Urban Planning (UvA)

Plurality of Expert Knowledge: Public Planners’ Experience with Urban Contractualism in Amsterdam

This chapter zeroes in on the role of the public planner when it comes to closing contractual deals with public and private sector partners in urban projects where neither public nor private sector actors can realize their objectives on their own, hence often a form of cooperation is established through a contractual arrangement. Little is known, however, about how public planners manage the contracting process and how their involvement in contracts may change their role. We argue in this chapter that the role of public planners has become more than just that of ‘professional elites’ or ‘technocrats’ in this era of urban contractualism. Even in more established and traditionally strictly coordinated planning systems like the Netherlands, practitioners have dynamic roles, they push boundaries, and they have transformative learning practices based on contracts. We seek to develop a more sophisticated understanding of how public planners’ learning reflects to their expert knowledge. The chapter will draw this dynamic picture based on the diversity in shifting positions of contract making, shifting dynamics in contract making, and safeguarding mechanisms.

Changing public accountability mechanisms in the governance of Dutch urban regeneration

Contemporary urban planning dynamics are based on negotiation and contractual relations, creating fragmented planning processes. On the one hand, they trigger technocratic forms of governance, which require the ‘legal instrumentalisation’ of planning in a piecemeal approach ensuring legal certainty. On the other hand, these processes require flexibility to enable easy, fast and efficient forms of implementation due to the increasing involvement of private sector actors in urban development. This article unravels the influence of these conflicting dynamics on the fundamentals of urban planning practices by focusing on changing public accountability mechanisms created through contractual relationships between public and private sector agencies. Dutch urban regeneration has demonstrated changing governance principles and dynamics in the last three decades. Representing instrumental and institutional measures, we connect accountability mechanisms to these changes and argue that they ‘co-exist’ in multiple forms across different contexts. This article embeds this evolution in wider theoretical discussions on the changing relationships between public and private sector actors in urban governance relative to the changing role of the state, and it addresses questions on who can be held accountable, and to what extent, when public sector actors are increasingly retreating from regulatory practices while private sector actors play increasingly prominent roles.

Complex planning landscapes: regimes, actors, instruments and discourses of contractual urban development

This special issue provides a collection of articles that contribute to a better understanding of the complex dynamics of property-led planning and urban governance, not only by providing empirical evidence to illustrate the sophisticated regimes, actors, instruments and discourses involved in it, but also by offering new ways to understand private sector involvement in public planning.

Tasan-Kok, T., Atkinson, R., & Refinetti Martins, M. L. (2019). Complex planning landscapes: regimes, actors, instruments and discourses of contractual urban development. European Planning Studies, 27(6), 1059-1063. https://doi.org/10.1080/09654313.2019.1598018

One and the Same? A Systematic Literature Review of Residential Property Investor Types

This article presents a systematic literature review on residential property investor types in selected social science disciplines and critically evaluates the status quo of academic engagement within this diverse group of property market actors. A recurring critique in recent years has been the minimal acknowledgment of investor heterogeneity particularly in relation to urban development andthe financialization of housing. Yet, to date, there is no systematic evidence supporting these contentions. Therefore, we conducted an exhaustive literature review of residential investment landscapes through the Web of Science citation database in the following fields: Urban and regional planning, geography, sociology, urban studies, public administration, and economics. Following a meta-categorization of the results, we demonstrate how existing literature differentiates investors in terms of their spatial scale of operation, size and social composition, investment object and finance, or investment and social behavior.

Democratie ligt op straat

De participatiesamenleving brengt bestuurders, beleidsmakers, welzijnsprofessionals en burgers veelvuldig met elkaar in contact. De gezamenlijke verantwoordelijkheid voor lokale besluitvorming is geen gemakkelijke opgave. Vaak ontstaan er conflicten tussen partijen met tegengestelde behoeften en belangen. Burgers zetten zich af tegen beslissingen of organiseren protest. Op zulke momenten komt niet alleen de participatiesamenleving onder druk te staan, maar ook de kwaliteit van de democratie. De democratische waarde van contentieuze interacties wordt echter over het hoofd gezien. Hoe kunnen publieke professionals omgaan met de dilemma’s en kansen die ontstaan in interacties die onverwachts plaatsvinden op het niveau van de straat?

Strijd om de straat in de Amsterdamse Wallen

Bewoners en anderen veranderen de stad door hun alledaagse gebruik van de publieke ruimte. Stedelijk beleid en planning lopen niet altijd in pas met dat gebruik. In de binnenstad van Amsterdam komt die botsing tot uiting in de strijd om eigenaarschap. Nanke Verloo deed in het kader van het Public Mediation Programma, samen met haar studenten Nikkie Menting, Robin Hooft van Huysduynen, Anna Idzinga, Eva Kieft, Reijer Lomans en Thom van Woerkum, onderzoek naar eigenaarschap in een controversieel gebied: de Wallen. Van wie is de binnenstad van Amsterdam? En welke lessen leren we van de straat?

Het asielzoekerscentrum als buurthuis?

In zowel Nederland als België worden bewoners geactiveerd om activiteiten te organiseren voor asielzoekers. Asielzoekerscentra zouden op die manier beter geïntegreerd raken in de context van een gemeente of woonwijk. Dit burgerschapsideaal staat niet op zichzelf. De beleidswens voor een lokale integratie van asielzoekerscentra vertoont paralellen met bredere maatschappelijke en academische discussies over lokale participatie en actief burgerschap.

Planning, uncertainty and risk

Since the last decade, rising concern related to uncertainty in urban dynamics has encouraged alternative approaches to land development in order to reduce financial risks of public spending while stimulating new investments. In particular, municipalities are experimenting with more open-ended, incremental and co-produced forms of urbanism that aim to reform existent supply-led urban development models. This paper shows that these practices underlie a neoliberal reform of public spending and that they have important socio-political implications for urban welfare. By discussing the relation between uncertainty and risk, it shows that recent reforms of urban development policies do not reduce risk but rather reorganize it in two ways. First, by resizing the time horizon of action and prioritizing short-term delivery, and second, by simultaneously privatizing and collectivizing risk to individuals and public budgets. An in-depth analysis of recent reforms in Amsterdam public financing model is provided. This paper concludes that a risk-sensitive view of planning innovation is today necessary in order to address future socio-economic challenges of urban change.

Planning Projects in Transition

Modern urban development is a complex process involving many parties. Self-organizational practices raise new questions with regard to urban space, the adaptation of legal regulations to new conditions, and the reorganization of the financial planning of investments in the real estate sector. Planning Projects in Transition is a roadmap for urban professionals, planners, and urban researchers who face these challenges. Through an extensive set of in-depth case studies and a comparative framework of analysis, the book explores cooperative processes and addresses the key aspects of urban transformations: interventions, regulations, and investments.

Dilemma's of planning

Planning through processes of “co-creation” has become a priority for practitioners, urban activists, and scientific researchers. However, urban development still shows a close instrumentalism on goal-specific tasks, means, and outcomes despite awareness that planning should enlarge possibilities for social change rather than constrain them. The article explores the dilemmas of planning agency in light of the contemporary need to open spaces for innovative practices. Planning is understood as a paradox; a structural tension between organization and spontaneity. The article provides a detailed profile of three specific dilemmas stemming from this condition. We distinguish and conceptually explore the dilemmas of intervention, regulation, and investment in current practices. The article provides a specific understanding of today’s planning dilemmas, exploring the key notions of “space and time” in the intervention dilemma, “material and procedural norms” in the regulation dilemma, and “risk and income” in the investment dilemma. We suggest that planning practice today needs to make sense of these dilemmas, navigating through their extremes to find new contextualized forms of synthesis.

The value of self-build (Almere)

This paper investigates the aspirations and strategies of self-builders of owner-occupied homes in a facilitated self-build scheme. It draws on a qualitative case-study of the Homeruskwartier in Almere, the Netherlands, one the largest assisted self-build schemes in present-day Europe, which caters to lower- and middle-income households. The study problematizes the notion that self-building necessarily leads to the pursuit of use values over exchange values. This questions the positive benefits attributed to self-building. The aspirations of self-builders are not only framed by social and material conditions, but are also being reframed in the action process. The paper stresses the contingent nature of aspirations and strategies and emphasizes the experimental nature of the self-building process.

Reflexive Planning as Design and Work: Lessons from the Port of Amsterdam

In recent years, planning theorists have advanced various interpretations of the notion of reflexivity, inspired by American pragmatism, complexity theory, hermeneutics, discursive and collaborative planning. Scholars agree that “reflexivity” has a strong temporal dimension: it not only aims to solve present planning problems, but to imagine and understand alternative trajectories for future action. This article explores the practical utility of reflexivity for planners, through a case study that focuses on a project to promote sustainable development in the Port of Amsterdam. Reflexivity in planning emerges as a new tool for generating critical knowledge and dialogue that can synthesise the perspectives of multiple actors in a common understanding, existing structural constraints and a collective imagination of alternative future possibilities. Such research highlights the potential of this approach to generate a creative reconfiguration of the present, and to build capacity for meaningful and considered change.

Learning within local government to promote the scaling-up of low-carbon initiatives: A case study in the City of Copenhagen

This research higlights that Local government must learn from low-carbon initiatives to promote their scaling-up. Instrumental and transformative knowledge can be derived from low-carbon initiatives. Learning results from an interplay of motivation, resources and skills.

Productive Amsterdam

Dit boek geeft een gedetailleerd overzicht van de winnende inzendingen voor de Europan 14 competitie, een tweejaarlijkse internationale ontwerpwedstrijd voor architecten.

Divided access and the spatial polarization of housing wealth

Recent research has pointed to increasingly divided housing access across advanced economies. This reflects growing labor market inequality and rising intergenerational divides amplifying the importance of parental resources. At the same time, an increasing spatial polarization of housing markets has driven divergence between high-gain versus low-gain submarkets. This paper confronts how divided access to housing collides with growing spatial inequality in housing markets. The research turns to the Netherlands, drawing on full-population register data. First, GIS mapping exposes spatial polarization in house-value development. Second, household-level modeling demonstrates the impact of income, employment position and parental wealth in divided access to housing submarkets. Taken together, spatial polarization and differentiated access appear fundamental to driving inequalities in housing wealth accumulation.

The neo-liberal politics and socio-spatial implications of Dutch post-crisis social housing policies

This review discusses changes in Dutch housing policy that were implemented after the great financial crisis of 2008, notably the 2015 Housing Act and its lead-up legislation, and a landlord levy aimed at taxing housing associations. We argue that these changes should be seen as a decade-long process of institutional re-regulation that may be characterised as neo-liberalisation. In addition to reviewing the neo-liberal politics of these changes, we also provide an assessment of the social and spatial implications of the new legislation. Financial pressures on housing associations and higher income tenants together with the stricter eligibility for new tenants have led to a relative decline and residualisation of the social-rental sector. Also, housing policies are set to increase the spatial concentration of disadvantaged population groups. These socio-spatial implications may further undermine social housing in the future.

Spatial housing market polarisation: National and urban dynamics of diverging house values

Housing is central in the reproduction of social inequalities. Beyond divides across populations, trends point to increasingly unequal housing‐market dynamics across space. Nonetheless, little systematic evidence exists on the spatial inequality of housing values. In this paper we address this through a detailed investigation of house‐value developments in the Netherlands over time and space. We draw on national registers including longitudinal and geocoded data for the entire housing stock over the 2006–2018 period. Spatial polarisation is examined across different scales at the national, provincial, and urban level. We further investigate how housing‐market inequality trends vary over time, particularly between periods of economic boom and house‐price increases or, conversely, periods of downturn. Our analyses expose a substantial and widespread trend of spatial polarisation. Rising spatial inequality between neighbourhoods is clearly apparent at the national level, within all but one province, as well as for 44 of the 50 largest municipalities. The polarising trend appears structural and pervasive. While boom periods saw the strongest increases, inequality levels, remarkably, remained stable or even saw continued increases over the period of declining house prices. These patterns of spatial polarisation in house values have fundamental societal implications towards uneven wealth accumulation and in amplifying socio‐economic cleavages across populations and space.

Placing self and Other: Imaginaries of urban diversity and productive discontent

The white working-class resident living in increasingly multi-ethnic urban neighbourhoods is a key trope in debates around migrant integration and national identity in Western Europe. Such residents are imagined to feel out of place due to the influx of migrants in ‘their’ neighbourhoods. This paper engages with the anxiety, discontent, and resentment experienced by a sub-set of residents in a multi-ethnic neighbourhood in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. I show how these emotions are grounded in everyday interactions with ‘Others’ but also stem from residents' placed subjectivities: perceptions of the self in relation to symbolic and material geographies of the city and the nation. Placed subjectivities in turn informed how residents were (not) able to deal with difference. While some residents demonstrated a by now familiar rhetoric of discontent, others developed new ways of interacting with place and defining their own position, despite their discomfort. These ‘productive discontents’ might allow for small-scale and ambivalent forms of neighbouring across difference.

Toekomstvisie op de Amsterdamse binnenstad

Drukte en overlast op de Wallen. Daar begon het allemaal mee. Er waren al een aantal maatregelen genomen, maar burgemeester Halsema wilde meer dan alleen regels voor de korte termijn. Ze vroeg hoogleraar Zef Hemel een langetermijnvisie voor de historische binnenstad te ontwikkelen. En die visie heeft nu vorm.

Shifting Infrastructure Landscapes in a Circular Economy:

Onder druk van de transitie naar een circulaire economie, vinden er grote institutionele veranderingen in de water en energie sector plaats. Door de theorie van Institutioneel Werk als lens te gebruiken wordt in kaart gebracht hoe deze herstructurering plaatsvindt en in het bijzonder hoe verschillende actoren hierop handelen. Circulariteit vraagt om een herstructurering van infrastructuur management om de toegenomen complexiteit door decentrale systemen te accomoderen en deze systemen te integreren. En het handelen van actoren lijkt dan ook zeer gericht op de interne organisatie en de rol die deze organisaties innemen in de samenleving.

Smart Cycling Futures

In Smart Cycling Futures (SCF) wordt onderzoek verricht naar de kansen die fietsinnovatie kan bieden aan de verbetering van steden en regio’s. Centraal in SCF staan de living labs die in de deelnemende Nederlandse steden en regio’s georganiseerd worden. In living labs gaan wetenschappers en experts uit de praktijk aan de slag om sociale en technische vindingen uit te proberen en te evalueren.

Met het SURF-onderzoek wil het consortium leren over en stimuleren van de transitie naar een slimmer fietssysteem – met als doel de leefbaarheid en veerkracht van stedelijke regio’s te vergroten. Onder meer Brabantstad, Stadsregio Amsterdam, Zwolle/Overijssel en Utrecht zijn ‘partner in crime’.

SCF maakt deel uit van het onderzoeksprogramma ‘Smart Urban Regions of the Future’ (SURF). Dit is hét kennisprogramma van de departementen van Infrastructuur en Milieu (IenM) en Binnenlandse Zaken en Koninkrijksrelaties (BZK), NWO, Platform31 en het Nationaal Regieorgaan Praktijkgericht Onderzoek SIA op het gebied van slimme stedelijke regio’s. De initiatiefnemers brengen 16,5 miljoen euro samen voor onderzoek en kennisoverdracht in de periode 2015-2020. In SURF werken (internationale) consortia van wetenschappelijk onderzoekers en praktijkpartijen in stedelijke regio’s samen aan kennis op de raakvlakken van ruimte, wonen, bereikbaarheid, economie en bestuur. In 2016 gingen de eerste SURF-projecten van start: vijf grote nationale projecten waaronder SCF. Kijk voor meer informatie hierover op www.verdus.nl

SCF werkt samen met andere fietsonderzoekers en -professionals in de Fietscommunity 2.0. lees meer over deze community op de SURF-website en de website van de Fietscommunity zelf.

Smart Cycling Futures is een samenwerkingsproject tussen/met veel partijen. De projectleiding  berust bij Rob Raven van de Universiteit Utrecht. Ook de Universiteiten van Amsterdam (UVA) en Eindhoven (TU) doen mee, net als Hogeschool Windesheim uit Zwolle. De vier steden Utrecht, Amsterdam, Eindhoven en Zwolle doen ook mee, evenals de provincie Overijssel, Utrecht en Noord Brabant en de stadregio Amsterdam. 

Bron en meer informatie: http://smartcyclingfutures.nl/

contactpersoon Gemeente Amsterdam: Iris van der Horst

CODALoop

Platform ter ondersteuning van gedragsaanpassingen, waaronder mobiliteitsgedrag.

Urban sustainability and political parties: Eco-development in Stockholm and Amsterdam

In environmental planning practice, political parties tend to be perceived as marginal, unimportant or even dysfunctional. Although urban politicians are increasingly important in the formulation of strong sustainable policies, there is little research that explicitly and empirically looks at the role of elected officials in shaping policies for urban sustainability. This paper scrutinizes the role of parties in formulating urban agendas of sustainable development and in triggering projects of eco-district development in Amsterdam and Stockholm. It does so in order to show how parties play a multiplicity of roles: they mobilize voters through differentiated agendas, they organize the translation of agendas into interventions and act as power holders in the formulation of sustainable urban policies. Combining a post-political framework and classic work on electoral politics, we show how this dynamic occurs in practice. We empirically illustrate that the behavior of parties resonates with the insights of a post-political critique but they do not behave linearly and homogeneously in the ‘policing’ process. They show a complex combination of mobilizing, politicizing and depoliticizing tactics. Political parties are relevant to eco-development and should be problematized within contemporary urban research.

Responsibility, polity, value: The (un)changing norms of planning practices

To address the social, spatial and environmental problems of cities, planners often promote and engage with spatial practices that are intended to be experimental, innovative or transformative of existent processes. Yet, the actual nature of the novelty of these practices is often not explicit nor problematised by their proponents. This article develops an institutionalist framework to better appreciate the variegated nature of change in planning practices. It understands planning as embedded in, and simultaneously impacting on, three types of institutionalised norms: operational norms that define and allocate responsibilities among actors, collective norms that (re)produce planning polities and constitute the spatial-temporal context of their actions and constitutional norms that substantiate the idea of value defining the eligible stakeholders of a particular process. The article mobilises this framework and argues that contemporary planning practices convey a (a) shifting of responsibility towards individuals and households, (b) disaggregation of city regions through polycentric localism and (c) the reproduction of the process of accumulative valorisation of land. The article concludes reflecting on the complexity institutional change.

Travelling together alone and alone together: mobility and potential exposure to diversity

Quantity and quality of social relations correlate with our happiness and physical health. Our (feeling of) connectedness also matters for the efficacy and functioning of communities and societies as a whole. Different mobility practices offer different conditions for being exposed to other people and the environment. Such exposure influences a sense of being connected to places, communities and societies. In transport planning practice and research, these relations are slowly getting attention. In this paper, we develop an analytical framework that offers a comprehensive understanding on if and how one’s experiences of being on the move influence the ability of an individual to develop a sense of connectedness. We develop hypotheses about these possible relations, that link literatures from mobilities research and sociology to advance transport planning research and practice. First, we discuss how the experiences of being mobile using different transport modes set different stages for the potential exposure to a diversity of socio-spatial environments. Second, we translate this into an analytical framework for understanding the relationships between connectedness and using different mobility modes. In the final part of the paper, we illustrate this by operationalising a number of potential indicators of connectedness (as dependent variables).

Governing the global locally: Agonistic democracy practices in The Hague’s Schilderswijk

Cities have become stages for (inter)national conflicts over political and religious identity, democratic values and ownership of place. These ‘glocal urban conflicts’ challenge local actors to respond immediately and effectively in ways that prevent escalation and strengthen democratic relations. The theory of agonistic democracy provides a valuable model that celebrates difference and inclusiveness to foster democracy. There is, however, little understanding of how these agnostic ideals are practiced in rapidly unfolding situations. This article provides a case study to further our understanding of dealing with conflicts where global tensions are enacted at the street level. It proposes an interpretative approach that brings into focus how a decentred network of local professionals practice agnostic democracy in action. The local government of The Hague was challenged to ‘govern the global locally’ when young Muslims waved flags allying with ISIS on the streets of the Schilderswijk neighbourhood. A series of local demonstrations required appropriate responses in a highly mediatised conflict. The analysis provides three ‘critical moments’ that function as a lens to study governance practices that underscore diversity as a political resource. Practices of ‘governing meaning’ and ‘governing the street’ addressed concerns about security, ownership and local grievances.

Speeltuinen, burgers en participatie: reflecties op kritische momenten in Amsterdam Oost

Hoe kun je omgaan met conflict in participatie processen? Na aanleiding van een jarenlange samenwerking met de gemeente Amsterdam ontwikkelde wij een methode om te reflecteren op conflict in processen van burgerparticipatie.

Het doel van dit schrijven is tweeledig. We analyseren twee casussen van participatie in Amsterdam Oost. Maar deze casusbeschrijvingen dienen ook een voorbeeld voor de ‘kritieke-momenten reflectiemethode’ die wij hebben ontwikkeld. De kritieke-momenten reflectiemethode is een manier om te begrijpen hoe, ondanks alle goede intenties, participatie vaak toch kan escaleren of tot nieuwe conflicten kan leiden. De methode die wij aandragen geeft professionals die participatie- of andere samenwerkingsverbanden willen bewerkstelligen, een handelingsrepertoire om actoren (spelers en betrokkenen die een actieve rol innemen en invloed hebben op een proces) en herinneringen een plek en rol te geven in het proces. De reflectie die in de methode wordt aangedragen is in Amsterdam Oost toegepast op de praktijk, met als doel beleidmakers en politici de mogelijkheid te bieden hun eigen handelen te begrijpen en nieuwe participatieprocessen te versterken.

The unraveling of Amsterdam’s unitary rental system

The Netherlands has traditionally been considered an iconic ‘unitary’ rental housing market in which social and private sectors directly compete. More recently however, this unitary market has been undermined by changes in the status of housing associations, the privatization of social housing stock and the promotion of home ownership. It has subsequently been suggested that the Netherlands is drifting toward a ‘dualist’ system in which social and private sectors are critically unequal. This paper takes on this claim, providing, on the one hand, palpable evidence of the waning influence of the unitary housing system in the Netherlands and, on the other, a deeper examination of processes of dualisation as well as the outcomes. We focus on Amsterdam, where housing privatization has been most intense. We specifically draw on a geospatial analysis of changing tenure distributions at the neighbourhood level as well as a household analysis of the shifting profile of tenants and home owners to show how the unitary rental market, which helped establish Amsterdam as an iconic ‘just city’, has been unraveling. We demonstrate the relevance of the unitary/dualist model to understanding contemporary urban processes, especially those featuring social and economic polarization.

The Revival of Private Landlords in Britain’s Post-Homeownership Society

Homeownership has been declining in favour of private renting in most developed English speaking countries since the early-2000s. Public debates in countries like Britain, Australia and the US have subsequently focused on the ostensible coming of age of ‘generation rent’, constituted of younger individuals excluded from home buying and traditional routes to housing asset accumulation. While the focus of this paper is the significance of access to housing assets as a means to offset potential economic and welfare precarity, our concern is landlords rather than tenants. Drawing on British survey data, we show that the rental boom has been accompanied by increasing multiple property ownership among classes of largely middle-aged and relatively affluent households. Over one-million small-time landlords have emerged in the last decade alone, who, we argue, are part product of historic developments in housing markets and welfare states. Generations of British have not only been orientated towards their homes as commodity assets, they have also begun to mobilise around multi-property accumulation in a context of shifting welfare and pension expectations.

Housing careers, intergenerational support and family relations

The home and family have always been mutually embedded, with the former central to the realization and reproduction of the latter. More recently, this mutuality has taken on a more critical salience as realignments in housing markets, employment and welfare states in many countries have worked together to undermine housing access for new households. In this context, families have become increasingly involved in smoothening the routes of young adults members up the ‘housing ladder’ into home ownership. Intergenerational support appears to have become much more widespread and not just confined to familialistic welfare regimes. The role of intergenerational support for housing remains, however, highly differentiated across countries, cities and regions, as well as uneven between social and income classes. This introduction to the Special Issue explores how the role of housing wealth transfers has impacted the renegotiation of the generational contract. In doing so, it sets the scene for the articles that follow, each of which contribute significantly to advancing understanding of housing as a key driver of contemporary social relations and inequalities.

“Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee”: giving voice to planning practitioners

 

 

Watch this video externally on: Vimeo

 

Tasan-Kok, T. (2016). “Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee”: giving voice to planning practitioners. Planning Theory & Practice 17(4), 621-625. DOI: 10.1080/14649357.2016.1225711

Re-naturing cities: great promises, deadlock . . . and new beginnings?

The chapter starts from the premise that it is vitally important to recognize that the rapid rate of planetary urbanization is the main driver of environmental change. Indeed, the “sustainability” of contemporary urban life (understood as the expanded reproduction of its socio-physical form and functions) is responsible for 80 percent of the world’s use of resources and most of the world’s waste. We wish to highlight how these urban origins are routinely ignored in urban theory and practice, and how feeble techno-managerial attempts to produce more “sustainable” forms of urban living are actually heightening the combined and uneven socio-ecological apocalypse that marks the contemporary dynamics of planetary urbanization. This chapter is, therefore, not so much concerned with the question of nature IN the city, as it is with the urbanization OF nature, understood as the process through which all forms of nature are socially mobilized, economically incorporated, and physically metabolized/transformed in order to support the urbanization process. First, we shall chart the strange history of how the relationship between cities and environments has been scripted and imagined over the last century or so. Second, we shall suggest how the environmental question entered urban theory and practice in the late twentieth century. And, finally, we shall explore how and why, despite our growing understanding of the relationship between environmental change and urbanization and a consensual focus on the need for “sustainable” urban development, the environmental conundrum and the pervasive problems it engenders do not show any sign of abating. We shall conclude by briefly charting some of the key intellectual and practical challenges ahead. Keywords: environmental politics; socio-ecological conflict urban political ecology; urban theory.

Planners’ role in accommodating citizen disagreement: The case of Dutch urban planning

Citizen disagreement on urban policies and planning decisions is both ubiquitous and fundamental to democracy. Post-political debates debunk the ‘consensus approach’, which is grounded in Habermasian communication theory, for circumventing disagreement. This article presents a counter argument. Our analysis of the highly institutionalised and consensus-oriented Dutch planning framework shows that this system does not necessarily prevent effective voicing of disagreement. The empirical material demonstrates that consensus is not a pre-defined and static outcome but a dynamic and sensitive process in which urban planning is an instrument. We conclude that planners could facilitate consensus through accommodative roles that address disagreement by taking an adaptive, proactive and more human stance.

Integrating Mobility and Urban Development Agendas: a Manifesto

Contemporary urban lifestyles and business practices are increasingly dependent on mobility. At the same time, the negative impacts of mobility on natural and social environments are growing dramatically, as is the public outcry for their reversal. Urban planners are faced with a difficult dilemma: how to rejoin the essential role of mobility in enhancing cities' welfare and well-being with the lack of sustainability of present urban mobility practices? The paper argues that coping with this dilemma requires understanding and managing the deep intertwining of urban mobility, spatial developments, and broader socio-economic and cultural processes, but also coming to terms with the many, irreducible uncertainties of the challenge. It concludes that only a more intensive and critical interaction between different disciplines – at the very least fully integrating transport and spatial planningand between planning science and planning practice can achieve this.

Using cost benefit analysis as a learning process: Identifying interventions for improving communication and trust

Integrated transportation plans require assessment approaches that can adequately support their multi-dimensional, context-specific needs. The suitability of cost benefit analysis (CBA) for answering this need has been studied in recent research: an analysis of participant perceptions in the Netherlands showed several problematic process issues when assessing integrated transportation plans with CBA (Beukers et al., 2012). CBA was perceived by the participants as a final test, in contrast to the desired outcome of using CBA as a learning tool to optimize the plans. Furthermore, the two main groups of participants (plan owners and evaluators) appeared to hold different and sometimes clashing rationales. This clash was expressed through lack of communication and mutual trust. Using a literature review of the fields of deliberative planning and organizational learning to explore how to improve communication and build trust, this paper provides a deeper understanding of the process issues at hand and contends that strong communication and trust between plan owners and evaluators are crucial conditions for employing CBA as a learning tool. Finally, based on these theoretical insights, this paper proposes an approach for supporting the practical use of CBA as a learning tool.

Urban Development without more Mobility by Car? Lessons from Amsterdam, a Multimodal Urban Region

The fundamental dilemma in attempts to make urban development less dependent upon mobility by car is the inability of alternatives to match the quality of accessibility provided by private motorized transport. Failure to recognize this means that bringing about environmentally more sustainable urban mobility patterns is only possible at economic, social, and political costs that are unacceptable in most societies. In this paper we identify and discuss ways out of this dilemma, in the form of solutions that pursue the goal of increasing both sustainability and accessibility. We start by contending that what people ask is not a generic mobility, but rather opportunities to participate in spatially disjointed activities. Accordingly, accessibility should be defined as the amount and the diversity of ‘spatial opportunities’ that can be reached within a certain amount of time. Solutions to the accessibility–sustainability dilemma building upon this perspective (that is, planning concepts, policy measures) have been the object of recent research at the Universiteit van Amsterdam and are discussed and we look for, and find, evidence of the feasibility of these solutions in the actual trends in the Amsterdam urban region. Some policy implications of the findings are discussed.

Evolutionary urban transportation planning: an exploration

For urban transportation planners these are challenging times. Mounting practical concerns are mirrored by more fundamental critiques. The latter comes together in the observation that conventional approaches do not adequately account for the irreducible uncertainty of future developments. The author's central aim is to explore whether and how an evolutionary approach can help overcome this limit. Two core hypotheses are formulated. The first is that the urban transportation system behaves in an evolutionary fashion. The second hypothesis is that, because of this, urban transportation planning needs to focus on enhancing the resilience and adaptability of the system. Changes in transport and land-use development patterns and policies, and in the broader context of the postwar period in the Amsterdam region, are analysed in order to illustrate the two core hypotheses. More general implications are also drawn.

Adaptive and Strategic Capacity: Navigating Megaprojects through Uncertainty and Complexity

In an effort to combat the complexity and uncertainty that comes with mega-infrastructure development, planners often seek to simplify the process and scope of their projects, making plans that consist of rigid sequential steps. The question is how this approach influences planners' responsiveness to uncertainty and complexity in megaproject decision making and planning. To answer this question I introduce two concepts: Adaptive capacity and strategic capacity. I develop these concepts and apply them to three large infrastructure projects in the Netherlands in order to analyze the potential of these projects to deal with change and inertia. In this paper I first look at the concepts individually and then link them together. This shows that, to be successful, planning needs to navigate a project through uncertainty and complexity and that it is important that these concepts are taken into consideration.

Adapting to new realities: an analysis of institutional work in three cases of Dutch infrastructure planning

The social and institutional context of infrastructure planning has shifted tremendously over recent decades. From top–down implementation, infrastructure planners are now forced to incorporate the demands and wishes of citizens and other external stakeholders. This paper adopts the analytical perspective of institutional work to analyse how a number of Dutch infrastructure planning organisations try to remain in control over these changes in their institutional context. Building on social systems thinking, this paper distinguishes three environments in which this control can play out: the internal environment over which an organisation has complete control, an external environment over which an organisation has little control and a transactional environment where the organisation, through its interactions with other actors, can influence institutional development. The paper concludes that while most forms of institutional work applied by the infrastructure planning organisations under study aim to change the organisations’ interactions with stakeholders, the forms of institutional work are predominantly located within the internal environment of planning organisations.

Scaling-up energy conservation initiatives: Barriers and local strategies

Energy conservation in residential and commercial buildings is considered a key challenge and opportunity for low-carbon urban development. In cities worldwide, energy conservation initiatives have been realized that demonstrate the social, financial, and environmental benefits that energy conservation can generate. However, in order to accomplish international goals pertaining to climate mitigation, these initiatives need to go to scale and reach a greater and broader audience. To accelerate the scaling-up of such initiatives, an in-depth understanding of barriers hampering this process and local strategies that can be applied to address these barriers is required. While scholars and practitioners underline the importance of local solutions to the global problem of climate change, little is known about strategies that can be applied at the local level to overcome barriers. This paper has three general findings that can make a valuable contribution to theory and practice on urban climate governance. First, it sketches the context-specificity of barriers to scaling-up energy conservation initiatives and reflects on similarities and differences in barriers to energy conservation in residential and commercial building stocks in two European cities: Utrecht and Valencia. Second, this paper presents several local strategies that can be applied to overcome barriers, thereby improving our understanding of the relation between barriers and solutions. Finally, the findings of the paper suggest that while many barriers have national or international origins, the local environment appears to be a promising scale to address barriers.

'Mortgaged Lives': the biopolitics of debt and homeownership in Spain

The article aims to expand the theoretical framework within which we examine mortgage debt, by focusing on the role that mortgages play not only in financialising housing, but also in promoting a biopolitics of financialising life itself. Conceptualising mortgages as a 'technology of power over life' (Foucault 2003, 246), we expose the biopolitics linked to mortgaged homeownership in order to broaden the scope of analysis on the dialectics between the production of biological futures and the production of future profits. Our analysis is grounded in a historical geographical examination of the biopolitics of mortgage debt in Spain, where, during the most recent real estate boom (1997-2007) mortgages were employed as a technique that was supposed to optimise income by enrolling livelihoods into the cycle of real estate speculation. But as 800,000 mortgages per year were issued at the same period that average wages fell by 10 per cent, mortgages also became a punitive/disciplinary technique, which made the population itself the object of financial speculation. Whilst livelihoods became closely connected to the rent extraction mechanisms of global finance, their very existence followed the fluctuation of financial markets with disastrous effects, including the eviction of over 200,000 Spanish families from their mortgaged homes between 2008-2013. This way, we argue, mortgaged homeownership became central in enrolling biological life into the process of rent extraction, in two distinct ways. First, by making hundreds of thousands of livelihoods ˜'mortgaged', that is, directly dependent on the success or failure of capital accumulation strategies rooted in the built environment. Second, by producing hundreds of thousands of indebted subjects who have to be embedded continuously in the production process in order to meet their debt obligations, and who often remain indebted even after they are evicted from the home they used to own.

“Don’t call me Resilient Again!” The New Urban Agenda as Immunology

The Habitat III Conference’s New Urban Agenda hails a “paradigm shift” for pursuing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). However, the new call for “safe, resilient, sustainable and inclusive cities” remains path-dependent on old methodological tools (e.g. indicators), techno-managerial solutions (e.g. smart cities), and institutional frameworks of an ecological modernization paradigm that did not work. Pursuing a new urban paradigm within this old framework can only act as immunology: it vaccinates citizens and environments so that they can take larger doses of inequality and degradation in the future; it mediates the effects of global socio-environmental inequality, but does little towards alleviating it. Indeed, an increasing number of communities across the world now decline these immunological offers. Instead, they rupture path dependency and establish effective alternative methods for accessing housing, healthcare, sanitation, etc. I argue that real smart solutions and real social innovation are to be found not in consensus-building exercises, but in these dissensus practices that act as living indicators of what/where urgently needs to be addressed.

Experiences with transportation models: An international survey of planning practices

Transport planning practice is experiencing rapid transitions. This shifting professional environment is prompting lively and sometimes bitter debates about how transportation models should be used. While these models and their outputs play an increasingly more important function in transport-related decision-making processes, growing concerns emerge about their limitations, assumptions, biases, and usability. This paper addresses the question of how different professionals involved in transportation planning perceive and experience these tensions. For that purpose, we developed an online survey which was completed by 229 European transport planning practitioners, primarily working in the Netherlands, Denmark and Germany. Our findings support the following key conclusions. First, and contrary to popular notions on the matter, practitioners are relatively satisfied with the models they use. Second, most respondents are confident that they understand the assumptions and uncertainties associated with transport models, but that other important stakeholders do not. However, third, the larger the distance that respondents have to hands-on working experience with transportation models, the lower is their trust on model outputs. Respondents who are not directly involved in the operation of the models a) report more negative experiences associated with model use in decision-making processes and b) identify more usability barriers. The overall picture revealed a lack of trust amongst transport planning professionals, which is a problem needing to be addressed. We propose bringing models closer to those who use their outputs as a constructive solution to this trust deficit.

Social-spatial narrative: A framework to analyze the democratic opportunity of conflict

Conflicts and contention increasingly challenge the capacity to govern the city. Social conflicts are not only problematic but also reveal a sense of active citizenship and engagement. Agonistic theories argue that governments should embrace contention to improve democracy, but this notion has rarely been made tangible in a framework of analysis. This paper proposes the ‘social-spatial narrative’ (SSN) framework to analyze if, when, where, and how conflicts can create opportunities to strengthen urban democracy. The SSN framework analyzes the social geography and political significance of street-level encounters in processes of urban conflict. It unravels exactly how the micropolitics of citizenship interacts with policy practices at the street-level. Narratives reveal the perspectives of stakeholders, but in order to study how some actors establish power and others get excluded, I argue for a social-spatial approach to critical moments. Critical moments may create liminal moments to (re)negotiate meaning, relationships and repertoires of action. The potential of conflict lies in the dramaturgy of these critical moments, which are therefore pivotal vantage points for critical reflection on the repertoire of urban politics. The paper coalesces theories from conflict studies, geography, and public policy to examine conflict empirically through case studies. I illustrate the framework with a case study in Amsterdam that addresses when and where opportunities to engage plural voices in decision making have emerged, and how local officials have missed these opportunities.

Entrepreneurial Governance: Challenges of large-scale property-led urban regeneration projects

Large‐scale urban regeneration projects become highly complex as they involve multiple actors with different expectations. In general, the implementation of such projects entails building governance regimes at the city or regional level, but this often means forging partnerships between public and private actors to serve as policy instruments. Each city government formulates its own strategy for coping with the complexities of various levels of policy‐making, thereby establishing multi‐level governance regimes. And each city has its own particular experience with the implementation trajectory: long or short, successful or unsuccessful. This paper focuses on how the complexities of multi‐actor governance influence the implementation of these projects. The purpose is to show how the macro‐level institutional context affects the project's success and to analyse the challenges posed by multi‐actor governance. Comparative analysis of two old port regeneration projects, namely Rotterdam's Kop van Zuid in the Netherlands, and Het Eilandje in Antwerp, Belgium, reveals how similar challenges were dealt with in different institutional contexts.

Commissioning as the cornerstone of self-build. Assessing the constraints and opportunities of self-build housing in the Netherlands

This paper investigates the relationship between self-build housing and the wider planning and housing regime. Although there is growing policy and academic attention to self-build housing, there is a lack of understanding of the institutional and regulatory conditions shaping the prospects of such housing provision. This paper takes the case of The Netherlands and scrutinizes how institutional dynamics over time have made lower and middle residents dependent on densely organized consortia of municipalities, housing associations and developers. These norms of land development appear to be at odds with the logic of self-building. Through exploring evidence in a pilot study of a municipal self-building scheme in Almere, the authors suggest that making self-building the cornerstone of a resident-led land development strategy, also for low- and middle-incomes, implies a reconfiguration of the actors’ positions in housing provision. This entails a commissioning role for residents in the institutional domain of social and commercial developers.

Kwartiermaken als symbolische politiek in overheidsgestuurde gentrificatie

Deze paper bespreekt overheidsinterventies rond de vernieuwing van een arme arbeidersbuurt in Amsterdam Noord – de Van der Pekbuurt. Zulke interventies worden vaak bekeken vanuit een perspectief van overheidsgestuurde gentrificatie, waarin de (lokale) overheid fungeert als aanjager van transformatie van de stedelijke ruimte. De rol van de overheid beperkt zich hierbij niet tot de herstructurering van de woningmarkt en de fysieke en sociale vernieuwing van ‘achterstandswijken’, maar behelst ook flankerend cultuurbeleid, met name het creëren van culturele voorzieningen voor de creatieve stedelijke middenklasse. Onze analyse laat zien dat die beleidsontwikkelingen bijdragen aan een discours van ‘natuurlijke’ ontwikkeling van de Van der Pekbuurt van arbeidersbuurt tot gentrificatiebuurt, terwijl de lokale overheid volop investeert in de ontwikkeling van een middenklasse en cultureel-creatieve esthetiek die nauw aansluit bij de visie van lokale gebiedsontwikkelaars. Door de dominantie van die symboliek worden de perspectieven van niet-middenklassebewoners genegeerd en de legitimiteit van hun aanwezigheid in de buurt ondermijnd. In tegenstelling tot de creatieve middenklasse is die groep echter slecht in staat gehoor te vinden voor haar positie.

'The city as a brain' - Zef Hemel

From 2011 to 2023, urban planner Zef Hemel held the Wibaut chair. During this period he focused on the question of how to further develop Amsterdam in a sustainable manner. At the end of his chair he published 'Once upon a time a city: visionary in spatial planning'. In this period he also contributed to the municipal course: De Nieuwe Wibaut.

Below you can read his inaugural lecture 'The city as a brain' in Dutch. In it, Hemel discusses the growing challenges for cities as a result of urbanization, but especially the opportunities that the city offers to its residents. The city that functions as a collective brain through optimism, sharing knowledge and cooperation and thus overcomes economic and ecological challenges. He expressed this when accepting the position of special professor of metropolitan issues, particularly focused on Amsterdam, on the Wibaut chair 13-09-2012.

Het nieuwe stadmaken

Normalizing urban inequality: cinematic imaginaries of difference in postcolonial Amsterdam

Combining insights from critical urban studies with geographies of race and racism, this article examines the role of spatial imaginaries in normalizing urban inequalities, showing how such imaginaries make the associations between places and populations appear natural. We extend analyses of the interplay between material landscapes and imaginative geographies to examine how these connections feature in processes of gentrification and displacement and emphasize the necessity of an intersectional approach in understanding the cultural underpinnings of urban change. We propose that such analyses of dominant spatial imaginaries benefit from attention to their colonial roots, given the persistence of monomythical explorer-hero narratives and the mapping of reworked colonial imaginative geographies onto contemporary postcolonial cities. Our analysis focuses on Amsterdam, the popular Dutch film Alleen Maar Nette Mensen and the spatiality of difference that its ‘monomyth’ narrative presents. It justifies an unequal urban order by contrasting Amsterdam’s city centre, which is depicted as White, middle-class and ‘civilized’, with the post-war urban periphery, which is cast as a mysterious place of racialized poverty, squalor and pathological behaviour. This culturally essentialist depiction contributes to the depoliticization of state-led gentrification and normalizes changes to the material cityscape.

The relationship between ethnic composition of the residential environment and self-reported health among Turks and Moroccans in Amsterdam

Previous studies from the US and UK suggest that neighbourhood ethnic composition is associated with health, positive or negative, depending on the health outcome and ethnic group. We examined the association between neighbourhood ethnic composition and self-reported health in these groups in Amsterdam, and we aimed to explore whether there is spatial variation in this association.

Gentrification Of The Changing State

Taking Jason Hackworth and Neil Smith’s seminal paper on the ‘changing state of gentrification’ as a starting point, this paper argues for a reconceptualization of state‐led gentrification to further our understanding of urban transformation. Rather than seeing the State as an extension of capital interests, we contend that class‐state relations may produce urban spaces through representative politics and State hegemonies. To illustrate, we present a brief historical and geographical overview of the transformation of Amsterdam from 1982 to 2015, based on policy documents, media reports, archival research, interviews and secondary literature, as well as social and electoral data at the neighbourhood level. As the gentrification frontier advanced and working class voting blocs diminished, new electoral politics took hold, which permitted a new middle class hegemony to institute policy and institutional changes to further push gentrification and capital interests, leading to subsequent waves of urban change.