Category: economie
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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…
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Unsustainable Urban Delta
Read in Het Parool of 15 April 2016: Last week they forced me to move to another lecture hall at the University of Amsterdam. They told me the Dutch prime-minister Mr. Rutte was expected to come. He would give a lecture on ‘How the Netherlands is functioning’, and he needed my room. So I…
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Beyond Big Plans
Read in ‘Beyond Seun-Sangga (2015): Last Thursday Hyeri Park, an urban planner from South-Korea who’s living in the Netherlands, gave a great lecture at the University of Amsterdam on ‘Seoul Mutations. Another Story after Fast Urban Growth in Asia’. Mrs. Park told the students about the ‘Miracle on the Han river’, which took place in…
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Dream your own future
To be visited from 12 April till 3 July 2016 in the Public Library Amsterdam: On Tuesday 12 April 2016, the People’s Industry Palace (Paleis voor Volksvlijt) in the Public Library of Amsterdam will open its doors. Twelve weeks long, citizens, young and old, from different backgrounds, from all neigborhoods and neighboring cities, can visit…
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Jane Jacobs again
Read in OECD Territorial Review of the Metropolitan Region Rotterdam-The Hague (2016): With the financial support of the Ministry of Interior Affairs in The Hague, the OECD published a report on the regional economy of the two Dutch neighboring cities Rotterdam and The Hague. It’s worth reading, especially for the students following my course on…
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Winners and losers
Read in ‘De verdeelde triomf’’ (2016) of Planbureau voor de Leefomgeving: The Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency in The Hague published its yearly spatial report last week. This year’s theme is urban inequality and justice: when economic inequality between cities and between cities and regions is growing, is it good or bad? The title of the…
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Capital of the Internet
Read in FD Morgen of 5 March 2016: Its special last weekend on innovation, leadership and technology ‘Morgen’ was on ‘Cooling down’. Het Financieele Dagblad published a beautiful map on page 6 and 7 of its special which showed all the datacenters in the Netherlands as gleaming stars. According to the journalist, Bob de…
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The Amsterdam Dream
Read in ‘’Landscapes of Power’ (1991) of Sharon Zukin: Walt Disney, the urbanist, is one of my heroes. His EPCOT, dating from 1982, was a very optimistic, brave enterprise, a utopian landscape of imagination that inspired many ordinary people. EPCOT is the abbreviation of the Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow. Disney wanted to build…
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Start-up City
Gelezen in Het Parool van 2 januari 2016: Alweer een voorbeeld van extreme ruimtelijke concentratie. Het gaat hier om tech start-ups. Dat zijn jonge, kleine bedrijfjes die nieuwe internetdiensten verkopen. Ze zorgen voor de digitalisering van de oude economie, zeg maar de toekomst van ons allemaal. Retail, mode, design, financiële dienstverlening, recruiting, reisbureaus, onderwijs,…
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Bad news
Read in NRC Handelsblad of 1 December 2015: There was some news on the future last week. Bad news. Hope you didn’t read it. In ‘The Netherlands will look like this in the future’, NRC Handelsblad reported on a scenario study of the Netherlands in the year 2050. The two long term scenario’s were made…