Author: Zef Hemel
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Profijt van Londen
Gelezen op Centreforcities.org van 7 juli 2015: Steden betalen de meeste belastingen, de grootste steden veruit het meest. En het platteland profiteert, ook al klaagt het keer op keer. ‘Ten years of tax’, een onderzoek van het Britse Centre for Cities naar de wijzigingen in het belastingpatroon van Groot-Brittannië over de afgelopen tien jaar –…
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Niet exploderen, maar imploderen
Voorgedragen op het Marineterrein, Amsterdam, op 7 juli 2016: TOFUD van Frank Havermans, op dit moment te zien in Cityscapes Gallery in Amsterdam, deed me aanvankelijk denken aan de PROUNs (‘pro-oon’) van El Lissitzky. Vooral zijn tweede serie uit 1923 betrof schitterende composities van geometrische vormen die de toekomst als ‘volstrekt nieuw’ wilden uitdrukken. Een…
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Tristate City Vintage
Read on Tristatecity.com: Imagine: ‘The Battle of the Cities’. The Dutch employers organisation VNO-NCW and the real estate developer CBRE think there is a battle going on in this world. They wanna be winners. Mr. Peter Savelberg, a Dutch consultant, proposes a city of 30 million inhabitants. VNO NCW and CBRE decided to sponsor him.…
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Car-free Amsterdam
Read in Climate Home of 23 June 2016: Amsterdam is struggling with its crowdedness and popularity, people think the city centre is too busy. Of course they are right. They were never used to live in an urban condition. Politicians try to reduce tourism now, distribute activities, the mayor even proposes to move people to…
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Brexit-vote against the global city
Read in The Independent of 24 June 2016: The Dutch presidency of the EU in the first half of 2016 ends with a Brexit. Well done. In Amsterdam, where all the EU-meetings were held, we can put away the flags. The party is over. The young and fragile Urban Agenda of the EU will…
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Peak Trade
Read in NRC Handelsblad of 28 April 2016: Again two newspaper articles worth reading: one of Frank Boll (28 April), on capitalism triumphant, the other of Maarten Schinkel (4 May), on the future of global trade. Boll, founder of Ecofis, wrote in the Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad on how capitalism liberated migrants from the countryside…
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The wrong conclusion
Read in De Volkskrant of 13 February 2016: Two newspaper articles. The first one on water shortages in the world. Arjen Hoekstra, professor Watermanagement at Wageningen University, thinks at least 4 billion people in the world are suffering from water shortages during at least one month a year. That’s far more than expected. Almost half…
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East Asia’s rapid urban growth
Read in East Asia’s Changing Urban Landscape (2016) of the World Bank: Should be front page news: with its 42 million inhabitants, Pearl River Delta is the largest city in the world, larger even than Tokyo. Urbanisation in East Asia in general is growing very fast. According to the World Bank the total urban…
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Country in a Clusterclimax
Read in De Volkskrant of 28 May 2016: Strange map in the Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant last week. Almost hilarious if not depressing. The map showed all the latest campusses in the Netherlands with their special brands: technopolis, bio science, healthcare, IT, geomatics, green chemistry, water, sensortechnology, energy, services, food, horti science, space, knowledge.…
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Philadelphia Blues
Read in NRC Handelsblad on 24 May 2016: Pia de Jong is a Dutch columnist living in Princeton, New Jersey. Her weekly writings in NRC Handelsblad are on events happening in her personal and family life. Every Tuesday I read them. Last week she wrote about her recent visit to Philadelphia. I loved this…