Category: wonen

  • Social entrepreneurs

    Read in The Guardian of 20 July 2015:   In Amsterdam it’s bad. In San Francisco it’s even worse. Yesterday we made a walking tour with policymakers of the municipality of Amsterdam who want to promote local startup ecosystems. We crossed the eastern part of the inner city. How to attract new tech-jobs?, they asked.…

  • Building green belts

    Read in The Economist of 26 September 2015:   Something’s badly wrong. On my way back from the UK, I read an article in this week’s edition of The Economist on the booming housing market in and around London. Despite stagnant incomes, Britons have taken on masses of cheap debt. All this demand has run…

  • Connect

    Read in The Argus of 24 September 2015:   Samer Bagaeen, teaching planning at the University of Brighton, showed me the local newspaper. In The Argus of last Thursday there were at least three pages on new high-rise initiatives in Brighton, UK. In ‘Building upwards is the way to go to meet housing crisis –…

  • Startup delta

    Read in The Economist of 25 July 2015: > It’s called a ‘briefing’. Subject: Silicon Valley. In The Economist of 25 July the message was: “the tech boom may get bumpy, but it will not end in a repeat of the dotcom crash.” It was a description of how the Greater San Francisco region is…

  • 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…

  • 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’,…

  • Wall of Money

    Read in NRC Handelsblad of 9 and 12 June 2015:   Alarming news. Vacant real estate in the Netherlands since 2010 more than dubbeled. The total amount of square meters empty office space is now 9 million, of m2 empty retail space it’s 2,7 million. And it gets worse, even after the crisis. Why? Because…

  • Learning from the UK

    Read in The Independent of 29 May 2015:   So that was reveiling news. In The Independent of 29 May 2015 Jon Stone wrote on poverty in London and Great Britain. Its message: "The most wealthy areas in Wales and Northern Ireland are on average poorer in terms of disposable income than the most deprived…

  • Saskia Sassen was here

    Gehoord op 19 mei 2015 in de Stadsschouwburg te Amsterdam: De lijst met huisuitzettingen in Amerikaanse steden die ze toonde was ronduit schokkend. De financiële markten, zei ze, zijn de nieuwe motoren van de economie. Die kopen en masse grond en vastgoed op, ze verwerven hele stadsdelen, de vastgoedprijzen in die steden stijgen soms skyhigh.…

  • Middle-class migration

    Gelezen in The Telegraph van 23 maart 2015: Dat het Londen voor de wind gaat zal iedereen duidelijk zijn. Jaloersmakend goed. Eigenlijk gaat het veel te goed met de Britse metropool.  De economie van de stad is bijna zo groot als die van heel Nederland. En ze groeit als kool. Met bijna 10 miljoen mensen…