Weblog of Zef Hemel on regional planning
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Remote worker
Read in Het Parool of 20 May 2015: I was asked to give a lecture on open planning for a team of politicians from Bavaria, Germany. They were visiting Amsterdam, hoping to learn more about local policies on biking. After my speech on globalization, information technology and planning (!), the team would make a…
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A new city
Read in Het Parool of 22 july 2015: Globalization. What does it mean? It means a growth of 15 per cent of internet traffic on the Ams-IX internet node last year. Ams-IX, based in Amsterdam, is the biggest internet node in the world. It’s not a node exactly, because it consists of a network of…
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Volksvlijt – uitnodiging voor 9 september 2015
Heb jij ideeën of dromen over de stad van de toekomst? Wonen we anders dan nu en hoe ziet de nieuwe economie eruit? Hoe blijven we gezond in de metropoolregio Amsterdam? Wordt de stad nog groener? Hoe verplaatsen we ons in de toekomst en hoe zal ICT de stad veranderen? Kortom: wat vind jij waardevol?…
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Impossible story
Read in Het Parool of 15 August 2015: The name: Mes Aynak. The old city is situated in Afghanistan. The remains of an old buddhist cloister were found here when the mining started in one of the biggest copper mines of the world. A Chinese firm – the China Mettallurgical Group Corporation – had…
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Building debt
Read in NRC Handelsblad of 28 August 2015: Prime minister Li Keqiang of China is in a difficult political position. For more than seven weeks now the Chinese exchange is in a crisis. Li Keqiang, the Amsterdam based newspaper NRC Handelsblad reported, has an agenda of restructuring the Chinese economy, but will he succeed? …
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Alternative models
Read in ‘Food and the City’ (2015) of Dorothee Imbert (editor): A new book about “the complex interrelationship between urbanization and food production” through time and space, in fourteen chapters. Great read. Dorothée Imbert, who holds a chair in landscape architecture at the Ohio State University, is editor. Dumbarton Oaks Trustees for Harvard University,…
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Delicious liquorice
Read on CityMetric on 1 July 2015: There is a fierce debate going on in Great Britain about the future of its London airports. BAA wants to expand the capacity of Heathrow, west of London. The mayor of London, Mr. Johnson, is favoring the building of a new hub on an artificial island in the…
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Startup delta
Read in The Economist of 25 July 2015: > It’s called a ‘briefing’. Subject: Silicon Valley. In The Economist of 25 July the message was: “the tech boom may get bumpy, but it will not end in a repeat of the dotcom crash.” It was a description of how the Greater San Francisco region is…
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No progress
Seen on Dutch television on Sunday 16 August 2015: The Dutch landscape architect Adriaan Geuze (1960) was guest in last week’s edition of ‘Zomergasten’ (‘’Summer Guests’) on Dutch television. The long interview, inlivened by video and short films, took almost three hours. Geuze showed fragments of documentaries on the Oosterscheldewerken, the building of the Afsluitdijk,…
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Sleepwalkers
Read in Forum (VNO NCW magazine) of 20 August 2015: Bingo! Three in two days: first ‘Alle kaarten op Amsterdam?’ (‘Amsterdam only?’) in Forum, magazine of Dutch employers union VNO NCW, second, on saturday, the Vonk-special of de Volkskrant on ‘De verhipte stad’ (‘The kinky city’) and three: ‘Rotterdam is hot’ in the Amsterdam…
Got any book recommendations?