Sign-up for this particular off-site is: here via Eventbrite. Advanced registration required. Capacity: 20. Cost: Pay as you go.
Come and join us at one of our four special stops this evening and meet other participants and the Placemaking Plus team during this tour of Amsterdam. You can join from the start or hop on later in the evening, and pay as you go.
Schedule:
Sign-up links for all off-sites will be sent by email to conference registrants only in late September. Advanced registration required. Capacity: 40.
This daylong trip to Almere will explore how this New Town is attempting to strengthen the heart of the city, and bring itself to the next level.
Almere is the Netherlands’ youngest city. It’s a new, planned town that has only existed for forty-one years. It is one of the top ten largest cities in the Netherlands with a population of over 200,000 inhabitants. The city center (Almere Centrum), with its novel and striking architecture, never fails to wow unsuspecting first-time visitors.
Each year, approximately 10 million people from Almere, and an increasing number of regional visitors, visit the city center due to its comprehensive facilities, the modern atmosphere, the easy access, and special events. The goal is for Almere Centum to become the beating heart for residents and visitors from the city and the region. But there are many challenges in Almere, as well as many assets.
How can we create better squares that strengthen both the built and natural environment? How can we make the most of this fast-growing city?
Lunch and transportation will be provided.
Many initiatives are already taking advantage of this city's unique assets. Next to the central train station in Tilburg, the reuse of a large old industrial building could provide the inner city with a major opportunity. The inner city shopping areas have taken inspiration from Jane Jacobs with a strategy to add new streets and meeting spaces. Some public spaces make inventive use of water as an anchor for community.
Now, the question for Tilburg is: Can local placemakers scale up these many small projects to affect the city as a whole? How can we help the city make a qualitative leap forward?
Lunch and transportation will be provided.
The square has the potential to serve as an anchor for the entire city center. With the expertise of Project for Public Spaces, we will organize a place game to analyse, observe and find new ideas for how to turn this space into a great place. We will use the lessons of the 10 principles for successful squares.
Zwolle is a modern city with a rich history and a steady economy. The city is in the top five in terms of economic growth in the Netherlands and has a lower unemployment rate than the national average. You will find lively streets there, with students, entrepreneurs, free-thinkers, and creative doers who have all worked together to keep public prosperity and well-being at a high level. At the same time, the city attracts multinational corporations.
This crossover has resulted in many innovative projects coming together, however the station square doesn’t reflect the city's many assets. How can we, with placemaking, reimagine a station square so that it will become a centerpiece of a comfortable and vibrant city center? How can we learn from the historic city square? How can we open up the surrounding buildings and offer more comfort from the sun and the wind? Which new activities and programming could be started and how should we facilitate the community at large to be the expert?
Lunch and transportation will be provided.
Sign-up links for all off-sites will be sent by email to conference registrants only in late September. Advanced registration required. Capacity: 30.
Green City Buzz is a sustainable urban development foundation with a story very much born of a place—the "Secret Village" in Amsterdam's historic city centre. Known as Amsterdam's "gay street," in 2016 the area became the target of redevelopment, but redevelopment with a soul!
Green City Buzz initially teamed up with all stakeholders on the street to improve the area through greening and better use of public space. We're now future-proofing Secret Village by implementing 20+ sub-projects from sustainable food and eco-friendly logistics to social cohesion initiatives and community engagement events. Our pièce de résistance is yet to come—transforming the street into a pedestrian haven and a true village centre for all Secret Villagers.
This a story of a battle for inclusive placemaking. How do you "improve" an area without letting go of the comforting and familiar? How do you welcome a new generation of visitors without alienating the old? How do you stay focused on big-picture thinking when the system tells you to stop dreaming big and narrow your focus, because it's easier?
Everything we do must keep the bigger picture in mind, because every street is an urban eco-system. You can't touch one area without impacting another, and it's time we approach urban development with this uncompromising mindset of real-world integration. We don't claim to have all the solutions (yet), but we have earned many answers worth sharing. It's what makes this little Amsterdam street, its inhabitants, and its caretakers a true game-changer in sustainable and inclusive urban development.
How did Amsterdam become such a successful cycling city, with 60% of all trips in the inner city made on bike? The increase is so large, that the City now has to make new choices. About the history and future of cycling in Amsterdam, and the latest initiatives.
- Janine Hogendoorn (Ring-Ring)
- Agartha Frimpong, Mama Agatha: Getting newcomers on bikes in Amsterdam Bijlmer
- Mahmut Yasar, Europe Cycle Company: importing from / and exporting to France, Turkey and China
- Kees Vernooij, City of Amsterdam: new designs for bike junctions.
3. Q&A and discussion with the audience
While it’s easy to fall in love with a city on a sunny day, how can our environments support the needs of our residents through less inviting times? Join us as we explore this question and discover the true meaning of Seasonal Effective Design.
Seasonal Effective Design integrates biodynamic placemaking practices to allow for greater social and ecological resilience. In this workshop we will work together on multiple case studies across North America and explore user-designed contextual interventions.
Questions we will discuss include:
-How can we create local support systems that accomodate social needs throughout the year?
-Why does our urban infrastructure collect puddles of water when it rains rather than accommodate absorption?
-How can we mitigate seasonal affective disorder through placemaking?
-How can we foster a symbiotic relationship in our urban ecosystems?
How can placemaking help adress the most pressing problems of Africa's fast-growing cities?
In the 1950s, William H. Whyte described the unruly growth of the American city as the "exploding metropolis." As African cities like Nairobi, Lagos, Accra, and Capetown go through their own explosive transformations, they face serious challenges in developing into inclusive and prosperous environments. This panel, which brings together researchers and practitioners, aims to explore how these growing cities can develop an agenda for sustainability, equity and prosperity, beginning with the public realm through placemaking: making cities together.
From embracing serendipitous encounters to resolving paradoxes to arts-based brainstorming techniques, this session of short presentations is all about engaging communities in new ways.
Featuring:
Place to Meet Friends in Mexico City
Guillermo Bernal (Mexico City, Mexico)
Smart Cities Can Still Be Dumb
Adam Green (San Francisco, CA, USA)
Empowerment in Public Space
Leonardo Brawl Márquez (Porto Alegre, Brazil)
Big Change by Small Encounters: Field Notes from Placemakers
Païvi Raivio (Helsinki, Finland)
From Trash Alley to Alley Garden
Emilie Roell (Yangon, Myanmar)
Reimagining Public Spaces through Ping Pong
Renée Miles Rooijmans (Vancouver, BC, Canada)
What Can Placemakers Learn from Paradox Scholars?
Ieva Rozentale (Amsterdam, Netherlands)
Sign-up links for all off-sites will be sent by email to conference registrants only in late September. Advanced registration required. Capacity: 25.
Creating opportunities for play in public spaces is central to a number of city urban agendas. Amsterdam is actively pursuing the agenda of engaging a children-focused vision of the city and elevating their experience of the city. Through an active 90-minute workshop, participants will assess challenges and opportunities of navigating a selected neighbourhood through the lens of a 95cm-tall child (the height of a healthy three year old).
Located at Java-eiland, a 10-minute walk from the conference venue, this workshop takes an action research approach to expose the challenges facing families with young children. The workshop, designed for active engagement with the urban environment, aims to provide a discussion platform of ideas ranging from DIY solutions, to harnessing existing resources to creatively engage in planning for all by using the vantage point of children.
Program:
10.00 Coffee / tea, general information, do-it-yourself tour (all day)
11.00 Guided tour
12.00 Meet the locals; transformation of an alley
13.00 Discussion: hybrid zones – diversity vs. quality
Guided tour 2
14.00 Meet the locals; entrepreneurs
Meet the locals; transformation of an alley
15.00 Discussion: Nieuwezijds Kolk - how to improve a divided square
Guided tour
16.00 Closing with a drink
This session will shed light on Amsterdam’s public space strategy from a variety of lenses, by the city’s senior planners and designers.
The city of Amsterdam has a rich history in public space planning and design. In the recent Public Space Vision for the municipality, public space is envisioned as "the city’s living room," with a few key characteristics:
As the city is facing substantial growth and densification between now and 2025, with the estimated addition of 50,000 houses over the next few years, the key challenge is how to keep up with the quality of public space at the pace of the development.
What happens when communities, developers, entrepreneurs, and the city wake up together? How can stakeholders with different goals create value for all through placemaking?
Join this panel of leading developers to learn how placemaking allows them to meet a "double bottom line" in housing, supermarkets, airports, hospitals, shopping malls, storefronts and more!
From the shaping of public spaces by private interests in Cape Town to transforming slums from “zones of danger” into “zones of peace” in Venezuela, this session of short talks focuses on topics that relate to ethics, equity, and inclusion in placemaking.
Featuring:
Open Streets Cape Town: Joys and Challenges
Marcela Guerrero Casas (Cape Town, South Africa)
Gigantic Micro-Interventions: Public Spaces in Venezuela
Vanessa Catalano (Amsterdam, Netherlands)
Yu Lok Lane: Hong Kong Top-Down or Bottom Up?
Judy Chan (Hong Kong)
Inclusive placemaking at the Ceuvel in Amsterdam North: Production of Build & Design Sessions and How to Measure their Impact
Roos Gerritsma (Amsterdam)
Excavating Place: Indigenous Place Making
Sam Mukwa Kloetstra (Toronto, ON, Canada)
Placemaking When Black Lives Matter
Annette Koh (Honolulu, HI, USA)
"Sit-ability": Have you ever seen a Living Room without a Couch?
Jenny Leuba (Zurich, Switzerland)
Is this park for US?
Joe Sikora (New Jersey, USA)
A new generation of placemaking has arrived for Central and Eastern Europe.
As younger people begin to see public spaces in a new light, public attitudes that once deemed common spaces as belonging to nobody are fading away. In this session we will explore how the region is taking on a role at the cutting edge of the placemaking movement.
PPS has assembled a panel of practicing placemakers coming from vastly diverse professional backgrounds—NGOs, foundations, municipal organizations, academia, publishing, and independent artists and researchers. Join us as we explore the shared legacy, successes and challenges to creating lively, authentic, and inclusive public spaces in the Central and Eastern European context.
From the need for a better planning process in booming Silicon Valley to the innovative reuse of Montreal’s Olympic Park, this session of short presentations will focus on placemaking with, within and without government.
Featuring:
Les Jardineries: Reinventing an Olympic Park
Maxim Bragoli (Montreal, QC, Canada)
New York City’s Public Plaza Program: Transforming streets for people
Donovan Finn (New York, NY, USA)
The Paradox of Limitations
Jia-Ping Lee (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia)
Democratizing Place Policy
Robin Abad Ocubillo (San Francisco, CA, USA)
A Placemaking Policy for Thessaloniki
Maria Sitzoglou (Thessaloniki, Greece)
Baby Steps in #SiliconValley
Kirk Vartan (San Jose, CA, USA)
Connecting Departments & Communities in Skawina
Maciej Zacher (Skawina, Poland)
In this closing session, we will crowd source everyone's ideas around two central questions:
- What is your placemaking ambition you take away from Placemaking Week?
- What is the next step in the short term you will take in your placemaking practice?
Amsterdam, as the host city, will kick off this closing session.
Drop by this open-house-style event to meet local placemakers, learn about this major thoroughfare, and discuss its ongoing transformation with shop owners, residents, and city officials.
The Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal, a thoroughfare between the city's main shopping district and its famous canal belt, has played a big and diverse role in Dutch history. Over the years it has served as the home of the biggest national newspapers and the squatting movement, and still acts as the "backyard" of the Royal Palace.
Today, the street forms a unique mix of functions with a diffuse character, but in the coming years, it will be transformed from a traffic-dominated road into a series of connected destinations. But how can we maintain locality, diversity, and authenticity in this process? Meet the street and help us out!
When you missed people at the meeting point you can ring the doorbel from 11.50 at:
Kantoor De Halve Wereld
Or call Marijke Storm: +316 20834489
