Author: Zef Hemel
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Dutch enlightenment
Read in NRC handelsblad of 9 August 2015: Early August this year, some thousand historians gathered in Rotterdam for the 14nth ISECS conference on ‘The Long Eighteenth Century’ (1650-1815). A long report of the conference proceedings I read in the science supplement of NRC Handelsblad, written by Dirk Vlasblom. Fascinating stuff. It was about…
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Asian style
Read in China Digital Times of 26 June 2014: What the Russians are trying to do in and around Greater Moscow (17 million inhabitants), the Chinese are doing even on a grander scale with Beijing (22 million inhabitants): building an Asian megalopolis. I remember the session in the Intercontinental Hotel in Moscow in April…
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Flanders 2055
Read in Het Parool of 3 October 2015: He was the last speaker at the conference last week, in the House of Lords (Eerste Kamer) in The Hague, just after me. The journalist who interviewed him was in the audience. Jonathan Holslag (1981) is professor at the Free University of Brussels, he’s an expert in…
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Subtle thinkers
Read in ‘Superforecasting’ (2015) of Philip Tetlock and Dan Gardner: Today, in Noordwijk on the Dutch coast, I will give my view on the long term future of the Amsterdam region for a small group of people. They invited me. Can I predict the future? Of course not. But according to Philip Tetlock and Dan…
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Social entrepreneurs
Read in The Guardian of 20 July 2015: In Amsterdam it’s bad. In San Francisco it’s even worse. Yesterday we made a walking tour with policymakers of the municipality of Amsterdam who want to promote local startup ecosystems. We crossed the eastern part of the inner city. How to attract new tech-jobs?, they asked.…
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Go West
Read in NRC Handelsblad 0f 21 August 2015: The number of expats in Amstelveen , the southern suburb of Amsterdam, has doubled over the last ten years. You could read it in NRC Handelsblad last summer. The newspaper quoted a research report of CBS, the Central Statistical Bureau in the Netherland. In 2005 there…
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Wat ons te doen staat
Gehoord in de Eerste Kamer der Staten Generaal op 1 oktober 2015: Vooruit dan. Nog eenmaal in het Nederlands. Omdat dit de toekomst van het Koninkrijk betreft. Over die toekomst organiseerden het Ministerie van Binnenlandse Zaken en de Wetenschappelijke Raad voor het Regeringsbeleid (WRR) afgelopen week een uiterst boeiende dag in de Eerste Kamer…
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Keep it light
Discussed in the House of Lords (Eerste Kamer) in The Hague on 1 October 2015: The conference was about ‘Contours of the Third Century of the Dutch Kingdom’ in the House of Lords (Eerste Kamer) at the Binnenhof in The Hague. The seminar was organized by the Scientific Advisory Board of the Dutch Government (WRR)…
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Braindrain
Prepared on 30 September 2015 in Amsterdam: This week the Dutch government commemorated two centuries Royal Dutch kingdom in Amsterdam, the capital city (1814-2014). Today I will give a lecture in the House of Lords (Eerste Kamer) in The Hague on ‘the third age of the Dutch kingdom’ (2014-2114). How will the next age…
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Building green belts
Read in The Economist of 26 September 2015: Something’s badly wrong. On my way back from the UK, I read an article in this week’s edition of The Economist on the booming housing market in and around London. Despite stagnant incomes, Britons have taken on masses of cheap debt. All this demand has run…