The aim of the research-by-design project The Hackable City is to develop a research agenda and toolkit that explores the role of digital media technologies for new directions for urban planning and city-making. How can citizens, design professionals, local government institutions and others creatively use digital technologies in collaborative processes of urban planning and management? The project seeks to connect developments of, on the one hand, city municipalities that develop smart-city policies and testing these in ‘urban living labs’ and, on the other hand, networked smart-citizen initiatives of people innovating and shaping their own living environments. In this contribution we look at how self-builders in urban lab Buiksloterham in Amsterdam have become ‘hackers’ of their own city, cleverly shaping the future development of a brownfield neighbourhood in Amsterdam’s northern quarter.
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Cities are becoming increasingly complex, both in terms of their social and cultural context, and in the technological solutions that are necessary to make them function. In parallel, we are observing a growing attention toward the public dimension of design, addressing societal challenges and opportunities at an urban scale. Conceptualizing, ideating, and framing design problems at a larger scale may still prove challenging, even as cities are becoming more and more relevant for all branches of design. In this chapter, we address the use of game mechanics to produce strong concepts for better understanding complex problems in city-making and communal participation, capitalizing on the necessity to shift the attention from smart cities to smart citizens. Through several examples we will show that games and play have a special quality of social bonding, providing context and motivational aspects that can be used to improve the dynamics and solutions within city-making.
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In deze publicatie komen de partijen aan het woord die een steentje hebben bijgedragen aan het project: de bewoners van de vier duurzame demohuizen in Paddepoel, de studenten van kenniscentrum NoorderRuimte over de rol die bewonersinitiatieven kunnen spelen. Doeners uit de praktijk van de energietransitie, zoals Joep de Boer van WarmteStad en Han Folkerts van woningcorporatie Nijestee, maar ook de denkers van TNO, CGI, RuG en Hanzehogeschool.
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This open access book presents a selection of the best contributions to the Digital Cities 9 Workshop held in Limerick in 2015, combining a number of the latest academic insights into new collaborative modes of city making that are firmly rooted in empirical findings about the actual practices of citizens, designers and policy makers. It explores the affordances of new media technologies for empowering citizens in the process of city making, relating examples of bottom-up or participatory practices to reflections about the changing roles of professional practitioners in the processes, as well as issues of governance and institutional policymaking.
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Although the interest in urban freight transport is growing, it is commonly seen as an area in which there is, for several reasons, a lack of research, especially if you compare it with the amount of research that deals with passenger transport. The attention of governments especially for urban goods movement has increased over recent years and with that the number of studies in the urban goods movement field. However, the practice of city logistics policies is not very often the result of detailed analyses and evaluations. This is reflected in similar types of regulations repeated through the different cities regardless of their characteristics, the same schedules for time windows and load zones, and the failure to recognise different types of urban distribution which require different types of regulations. Apart from copying regulation frameworks, however, cities hardly share information, knowledge or cooperation. The lack of national or regional bodies dealing with city logistics, as there exist for urban passenger traffic, is significant. In this paper we will address the main research contributions in city logistics and try to illustrate how the research contributions are (not) related to the daily practice of policymaking and town planning. Finally we will end with the conclusion that a real gap exists between research and practice and provide some explanations, conditions and directions for setting up new research projects.
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In Amsterdam we have been working with a diversity of partners in the city for more than a decade now. Our study and research in our research group Cities & Visitors have been focused on the image and reputations of our cities, including the image and reputation of different areas of the city itself. Year after year, we have seen together with our students in different European cities, how somehow intangible concepts truly influence the prosperity and the prospects of those living in different city areas. While some areas have been considered cool and ‘the place to be’ (mostly in the carefully restored older city centers) others suffer from a resilient bad reputation (see especially some neighborhoods in the peripheral areas)However, we have also realized that good and bad reputations do not last forever. Before the covid pandemic, many of the beautiful but overcrowded historical centers had become ‘no-go areas’, according to many residents. Simultaneously, we were also starting to identify clear signals that the reputation of some ‘peripheral’ places that had been considered the ‘worse places’ for years were beginning to be reframed. Operating from one of these peripheral areas in Amsterdam, the Bijlmer in the South East, we had already started to discover the interest, the knowledge and the creativity that slowly but surely had been nesting in Bijlmer, home to people from all over the world. We also realized that many of these areas had also become the home of our university campuses, including student housing. At the same time we also saw that lots of work still needed to be done and that all of the appealing potential was not necessarily visible at first sight. The area has been lacking infrastructure to articulate and put the already existing interest on the map. Challenged by our students, we reflected on our role as a university of applied sciences and decided to put some results of our research into practice. We have started a real life Lab & Café with a number of partners in Amsterdam South East. In the Lab we work on place making, building maps, exploring and documenting in cooperation not only with our students and co-researchers but also (and especially) with many key actors in Bijlmer who believed in and advocated for its potential before others. These experiments and practices respond to the need to develop (by doing) a more polycentric mapping of our cities and to stimulate different views on creativity and creative business initiatives. The work has the extra impact of being part of a consortium of five cities in Europe linked by our project IMAGE. In the Ureka workshop we would love to share with you how Spinoza Imaginaries Lab & Café has enabled us to become better ‘agents of change’ in our campuses. Through a ‘’Yes We Can,’’ approach one finds commonalities and discovers that co-creation is also a matter of commitment and trust and that creativity is inherent to life and belongs to all life phases and facets.
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This report relates to the Horizon 2020 project entitled ‘Making City’. The report was conducted by the Hanze University of Applied Sciences to the benefit of theMunicipality of Groningen and other consortium partners in the Making City project and addresses the legal impediments that may arise when creating and achieving a Positive Energy District (PED). In doing so, it specifically addresses the situation in the city of Groningen and the legal framework of the Netherlands.This report highlights legal developments of (upcoming) EU and mostly Dutch legislation related to a PED, such as the Collective Heat and Supply Act (Warmtewet) and the Environmental Act. Moreover, smart contracts used in the Block chain technology is discussed and a chapter on Intellectual Property legislation is included which becomes relevant when using new innovations and technologies. Furthermore, it identifies certain legal barriers that emerged in the establishment of the Groningen PED.
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Het project “Sporttoerisme - Sportas Amsterdam” draait om de vraag: welke kansen biedt sporttoerisme voor Sportas? De aanleiding voor het project is het bredere programma rond het gebiedsconcept Sportas Amsterdam. Dit programma behelst de ambitie van de gemeente Amsterdam, gemeente Amstelveen en partners om één ruimtelijk geheel te maken van het gebied en de sportfaciliteiten die in zuidwest Amsterdam zijn gelegen, grofweg van het Olympische Stadion tot en met de sportfaciliteiten in het Amsterdamse Bos. Het programma draagt bij aan city branding (regio Amsterdam), lokale bedrijfsontwikkeling (o.a. horeca, retail, dienstverlening), ondersteunen lokaal verenigingsleven en sportfaciliteiten (vitaliteit kantines en accommodatie), veiligheid (ruimtelijke eenheid, levendig) en leefbaarheid (toegankelijke en aantrekkelijke openbare ruimte). Bovenal kan de Sportas bijdragen aan het aantrekken en binden van de relatief hoogopgeleide en weinig plaatsgebonden leeftijdsgroep van 18-35 jaar. Dit sluit aan bij de ideeën van auteurs als Richard Florida (“The rise of the creative class”) en Charles Landry (“The art of city making”) over het aantrekken en vasthouden van de creatieve klasse en de kenniswerker. Het idee van de Sportas veronderstelt een transitie, van een versnipperd sportgebied naar geïntegreerd vrijetijdslandschap. Het gebied is momenteel al interessant voor sporttoerisme (topsport, breedtesport) en kan door deze transitie een impuls krijgen. Tegelijkertijd is de ontwikkeling van sporttoerisme een schakel in deze transitie. Er is echter nog te weinig bekend over de omvang van sporttoerisme en de potenties van de Sportas op dit vlak.
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Using a broad international comparative perspective spanning multiple countries across South America, Europe and Africa, contributors explore resident-led self-builing for low- and middle-income groups in urban areas. Although social, economic and urban prosperity differs across these contexts, there exists a recurring, cross-continental tension between formal governance and self-regulation.
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