Era), written by Arie Bleijenberg, TNO’s Business Director Infrastructure in Delft. They thought I would like it. Sure I do. It’s exactly…
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City collaboration
Read on the blog of Olivier Beauchesne 11 August 2014: Olivier Beauchesne created a world map of scientific collaboration a few years ago. Last year he attempted to make a new one. Because most of the scientific papers are guarded, he worked with Scimago Lab feed, an active feed on social media. Scimago and…
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From the bottom up
Read in ‘Emergence’ (2001) of Steven Johnson: > OESO’s Territorial Review of the Netherlands 2014 advocated the making of a holistic strategic urban policy framework for cities by the Dutch government. Such a framework is lacking now. The Ministry of Interior Affairs started an open process this year for developing an ‘urban agenda’, which might…
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The soft side
Read in ‘The Regional Knowledge Economy’ (2009) of Otto Raspe: The discussion on agglomeration economies, innovation clusters and regional economic growth is a difficult one. Why? Well, because it all has become very political. So what does science tell us? In ‘The knowledge economy and urban economic growth’ (2009), Otto Raspe – a regional…