Gemeente Amsterdam

Gemeente
Europe and
Amsterdam
Amsterdam in 2013
City of
Amsterdam
Progress in sustainable urban
development
Amsterdam is on its way to becoming a Smart Global Hub. Sustainable
urban development is one of the four goals set in the city’s European
Strategy for Amsterdam. The ultimate aim is to reduce CO2 emissions by
40 percent in 2025 and to position the city as a front-runner in the field of
integrated sustainable urban development. This leaflet reports about what
has been achieved in 2013 in the main projects and actions in Amsterdam.
TRANSFORM: A transformation agenda
for low-carbon cities
Actually achieving the goals for saving energy
and reducing CO₂ emissions – 40 percent by
2025 – is strongly supported by the TRANSFORM project. Launched in 2012, this project
is funded by the 7th Framework Programme
for Research and Technological Development
(fp7) in Europe and continues until mid 2015.
The six European cities of Amsterdam,
Copenhagen, Genoa, Hamburg, Vienna and
Lyon are jointly providing the platforms for
Smart Urban Labs. In June 2013 Amsterdam
hosted a three-day event where actions that
contribute to heating and cooling strategies
as well as to energy savings in built-up areas
were devised using the concept of ESCOs
(Energy Saving Companies).
TRANSFORM will continue working on a
‘transformation agenda’ with a focus on
finance, legal framework and governance
and will organise expert meetings throughout
Europe to spread its message. TRANSFORM
is also working on a portfolio of projects and
methodologies developed in the six Smart
Urban Labs. Moreover, a prototype decision
support tool, based on data, is currently being
elaborated: Energy Atlas Plus.
www.urbantransfrom.eu contact: Ronald van Warmerdam
transform@dro.amsterdam.nl
Electric Sustainable Transport
Amsterdam stimulates electric transport to improve its air quality. This
technological innovation contributes
to reducing CO2 emissions as well.
The city is a pioneer in introducing
measures to encourage electric mobility, such as installing a large-scale
public charging network. As a consequence, Amsterdam saw the launch
of Europe’s first fully electric taxi company and Car2Go launched its electric
car sharing enterprise in Amsterdam,
with 300 electric Smarts that can be
hired on the spot without having to
return them to a particular place by
a particular time. The German car
manufacturer BMW presented the
electric BMWi3 in the green capital of
Amsterdam, and Tesla Electric Motors
chose to locate its European headquarters in Amsterdam.
Amsterdam actively exchanges know­
ledge with cities such as London and
Berlin, for example about the best
way to expand a charging network.
The city is currently a partner in two
EU-funded projects: Mobi Europe and
FREVUE. Within Mobi Europe, several
regions throughout Europe are working together to introduce interoperability between different countries
in 2014. Plug-in cars from different
partners will then be able to charge
cross border. In the FREVUE project
Amsterdam is cooperating with seven
other European cities to promote
electric freight vehicles on European
roads, together with the associated
charging infrastructure. Dutch companies such as Heineken and TNT will
introduce about 20 vehicles in the
Netherlands within the framework of
this project.
www.amsterdamelectric.nl
contact: Art van der Giessen
a.vander.giessen@ivv.amsterdam.nl
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www.amsterdam.nl/europe
Green Data Port
About 50 data centres are situated in
and around the city of Amsterdam,
which is about 30 percent of the
Dutch total. Amsterdam and Paris
rank equally 3rd as European data
centre locations. Data centres are one
of the fastest-growing new businesses, but they use a lot of energy:
around 11 percent of the total electricity consumption of the 22,000
enterprises in the city. The greening
of these data centres is therefore an
important goal, for the city and for
the EU. So far this has primarily been
achieved by improving the efficiency
of the cooling facilities. For the future,
the re-use of previously wasted heat
from the data centres is an interesting
economic topic and spatially relevant.
The City of Amsterdam’s data centre
policy has formed part of the national
Green Deal strategy since 2013.
contact: Stéphanie van de Wiel
s.vande.wiel@dro.amsterdam.nl
Climate adaption, resilience to water and urban
development go hand in
hand in Amsterdam.
Water and Climate Adaptation
For a city located in a delta, like Amsterdam,
resilience to flooding by river or rain is an
important topic. Therefore the city works within the national Delta Programme.Two major
events took place in 2013.
In March, the first European Climate Change
Adaption Conference was held in Hamburg,
a high-level meeting that tackled the topic of
rainwater-resilient cities with input from Hamburg, Copenhagen and Stockholm.
The second event, the International Water
Week, was hosted in Amsterdam in November 2013, with many workshops on the theme
of Integrated Water Solutions for a Green
Economy. The sharing of expertise with the
Paris delegation in the Amsterdam Partner
Cities Workshop was especially useful. Peter
WASTECOSMART – Waste as a Major
Source of Energy
WASTECOSMART started on Paphos (Cyprus)
in September 2013. Goal of the project is the
optimisation of integrated waste strategies
through maximisation of resource efficiency:
waste as a main source of energy. This EU project on waste includes 23 participants. It aims
at bringing together researchers, SMEs and
end users (e.g. municipalities) in a research
and innovation environment for the next three
years. The Amsterdam participants are the
Gammeltoft, Head of Unit for Water within
the European Commission’s DG Environment,
accepted the City of Amsterdam’s invitation
to be a keynote speaker. Many high-level
international guests attended the dinner at
the Mayor’s Residence. No fewer than 1,050
conference delegates took part in the International Water Week, including more than 500
young water professionals who introduced
fresh ideas, and 21,000 professionals visited
the Aquatech exhibition.
www.internationalwaterweek.com
www.eccaconf.eu
contact: Paulien Hartog
paulien.hartog@waternet.nl
Amsterdam Economic Board, the Amsterdam
Waste-to-Energy Company (AEB), the Free
University (VU) and the City of Amsterdam
(the Physical Planning Department and city
districts). Other cities taking part include
Budapest, Paphos and Sundbyberg (Sweden).
Amsterdam will be presenting a framework
for the design of Resource Efficiency Management Plans in early 2014.
contact: Janneke Hoedemaekers
j.hoedemaekers@amecboard.nl
SMART urban mobility
Sustainable urban development
3
Phosphate Cycle
Phosphorus is essential for our worldwide food security. It is widely used in
agriculture and is an essential component in fertiliser and animal feed.
It is an irreplaceable natural resource,
which has no substitute. Supplies are
limited, prices have been volatile and
much phosphate is currently wasted,
creating concerns about the cost and
availability of future supplies in the EU
and worldwide.
Amsterdam has signed the Dutch
Phosphate Value Chain Agreement
in conjunction with partners from
government bodies, knowledge institutes and trade and industry. The aim
of this agreement’s signatories is to
bring the residual flow of phosphates
into a closed cycle. Amsterdam is also
an official partner of the European
Sustainable Phosphorus Platform,
Amsterdam: Responsible Capital
and Urban-rural Strategy
Cities throughout Europe are growing
while populations in rural areas are
declining. This is also the case in The
Netherlands. The Mayor of Amsterdam, Eberhard van der Laan, has set
up a collaborative project to examine
urban-rural relationships. By working
with municipalities on the perimeters
of the Netherlands, namely Delfzijl,
Sluis and Heerlen, he is propagating
an innovative approach of cohesion
and solidarity on a demand-driven
basis. Amsterdam helps shrinking municipalities in the country with capacity building and networking for their
public administrations and businesses. Besides workshops and exchanges, a highlight of this partnership
so far was the concert by the Royal
Concertgebouw Orchestra in the southern city of Heerlen. This approach is
fairly new and has been mentioned in
RURBAN, an OECD study on ruralurban partnerships.
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www.amsterdam.nl/europe
whose members exchange experiences and information on phosphate /
phosphorus recycling. This platform
gives access to a network covering
the entire value chain.
In 2013 Amsterdam gave presentations about phosphate capture,
including a workshop in Berlin and
Brussels. Amsterdam has also been
stimulating innovative and promising
possibilities for ‘the harvest of phosphate’, such as decentralised sanitation
for large venues like the Heineken
Music Hall and in new residential districts. Amsterdam is also supporting
research on the separation of streams
of liquid waste so that phosphate can
be recovered efficiently.
www.nutrientplatform.org
www.phosphorusplatform.eu
contact: Edgar Zonneveldt
e.zonneveldt@dro.amsterdam.nl
Amsterdam has participated as an
expert in various seminars in 2013:
the URMA Interreg IVC project for
cooperation between urban and rural
areas, the Purple General Assembly
that brings together peri-urban territories in the EU where urban and rural
features co-exist, and the OECD conference on urban-rural relationships.
contact: Julian Jansen
j.jansen@dro.amsterdam.nl
Towards
the Amsterdam
Circular Economy
“Towards the Amsterdam Circular Economy”
was presented in 2013. As a consequence,
Wageningen University has elaborated four of
the six relevant resource cycles described in
the publication such as water, waste, phosphate and food.
European legislation
The impact of European legislation
(environmental and otherwise) on
physical planning can be of great
importance. Directives on air quality,
environmental impact assessment,
but also the Birds and Habitat Directives require a good balance between
spatial planning and the protection
of people and the environment. EU
legislation itself is important, but
so is participation in the implementation process. The monitoring of
European developments in Brussels
and the lobbying and implementation process in The Hague are two of
the main activities for Amsterdam’s
Physical Planning Department. The
amendment of the Directive on Environmental Impact Assessment was
followed closely in 2013 and will also
be tracked in 2014. In this regard the
city works together with the Ministry
of Infrastructure and Environment.
contact: Ymke Hofhuis
y.hofhuis@dro.amsterdam.nl
METREX
MAIA – Metropolitan Areas in Action
METREX, the Network of European Metropolitan Regions and Areas, was founded in 1996.
Amsterdam has held the vice-presidency of
METREX since October 2012. This network
provides a platform for the exchange of knowledge, expertise and experience on metropolitan affairs, as well as coordinated action on
issues such as regional planning or becoming
a smart city. The network has members from
50 metropolitan regions and areas in Europe
who meet twice a year at conferences and in
expert groups to discuss topics such as urbanrural partnerships and economic clusters in
metropolitan areas. METREX facilitates the
individual exchange and provide support to
its members. Activities within the METREX
vice-presidency have involved closer collaboration with the EU bodies and have initiated
further collaboration with other networks on
two important topics. METREX contributed
to the study on metropolitan governance (the
MAIA study) and urban-rural partnerships (the
RURBAN initiative).
METREX provided key input for two collaborative events in 2013: firstly, a debate on food
and territorial cohesion during the Open Days
with the participation of major urban and
rural networks (e.g. CEMR, EUROCITIES and
PURPLE), the OECD, DG Regio and DG Agri;
secondly, a joint workshop with Eurocities, the
network of major European cities, during RURBAN, the OECD conference on urban-rural
relationships. Amsterdam also contributed to
the two METREX conferences in 2013. In Glasgow the city presented the Structural Vision
2040: Economically strong and sustainable as
best practice for long-term strategic planning and collaboration. During the METREX
Oslo conference, members of the EU-project
TRANSFORM explained the approach of
planning for sustainable energy. Four of the
six partners are from METREX regions, with
Amsterdam as the lead partner. In 2014 the
Amsterdam Economic Board will present its
triple helix strategy during the METREX Leipzig conference.
Amsterdam is a member of the Eurocities
Working Group on metropolitan areas. In
2013 this resulted in the Metropolitan Areas
in Action (MAIA) study, a survey of 38 regions.
The study provides evidence of what has been
happening in terms of metropolitan area collaboration over recent years. It looks at how
collaboration is organised and implemented
at the scale of metropolitan areas and city regions, and identifies possible success factors.
www.eurometrex.org
contact: Juliane Kürschner
j.kurschner@dro.amsterdam.nl
The evidence shows that:
1. metropolitan areas are established in many
places, in all parts of Europe and in various
types of cities; 2. metropolitan areas address
a wide range of different issues of common
interest; 3. in the majority of cases, local
authorities and especially core cities are the
initial players, though national and regional
authorities may also be decisive stakeholders
or catalysts by providing legal frameworks
and/or incentives; 4. the decision to work in
partnership is motivated by (i) a shared sense
of urgency to tackle complex challenges at
the level of the functional area, and by (ii) the
increasing mismatch between administrative
boundaries and the reality of development on
the ground. Amsterdam produced the MAIA
atlas that is part of this study.
The study was presented the Urban Intergroup at the European Parliament in November 2013. In March 2014 the study will be
presented to Oldrich Vlasák, Vice-President of
the European Parliament.
contact: Juliane Kürschner
j.kurschner@dro.amsterdam.nl
Sustainable urban development
5
Exchanging Integrated Planning
and Metropolitan Development
Amsterdam is known for its integrated
way of long-term urban development.
Main interest goes to the Structural
Vision 2040, to related aspects of
open and innovative planning and
to the governance model of the
Amsterdam Metropolitan Area. The
Structural Vision 2040 sets out the
long-term development goals for
Amsterdam within the Amsterdam
Metropolitan Area (MRA), based on
waterfront development, rolling out
the attractive centre to outlying areas,
the business axis between Schiphol
Airport and Amsterdam-Southeast,
and the metropolitan landscape. It
has been elaborated in an innovative
way with a strong participation component. The city’s Structural Vision
was honoured with the 2011 Award
for Excellence of the International
Society of City and Regional Plan-
ners (ISOCARP) and its approach to
metropolitan governance had won
an earlier ISOCARP award, while the
‘Free State of Amsterdam’ concept
received an accolade from Eurocities
and the city ranked fourth in the very
first European Green Capital Award in
2010.
Amsterdam was proud to serve the
feedback group for the City of Vienna’s new structural plan, STEP2025,
in 2013.
Amsterdam’s Physical Planning
Department has created a new
international website about urban
development. In addition, two special
international editions of Plan Amsterdam, the City of Amsterdam’s
magazine on urban planning, were
released.
Corporate Magazine of the Physical Planning Department of the City of Amsterdam.
planamsterdam@dro.amsterdam.nl
PLAN
Amsterdam
07 | 2013
The Blue Gold The spatio-economic
significance of Amsterdam’s water
Waterproof Amsterdam Working
towards water-resilient urban design
Rainproof Amsterdam Rain –
a binding factor
04
14
24
Amsterdam, City of Water
A Vision for Water, Safety and
Rainproofing
PLAN
Amsterdam
08 | 2013
The road to low carbon cities
Building the transformation agenda
Lighthouse projects for low carbon
cities Creating change in districts
Data sharing as an enabler for low
carbon projects The Energy Atlas Plus
04
16
22
TRANSFORM
Towards a low carbon city
www.amsterdam.nl/physicalplanning
contact: Eric van der Kooij
e.vander.kooij@dro.amsterdam.nl
Credits
More information
on the European Strategy for Amsterdam
www.amsterdam.nl/europe
contact: Wouter van der Heijde
w.van.der.heijde@amsterdam.nl
on Sustainability Coordination and Circular City
contact: Eveline Jonkhoff
j.jonkhoff@dro.amsterdam.nl
Coordination
Juliane Kürschner
Editing and proofreading
Sandra Langendijk
ABC Redactie, City of Amsterdam
Andrew May
Graphic Design
Geert den Boogert
Physical Planning Department
City of Amsterdam
Photos and Graphics
Beeldbank, City of Amsterdam
Physical Planning Department, City of
Amsterdam
Bas Köhler
www.amsterdam.nl/physicalplanning
March 2014
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www.amsterdam.nl/europe