Tag Archives: Amsterdam

Graduation Ceremony MADE

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The first lucky 7 students have graduated from the MSc MADE (Metropolitan Analysis, Design and Engineering) programme! They received their well-earned MSc diploma during a festive graduation ceremony at AMS Institute. Two years ago, they joined AMS Institute together with elven others for classes on metropolitan challenges, entrepreneurial skills, and data analysis in the urban context. Now they have developed to be the first generation of interdisciplinary metropolitan innovators.

On September 24th, we have celebrated this milestone together with their family and friends when receiving their joint degree diplomas from Delft University of Technology and Wageningen University & Research. This is extra special as these are the first engineering degrees that are handed out in the city of Amsterdam in over 450 years! It has been quite an adventure to write this progrogramme from 2016 until its successful accreditation, and, subsequently, I am happy to have been the first director of this programme. Continue reading →

Smart Urban Mobility

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Why is smart mobility essential in urban development?

Like many metropolitan areas, the Amsterdam metropolis is prospering, the city is growing, new homes are being built, new companies and talent continue to relocate here, and the city is becoming increasingly popular with tourists. If residents, visitors, commuters, and others continue to travel as they do today, all forms of transport combined will grow in the coming years between 20% and 40%, and traffic will grind to a halt.

Good accessibility – with smart connections within the city and with the rest of the country and world – makes an important contribution to Amsterdam’s attractiveness for all travelers. Moreover, particularly in Amsterdam, social diversity and inclusivity are valued, which means providing everyone with equal access to good liveability and transport.

Mobility operates as the intersection between the city’s infrastructure and its city’s inhabitants. It is the central link in the well-functioning of a city and a key element in the organization of multimodal transport. In doing so, it is not only about the connection to other areas, but also about sowing together the fabric of the area and the movement of people in the area itself.
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Getting your Hands Dirty

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Being a graduate student, active in the public space, doesn’t mean you never should get your hands dirty! Becoming a master can be and will be more than being an active listener in a lecture room: So, happy to see (once again) that my thoughts on a ‘living lab way of learning’ have come to life. Some things are changing in academia.


Pouring concrete, and placing the table tennis table. (photo credits resp. Marita de Vries, and Gwenhwyfar Spil)
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Metropolitan Stations

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Places for Change and Innovation

A train station has always been a space for many and it is about time to be approached and designed as such. The urgency is there. Stations have become an intermodal hub with a large crowd being present. From a human perspective, it makes sense: Stations are part of the larger network of public spaces, indoors – outdoors, and interlink other hybrid places and buildings. The more people flock to the city, the more move and stay at stations and/or elsewhere close-by. The role of stations in the network strengthens. More and different people are present. As such, from the observation that the whole is more than the sum of fixed demarcated elements, ever-changing human hubs are perfect settings for place-based innovation in design and by design, because where people move, society changes, and where strangers meet change takes place.

Station as Nodes

Read the article: Metropolitan Stations, Places for Change and Innovation (2018) by Maurice Harteveld (c)

See also: Station as Nodes and Integrated Mobility Challenges

10 Visions, 5 Cities

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“After 9 months of researching, designing and discussing new ways of making a city, the results of the design research De Stad van de Toekomst (The City of the Future) have been presented in a festive closing event on 30 November. Over the course of 2018, design teams, municipalities and a large network of involved experts worked on integrated designs for five test locations of 1 × 1 km in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague, Utrecht, and Eindhoven. The central question: How can the major transitions that we stand for as a society help to create attractive and future-proof urban environments?” (source)

Happy to contribute as an expert.

Stad van de Toekomst (closing event in Dutch only)
‘De 10 Ontwerpvisies voor de 5 Grote Steden’

when:
30 november 2018

where:
Pakhuis de Zwijger
Piet Heinkade 179
Amsterdam

See also: City of the Future Competition

Re-Learning Public Space

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An Action Research Event

When: 28th – 30th June, 2018
Where: AMS Institute, Mauritskade 62, 1092 AD Amsterdam

Urban researchers, planners, communication experts, geographers, architects, as well as active citizens, policy makers trace the stories behind contemporary appropriations of public space. They identify related dilemmas and formulate research questions by liaison with locals, designing an alternative city guide inspired by a set of broad, yet timely themes: The ludic team focusses on the affordance of creative reuse an play in the city, grounded in co-creating public space. The circularity team focusses on self-sufficiency in the city, as manifested by places of gathering and sharing and tangible in productive urban landscapes. The informal team focusses on emerging inequalities and politicisation/de-politicisation, as a result of global commons and local governances of urban places. The wild life team shifts focus to the place of animals in our city. The mass tourism team shines the light on the effect of visitors, travelers, and short-stay residents on the public sphere.
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Integrated Mobility Challenges

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Exploring Sustainable Urban Integration Approaches
in Future Metropolitan Areas

The Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Solutions (AMS), the Delft Deltas, Infrastructures & Mobility Initiative (DIMI), the University of Paris-Est and ARENA Architectural Research Network join Delft University of Technology in the organisation of the interdisciplinary 2018 Summer School: Integrated Mobility Challenges in Future Metropolitan Areas. This is a follow up of Making the Metropolis edition held in Amsterdam in August 2017 and the Stations of the Future event held in Paris in March 2018.

Integrated Mobility Challenges will explore interdisciplinary approaches towards a sustainable urban integration of rail-metro stations. At the main point of intersection between the railway and the city, stations are key elements of the organization of the intermodal transport but also catalysts of urban developments. The main question will be: which approaches and scenarios can be tested and applied to these intermodal nodes, particularly when dealing with lack of space and growing number of users? By using Amsterdam (case of Sloterdijk station area) as test-bed and design location you will exchange knowledge and apply different strategies of sustainable solutions.

When
From 21st to 28th August 2018

Where
Delft University of Technology (NL) with fieldwork in Amsterdam (NL)

Target Group
60 researchers or young professionals and master students in Architecture, Urban Design and Planning, Environmental Design and Sciences, Landscape Architecture, Transport, Infrastructure and Logistics, and related disciplines.

More information can be found here: Summer School Integrated Mobility Challenges

UPDATE: See also Metropolitan Stations and Stations as Nodes

City of the Future Competition

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Making Cities in Times of Major Transitions

On January 10, 2018, our research ‘The City of the Future’ has starts. This study explores new ways of city making by using five test locations of 1 x 1 km in the cities of Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague, Utrecht and Eindhoven (five most populated cities in The Netherlands). We question how we can interrelate urban development, whilst urban design, planning and engineering, to upcoming challenges like shifts in transport, energy transition, circular economy and other system and network innovations, in times of the next generation of densification.
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Public Space: Changing Values

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The Quest for Public Space: Changing Values in Urban Design, The City as Learning Lab and Living Lab

This article highlights the dynamics of values in our reasoning on public space. By means of an epistemological study, it tests the contemporary premises underlying our ways to safeguard the inclusive, democratic, agential city, and, as such, it aims to update our view on urban design. The article raises three subsequent questions: [i] Is the city our common house as perceived from the Renaissance onward, containing all, and consequently are public spaces used by the people as a whole? [ii] Is the city formalising our municipal autonomy as emphasised since the Enlightenment, in an anti-egoistic manner, and in this line, are public spaces owned by local governments representing the people? And, [iii] is the city open to our general view as advocated in Modern reasoning, restricting entrepreneurial influences, and synchronically, is its public spaces seen and/or known by everyone? – Inclusiveness, democracy, agentiality are strongholds in our scientific thinking on public space and each issue echoes through in the practice on urban design. Yet, in an aim to keep cities connected and accessible, fair and vital, and open and social, conflicts appear. Primarily based upon reviewing urban theory and particularly experiencing the Amsterdam for this matter, the answering of questions generates remarks on this aim. Contemporary Western illuminations on pro-active citizens, participatory societies, and effects of social media and micro-blogging forecast a more differentiated image of public space and surmise to enforce diversification in our value framework in urban design.

See:
Harteveld, Maurice G. A. D. (2017) The Quest for Public Space: Changing Values in Urban Design, The City as Learning Lab and Living Lab, IN Tieben, Hendrik, Yan Geng, and Francesco Rossini (eds) The Entrepreneurial City, , Rotterdam: International Forum on Urbanism (IFoU) / Hong Kong: School of Architecture, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, pp. 395-411
or alternative link

Exploring Metropolitan Design

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The Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Solutions (AMS), the Delft Deltas, Infrastructures & Mobility Initiative (DIMI), and the International Forum on Urbanism (IFoU) joined Delft University of Technology in the organisation of the interdisciplinary 2017 Summer School:‘Making the Metropolis: Exploring Interdisciplinary approaches in Metropolitan Design Engineering’.


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