Weblog of Zef Hemel on regional planning
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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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Flooding your city
Read in ‘Household vulnerability to climate change’ (2011) of F. Linnekamp et. al.: What about Paramaribo, Surinam? Will the capital city of the former Dutch colony adapt to climate change in time? Searching for an answer, I found a paper, written by F. Linnekamp, A. Koedam en Isa Baud, University of Amsterdam, on household…
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Third Golden Age
Heard on 3 July 2015 at the Public Library in Amsterdam: In 1864 a Christal Palace was erected on the Frederiksplein, Amsterdam. The great tall building of glass and steel contained a huge space for exhibitions, showing all kinds of innovations of the industrial capitalist era. The Jewish entrepreneur and medical doctor Samuel Sharphati initiated…
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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…
Got any book recommendations?