Author: Zef Hemel
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Highrise is coming
Read in Het Parool of 1 August 2015: So we spent a week in London. We booked an Airbnb in Hampstead Heath, London North. An excellent appartment, though rather small compared to Dutch standards. We met friends, all living in London now. Why did they chose for London? Because, they said, here are the…
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On tour
Seen in the Netherlands in August 2015: Because the Dutch Minister of Interior Affairs, Mr. Plasterk, wants us to consider the Netherlands “as one big city of 17 million people”, I decided to make a two-weeks tour in my own city, after having spent a full week in London. What a strange city Holland…
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Going for gold
Read in The Economist of 25 July 2015: Spent a week in London this summer with the whole family. On arriving at Gatwick airport I started reading the local newspapers. The title of an article in The Economist on the legacy of the London Olympic Games 2012 stroke me: ‘’Going for bronze’. Really just…
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Importance of a ping-pong table
Read this summer in London and on the beach: At the beginning of every summer, more or less round the month of July, correspondents and critics of newspapers and popular magazines always give personal lists of their favorite books. ‘These are the books I advise you to read.’ I love those lists. So that’s why…
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Keeping Amsterdam small
Read in Het Parool of 2 July 2015: On Friday we would meet. Thursday he published his strong opinion in the local newspaper Het Parool: ‘Maak van Mokum geen megastad’ (‘Do not turn Amsterdam into a megacity’). Friso de Zeeuw, professor at Delft Technical University, always prompts his readers to use more common sense.…
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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…