Stan Majoor, AMIDSt - Amsterdam institute for Metropolitan and International Development Studies
Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences
Universiteit van Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Reshaping Urbanity in the Amsterdam Region (assigned to theme
Large-scale urban development projects are almost everywhere heavily debated by citizens, politicians, planners, architects and developers. A rough dichotomy can be drawn between critics and proponents of these projects. The first part of this paper will give a short overview of the arguments from both sides. On this basis we define our own position, which will be rather pragmatic. One of the most interesting and promising planning ambitions to counteract the criticisms on large projects and to better fulfill their potentials, is to realize more mixed-use urban environments in these areas. We will argue that the success rate of this ambition depends heavily on institutional innovations. The necessity for this innovation finds its origin in the combined task to both manage the increasing complexity at the level of the specific investment project as well as in positioning a project in a regional and national scale of action. We will argue that the relationship between innovations at these two (spatial) scales is crucial to create the conditions for successful content innovations. The problem is that often, narrow defined ad-hoc new institutional structures, like development corporations are set up, that have difficulty in fulfilling ambitions. The Amsterdam Zuidas case study will both display potentials and pitfalls in this respect.
submitted 2005-05-04 09:58:38.093
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