the future of Urban Development, February 2003

Club of Amsterdam

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Supporters
PricewaterhouseCoopers
LOGICmerce

Are you prepared for the changes in the European market?
Do you know how to create a competitive business, which survives the future business landscapes?
Do you know the key factors for a changing urban environment?
This Event about the future Urban Development is of concern to the building industry and to everybody who needs to know what impact Urban Development will have to its business.

Part I: Dialogue: Winy Maas, Architect and Urban Planner, MVRDV & Paul Schnabel, director of the Netherlands Social and Cultural Planning

Part II: Panel with Dialogue Partners and Kees Rijnboutt, Architect, de architectengroep, Bernard Hulsman, NRC Handelsblad, Jan Fokkens, Chairman, GIDO-Stichting and the Host Karel van der Poel, founder & CEO, Blue-Nova

Winy Maas: “European borders disappear – new regions appear. What is the role of The Netherlands in this new landscape? Is this going to be a landscape of internal competition or should Europe collaborate and The Netherlands as a consequence specialise? How is this going to look like? What kind of specialisation is needed?”

Paul Schnabel: “Paradoxes reign in the arena of urban development, to a great deal determining its future. The real ‘city-zens’ are moving out to ever greener suburbs, mainly consisting of low rize onefamily houses, whereas the ‘villagers’ from abroad take up residence in the cheap apartmentblocks surrounding the centres of the old cities. They urbanize their traditional village-life, but do not take part in traditional western urban life.
Spectacular concentrations of highrise officebuildings on traffic hubs develop as visual eyecatchers into landmarks of urbanity, but real urban life is a leisure time activity of suburbanites. They turn the old and very vulnerable smallscale citycenters into stagesettings for a neo-bourgeois lifestyle. Convenience shopping become concentrated in shopping malls with ample parking space, funshopping will be an ‘urban’ pastime, not necessary focused on buying the goods the shops so beautifully display.”

Photos from the Event