This is the opening of the first day of the scientific conference: Reinventing the City. Hosted at AMS Institute.
Living in a modern city, it can be hard to ‘see’ food. We all eat every day, yet few of us really know where our food comes from. By failing to value food, however, we’ve created a bad sitopia. Climate change, deforestation, soil erosion, water depletion, pollution, mass extinction, diet-related disease and zoonotic pandemics are just some of the ‘externalities’ of the way we eat. Our lives are built on the illusion of cheap food, while in reality so such thing exists. Only by restoring food’s true value and harnessing its power for good can we hope to thrive on our crowded, overheating planet. Sitopia is not utopia; yet by valuing food and consciously shaping the world through it, we can come close to the utopian dream of a healthy, fair and resilient society.
What will be the image of Reinvented City? Will it be filled with new technology and sensors? Will it be carbon neutral? Will people behave differently in how they move, consume, separate waste and interact with each other? Will businesses and citizens collaborate for circularity? And what about the presumption of energy, food, and waste?During the first panel session, featuring Jan Duffhues (City of Amsterdam), Eveline Butter (Witteveen & Bos) and Sigrid Wertheim (Wageningen University & Research), we will focus on what is needed to reinvent our cities into (more) sustainable and inclusive places. What will be the role of technology and data, of behavior and practices and of the triple helix?
Different parts of the governments are adopting new information and communication technologies - such as artificial intelligence, sense-making algorithms - at different paces. The goal of this session is to bring together academics, professionals, and policymakers to discuss how can we solve the digitalization imbalance by helping the elected representatives carry out their responsibilities using artificial intelligence-based solutions: what are the opportunities? which are the challenges? who can we trust to build such systems? The ultimate objective is to build a network of collaboration around this topic to then build a consortium able to pursue national and international grants.
Guest speaker: Andrea Mauri
Increased droughts, heat-waves and floods under climate change intersect in cities with further concerns linked to the Sustainable Development Goals. In the light of these challenges, multiple data- and model-driven approaches to provide solutions and opportunities for transformation in cities will be discussed and presented, with numerous regional examples. Starting with a model for droughts, The "Urban Drought Nexus Tool" facilitates the sustainable development of cities under increasing droughts. The tool integrates multiple types of information and still can be applied to other case studies with minimal adjustments on the parameters of land use, water consumption and energy use in the water sector. The tool needs hydrological projections under climate scenarios to evaluate climatic futures, and requires the co-creation of socio-economic future scenarios with local stakeholders. Thus, it is possible to provide specific information about droughts taking into account future water availability and future water consumption.
Type of session: the session is a hybrid comprising short-lecture contributions by 4 different teams as outlined in the session abstract, with a final panel discussion about the needs for further tools with input from the audience.
This is a video of three paper presentations around the theme of food-systems:
-A framework for identifying and exploiting policy entry points for sustainable transformation of food systems
-Reinventing new rural-urban food system interventions in Kibera, Nairobi (Kenya)
-From prosumership to entrepreneurship: exploring the urban food system transformation of Almere Oosterwold
Underneath this text, you can find the abstracts of the research presented. Find the link to the videos of the paper presentations at the bottom.
Watch the video of the paper presentations here.
After launching the strategy, the monitor circular economy developed a steady basis for further research, using governmental data sources: national import/use/export and waste management statistics, information about the total number of branches and employees in circular jobs as well as local surveys on the perceptions about the circular economy. The next step is connecting these insights with those of key players. In other words, the monitor aims to develop partnerships with citizen science, business R&D's and other forms of city science to create win-win scenarios on how Amsterdam can work towards 50% reduction of primary raw materials by 2030, full circularity by 2050, as well as enter the "sweet spot" of Kate Raworth's doughnut model. In this session the monitor circular economy was presented, and a co-design session was organised.
This session was moderated by Mesiha Tepic and Juan-Carlos Goilo.
In the virtual co-design session, the following challenge was chosen to work on in the session: Develop services for different stakeholders, so they can recognize themselves in the material streams. The other possible challenges can be seen in photo 1.
Subsequently, design requirements were formulated for this challenge:
Subsequently, these design requirements were further grouped and linked to an inspirational example (see photo 2), including the Together against food waste initiative, the World Business Council for Sustainable Development and the AMS session on organic waste on 17 February.
In conclusion, the importance of stakeholder involvement was emphasized. The city cannot develop a monitor in isolation. Value chains are dynamic and the necessary data can only be obtained through stakeholders.
The Netherlands is one of the most urbanized areas in the world. Challenges of climate change all come together on our 60,000 km2. Governments are faced with an enormous task here. The maintenance of civil infrastructure within the urban environment, in particular bridges, quay walls and pavements, is overdue and suffers from a scarcity of resources for replacement, reinforcement and maintenance.
The old ways of maintaining, strengthening and renewing civil infrastructure simply no longer suffice: renovation and replacement are not happening fast enough and the costs are too high, while opportunities for future-proofing the city are missed.
Cities worldwide are faced with the same challenges: from Amsterdam to New York and from Rotterdam to Tokyo, solutions are being sought to make the infrastructure of cities future-proof.
In this session, several front runners from industry, science and government will present a New Innovation Approach to Tackle Major Infrastructure Challenges. The case at hand is the Future Poof Asset Consoritum and its six projects. And we will discuss this with Jacqueline Cramer, Lindy Molenkamp, Huub Keizer, Sacha Stolp and Kenneth Heijns.
The session took place in Dutch.
This is a collection made for the reflection of Ard van de Kreeke. He provided the reflection after the Keynote by Carolyn Steel during the scientific conference Reinventing the City. He is the founder of GROWY, the world's first commercially viable vertical farm.
On-demand services, in which a fleet of vehicles is coordinated online to serve an emerging demand that is not known beforehand, can have a great potential in providing good quality of service and efficient operations. By integrating the on-demand services into the public transport systems, these services can obtain synergetic effects. In other words, by providing not only traditional fixed-routes lines but also offering vehicles with flexible routes when, this increases the overall efficiency of the system.
In this session, we will discuss some recent works and experiences in this realm, with the presentations of renowned researchers and practitioners that have studied different approaches to adapt public transport networks and leverage the potential of new technologies.
Speakers: Dr. Kara Kockelman, Pascal van Hentenryck, Menno van der Zee and Arjan van Andel.
Amsterdam leads the world in terms of bike use for transportation, yet bike-sharing was restricted in regulation over the last couple of years after the city faced a dump of bike-sharing operators for which the city was not prepared. Now, bike-sharing is back, at least in a pilot phase, including bikes and e-cargo bikes. With this recent development, the time is right to discuss them.
The panel's discussion will be centred around the following four topics.
This event is organized by the MET Forum (Metropolitan Forum). The MET Forum is a student-led initiative to enhance discussions within and around the AMS Institute on metropolitan challenges, innovations, and solutions. Our events come in many shapes and forms including seminars, panels, and other activities. In the past we have discussed about circular economy in developing countries, financialization of housing, and cargo bike adoption in the USA.
The speakers on this event are:
This a collection of three paper presentations about cities and circular food systems, hosted by AMS Institute during the conference Reinventing the City.
The following presentations are included in this collection:
In this collection you will find the paper presentations of 'Urban Energy Production and Positive Energy Distractions (PEDs)'. These presentations were given on the first day of the scientific conference: 'Reinventing the City'. This conference is organized by AMS Institute in collaboration with the Municipality of Amsterdam.
Positive Energy Districts (PEDs) are urban neighborhoods that generate an annual surplus of renewable energy and have zero greenhouse gas emissions. In these districts, or city districts, energy is used very economically. PEDs also provide a flexible system for energy use and storage and dynamic integration into regional energy systems.
Click on 'more information' for the program and the speakers.
The following presentations are included in this collection:
This is a collection for the paper presentations of "Future circularity in cities". A set of paper presentations given on the first day of the scientific conference: Reinventing the City, hosted by AMS Institute.
This is a collection for the paper presentations of Potential of Urban Green. A set of paper presentations consisting out of three parts.