Category: ruimtelijke ordening
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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…
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Crisis, what crisis?
Read in The Economist of 7 November 2015: Yesterday evening I had to give a short presentation in Pakhuis de Zwijger, Amsterdam, on ‘Growing cities, shrinking regions’ (Groeiende steden, krimpende regio’s). The meeting was organized by the journalist Floor Milikowski of De Groene Amsterdammer on behalf of the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and the…
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Sick building syndrome
Read in Het Parool of 7 October 2015: Foreign investors are buying pied-a-terres, luxury shopping malls, dwellings, office space on a big scale in Amsterdam. The financial crisis seems to be passé. Buying real estate is becoming more and more attractive. The mayor of Amsterdam wants a real estate fund that will finance the…
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Braindrain
Prepared on 30 September 2015 in Amsterdam: This week the Dutch government commemorated two centuries Royal Dutch kingdom in Amsterdam, the capital city (1814-2014). Today I will give a lecture in the House of Lords (Eerste Kamer) in The Hague on ‘the third age of the Dutch kingdom’ (2014-2114). How will the next age…
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Sleepwalkers
Read in Forum (VNO NCW magazine) of 20 August 2015: Bingo! Three in two days: first ‘Alle kaarten op Amsterdam?’ (‘Amsterdam only?’) in Forum, magazine of Dutch employers union VNO NCW, second, on saturday, the Vonk-special of de Volkskrant on ‘De verhipte stad’ (‘The kinky city’) and three: ‘Rotterdam is hot’ in the Amsterdam…
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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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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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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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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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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…