Tag: nederland
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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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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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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…
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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…
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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…
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Being honest
Read in The Economist of 30 May 2015: So many cities will decline. Not because of suburbanisation, but for demographic reasons. People are getting older. The younger ones are getting mobile. In Japan 20 cities with more than 300.000 inhabitants are already declining, so do 60 out of 107 German cities. In The Economist an…