Planning for the Future

The Dutch are famous for their tradition of landscape and urban planning. Since the abandonment of central planning in 2004 and the liquidation of the relevant ministry (VROM) in 2010, this tradition has eroded. As the negative effects of this willful neglect pile up around Dutch landscapes and communities, new and daring initiatives abound. This program will discuss what is to be gained and what is to be lost, taking as cases one major Amsterdam-related classical planning project and one recent local experiment.

Professor and renowned landscape architect Adriaan Geuze states that the landscape created on the seabed is the soul of Dutch culture. In this landscape with polders and canals, a unique metropolis developed: the Randstad. Nowadays, this metropolis is losing its vitality due to the absence of an efficient planning strategy. According to him, the Dutch tradition of spatial planning, where famous engineers took the lead, has made way for a doctrine in which lawyers, planners and policymakers are in charge and which is implemented in an increasingly decentralized manner, with disastrous consequences. Professor Geuze will use the history of the North Sea Canal to explain the consequences (in terms of economic development, urban planning and cultural landscapes) for the Amsterdam region.

In 2020, the Amsterdam city council expressed the ambition to make the city more car-free. The aim of this policy ambition is a liveable and accessible city, creating more space for pedestrians, cyclists, public transport, greenery and public facilities in the city. As part of this policy goal, the Weesperstraat (one of the most important traffic arteries in the city center for cars) was closed for 6 weeks on a pilot basis in the summer of 2023 between 6 a.m. and 11 p.m. Jeroen Slot, head of research at the Research and Statistics department of the municipality of Amsterdam, will present research examining the wider effects of this pilot.

Some of our NIAS symposium keynote speakers and esteemed guests (Martin Ruef (Duke University), Olav Sorenson (UCLA), Nicole Marwell (University of Chicago), Sunasir Dutta (University of Minnesota), Arjen van Witteloostuijn (VU), Filippo Carlo Wezel (USI), Carolina Castaldi (UU) and Jon Bannister (Manchester University) will discuss, from their own academic discipline, the topics presented with Adriaan Geuze and Jeroen Slot.

This public event is organized in the context of the NIAS symposium on “The Spatial Segregation of Neighborhoood Organizations and Entrepreneurs”, held in Amsterdam at the Royal Dutch Academy of Arts and Science (KNAW), June 17th-19^th.

About the speakers

Adriaan Geuze is Professor of Landscape Architecture at the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment at the Delft University of Technology, where he works on urgent complex topics, such as climate adaptation, housing construction, energy transition, and agriculture realignment. Geuze is one of the founders of West 8 urban design & landscape architecture, a leading urban design practice in Europe.

Jeroen Slot is Head of the Research and Statistics department of the municipality of Amsterdam. He is one of the greatest experts on figures and facts about Amsterdam and advice local government on a variety of issues, social, economic, planning and demographic developments. Slot is an alumnus of the University of Amsterdam where he studied Social Geography.

Debra Minkoff (moderator) joined the faculty of Barnard College in 2005, where she has served as chair of the Barnard sociology department for more than a decade, as well as Dean for Faculty Diversity and Development. Minkoff started her career teaching at Yale University and the University of Washington, Seattle and has held visiting positions at the University of Munich and the Humboldt University of Berlin while on a Fulbright Fellowship. Her work focuses on the organizational dimensions of social movements and political activism in the U.S.