Category: infrastructuur
-
Staten begrijpen steden niet
Gehoord in Bogotá, Colombia, op 3, 4 november 2016: Op uitnodiging van Probogotá – de nieuwe ondernemersvereniging van Bogotá – gesproken over de principes van open planning in het kader van het te maken structuurplan voor de hoofdstad van Colombia. De bijeenkomst vond plaats in Club El Nogal, het hoofdkwartier van de industriële ondernemersvereniging dat…
-
Unwinding the fabric
Gelezen in NRC Handelsblad van 25 oktober 2016: Deze week verscheen in NRC Handelsblad een uitstekend artikel van Melle Garschagen (jawel, de correspondent uit Jakarta die naar Londen is verhuisd) over de voorgenomen uitbreiding van het Londense vliegveld Heathrow met een derde baan. Komende dinsdag, zo laat Garschagen weten, zal de nieuwe Britse minister…
-
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…
-
Local Autonomy
Read in The Economist of 12 March 2016: This week I had to defend myself at the Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment at the session on the future of the Dutch system of physical investment programming (MIRT). They asked three collegues to give their view on the new programming, which we did. I…
-
Noiseless city
Seen and heard in Amsterdam on sunday 17 january 2016: So the number of bikes in Amsterdam is at least 800.000. It means that 63 per cent of the Amsterdammers is riding a bike on a daily base. In the modal split, more than 32 per cent is biking, compared to 22 per cent…
-
The End of Biking
Read in Het Parool of 2 June 2014: The era of Amsterdam as a great city for biking is coming to an end. After twenty years of growth we will no longer cycle that much. Really a pity. The miraculous growth of biking in the Dutch capital was due to many things: high parking…
-
Interdependence
Read in ‘Building Gotham’ (2003) of Keith Revell: We met at Penn Station, New York. From there we would take the train to Boston. He had the tickets. The station, dating from the sixties, looked like Dante’s Inferno, but then as if you’re in a science-fiction movie, from the Jetsons, a world deep under the…
-
Remote worker
Read in Het Parool of 20 May 2015: I was asked to give a lecture on open planning for a team of politicians from Bavaria, Germany. They were visiting Amsterdam, hoping to learn more about local policies on biking. After my speech on globalization, information technology and planning (!), the team would make a…
-
A new city
Read in Het Parool of 22 july 2015: Globalization. What does it mean? It means a growth of 15 per cent of internet traffic on the Ams-IX internet node last year. Ams-IX, based in Amsterdam, is the biggest internet node in the world. It’s not a node exactly, because it consists of a network of…
-
Delicious liquorice
Read on CityMetric on 1 July 2015: There is a fierce debate going on in Great Britain about the future of its London airports. BAA wants to expand the capacity of Heathrow, west of London. The mayor of London, Mr. Johnson, is favoring the building of a new hub on an artificial island in the…