Author: Zef Hemel
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No growth
Read in FD of 1 March 2015: Why does nobody wants to know about shrinking cities in The Netherlands? Because Dutch municipalities still own 75% percent of all the land available for building homes, office space and business parks. They paid far too much for it: 13 billion euros. They all should reduce their land…
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Making a mess
Read in Het Parool of 20 June 2015: Felix Rottenberg is a former political leader of the Dutch Social-Democratic Party (PvdA), also an anchorman on Dutch television. In his weekly column in the Amsterdam based newspaper Het Parool he reacted on my proposal to double the size of the Amsterdam agglomeration by building in…
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Mini-Manhattan
Read on Building.co.uk of 2 December 2014: Last week a television team from London visited Amsterdam. They were doing research on land development in the Bijlmer district, Amsterdam Southeast. I met them in the Ajax Arena stadium. Why? London is planning a huge brownfield development in Old Oak, which is a poor neighborhood in…
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Polynuclear nonsense
Read in ‘The World Cities’ (1966) by Peter Hall: Dutch planners love polynuclear patterns of urbanisation. They think these patterns are the most sustainable. Polynuclearity, they say, is the best you can get. The Dutch became world champions in developing polynuclearity and are still proud of it. It became part of the Dutch planning…
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On the road
Heard in B.Amsterdam, Amsterdam Slotervaart, on 4 June 2015: The evaluation of the Highspeed train public tender by the Dutch politicians has ended last week. What a disaster. Big mistakes were made. Market failures. Technical failures. The Dutch state failed. Still missing those fast trains in The Netherlands. More lucky we are on the road.…
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Winner takes all
Read in The Economist of 12 June 2016: In the UK, just like in many other countries, regional inequality is growing fast. London is the big winner, cities in the North are the big losers. As Richard Florida already forecasted years ago, the world is getting pretty spiky. The principle is simple: ‘success breeds…
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Wall of Money
Read in NRC Handelsblad of 9 and 12 June 2015: Alarming news. Vacant real estate in the Netherlands since 2010 more than dubbeled. The total amount of square meters empty office space is now 9 million, of m2 empty retail space it’s 2,7 million. And it gets worse, even after the crisis. Why? Because…
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Big mistake
Read in ‘Red Plenty’ (2010) of Francis Spufford: What’s wrong with Russian society? Also with the West? Only after reading ‘Red Plenty’ of the British writer Francis Spufford I really understood. It’s the withering of social sciences. Spufford’s book, which I can recommend everybody, is a lively, dramatised history of the postwar years of the…
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Happy tunnel
Seen in Amsterdam Bijlmermeer on 5 June 2015: This August the builders will start their amazing construction works. The Gaasperdammerweg – a six lane freeway cutting throug the Bijlmermeer – will be enlarged and tunneled. Roy Berents, an urban planner of the city of Amsterdam, gave a lecture on the engineering of this project…