Amsterdam Smart City

We need to look ahead, at least forty years.

Geert Kloppenburg, mobility expert at Urgenda, doesn’t understand that the car still gets so much space in the city. Kloppenburg doesn’t want to complain: that time when the Dam was packed with parked cars is far behind us. Besides, motorists are discouraged to drive in the city through high parking fees and road diversions, for instance on Leidseplein and at the Munt.

Make way for the bike
“Because of increasing traffic we need to look ahead, at least forty years”, says Kloppenburg in Het Parool. According to him, the only way to keep the city livable is to make way for the bicycle, which is only possible if the car makes way. That will create more space for broad bike lanes with two lanes: one for slow bikers and one for fast, electric bicycles.

Source: Parool
Picture: Parool

The airport will support start-ups for three years.

At the campus people try to live and work as sustainably as possible.

Amsterdam sort of gained an extra city district since FabCity has risen at the Kop of Java-eiland. At the campus people try to live and work as sustainably as possible. FabCity is part of the program around the EU presidency. The campus was officially opened this week by Minister Bussemaker and Mayor Van der Laan.

More than four hundred students, professionals, artists and other creative people develop the site into a sustainable urban area, where they work, create, explore and find solutions to problems in cities. "We actually show what the future of a city might look like. We have sustainable homes, we work on new production methods like metal and concrete printing and we reuse plastic. This is a unique part of Amsterdam, so in that respect this is now district FabCity’’ says organizer Mark Borst. The participants come from diverse educational backgrounds such as art schools, universities and vocational training. "I'm building a movable property of residual material. I want to show society that residual material can still have a second or third life", said one of the participants. "This is a completely self-sufficient house. That means that we have no connection to sewage, water or gas. This house does everything itself”, says another.

FabCity can be found at the Kop of Java-eiland until the end of June.

Source: AT5
Picture: nu.nl

The city is the winner of the iCapital competition, a prize awarded by the European Commission

The next years, Amsterdam is the European capital of innovation. The city is the winner of the iCapital competition, a prize awarded by the European Commission. Amsterdam went against eight other cities in the finale, including Berlin, Paris, Turin and Eindhoven.

Together with the prize a sum of 950,000 Euro is related to winning the competition. Turin and Paris respectively took the second (100,000 euros) and third (EUR 50,000) prize. Amsterdam's participation was prepared by a team of people from the city of Amsterdam, Warehouse the Silent, Netherlands Kennisland, Waag Society and the Amsterdam Economic Board.

Promovideo submitted by Amsterdam:

The number of smart projects in Amsterdam is growing bigger and bigger! That is an improvement and that is why we will pay a little more attention to a smart project every two weeks. This time Mara visited Buurtbuik..

In the restaurant ‘Eerste klas’ on Amsterdam Central Station I met Roel en Joni from the initiative Buurtbuik. It’s an initiative that I think can be an example for others. It has expanded greatly the last year and has successfully collaborated with companies, the municipal government, other initiatives and residents. Besides, Buurbuik tackles 3 different challenges with one project.

They help supermarkets and restaurants get rid of their leftover food, the provide meals for residents that have less to spend and they organize joint diners for residents to get to know each other. In this way they prevent food waste and hunger and decrease the number of residents in social isolation.

Buurtbuik has started one year ago and has grown to an initiative with many volunteers that provide 500 meals in three city districts weakly. The food is prepared together with the residents of the neighbourhood. You can eat the meal at the spot, usually a community centre or a comparable place, or you can take one or several meals with you.

To get the ingredients for the meals Buurtbuik cooperates with different companies. Many initiatives struggle in starting cooperation’s like these, but Buurtbuik is very successful. This is presumably because Buurtbuik clearly shows the companies how they bring supply and demand together. Supply is in this case the enormous amount of food that is wasted daily en the demand the the amount of people that don’t have enough money to spend on food. As long as both problems aren’t solved Buurtbuik has a challenge.

A big challenge for Buurtbuik is logistics. How can they get the food from the supermarkets and restaurants to the neighbourhoods? Do you have a solution for Buurtbuiks logistics? Please let us know!

By: Mara de Pater with help of Roel and Joni of Buurtbuik

Picture: Buurtbuik

The Amsterdam shipping company Blue Boat Company makes a transition from boats running on diesel to boats running on GTL (gas-to-liquid)

Earlier Ikea cancelled the sale of panels of Chinese Hanergy

Wednesday, April 6th

H3B Media and the Thinking Cities Alliance are organising a Smart Cities Side-Event at Intertraffic Amsterdam. The half-day event takes place on Wednesday 6 April, day two of the show, in an especially modified conference room within the RAI and includes a smart city mobility technology tour around the exhibition floor, site visits in Amsterdam, an opening plenary featuring keynote speeches and short films, and 11 parallel Thinking Cities Roundtable Discussions. The event is co-hosted by Thinking Cities magazine and the Amsterdam Smart City innovation platform.

The programme kicks off at 09:30 with a keynote plenary session, with delegates and Roundtable participants gaining special access to the Intertraffic show half an hour before the exhibit floor opens, and will be presented by Kevin Borras, editor in chief of Thinking Cities and Thinking Highways magazines.

At 11:15 the Parallel Roundtable discussions commence, with up to 10 participants per table, together with a moderator and a rapporteur. The subjects up for discussion are: Urban traffic management; Urban traffic monitoring; Urban parking; Traffic safety; Urban distribution; Automated driving: Sustainable Urban Planning; Ecomobility; The Connected Traveller; Mobility as a Service and Smart Cycling. Each Roundtable panel will include a mixture of city representatives, experts, solution providers, researchers and students in order to create as lively a discussion as possible and to offer a diversity of perspectives.

After lunch the event concludes with a closing plenary session featuring a wrap-up of some of the most interesting discussions. Read more information.

Source: Intertraffic
Photo: Intertraffic