Report Workshop RED&BLUE: Amsterdam

Prioritizing research questions and selection of urban use cases

The past few decades have witnessed several economic, social, and climatic events that led to major shifts in trends of real estate development in cities. Until the first decade of the century, real estate agents would draw an image of a specific person as the target group for their real estate products. However, the financial crisis in 2008-2009 pushed them to re-profile these unified models into a collection of clients who might not share the same age, financial status, or even business models rather the neighborhood. Meanwhile, urban planners shifted to diversifying the internal city and promoting the mixed-use of buildings to overcome the shortage of spaces, reduce transport costs, and create more social interaction between different social segments. At the same time, the pace of climate change kept increasing, and the resulting damages are threatening the existence of cities. Amsterdam is not far from these major developments, with many of its areas densely populated and below the sea level, the climate change poses high risk on the vitality of the city.

In a workshop that brought the Red&Blue partners together, we attempted to co-create a research pathway with all partners. This is through prioritizing the research questions and selecting specific areas in Amsterdam together to work on during the coming years. This workshop was preluded by 24 bilateral meetings with the consortium participants to understand their motivation, aspiration in this project, and define urban use cases in Amsterdam. A list of criteria and five different areas in Amsterdam emerged from these meetings which served as basis for the discussion during the workshop.