Author: Zef Hemel
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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…
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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.…