Last Friday's Round-Up

Data are a key asset to smart cities, so we dived into Amsterdam Smart City´s data set and did some research on the most popular projects added in February. These projects were added by Amsterdam Smart City’s community members, who make Amsterdam a smarter and future proof city every day. Do you have an innovative project that the community should know about? Please add and share your project to the community.

1. The Peaceful Citizen Stress is the most common occupational disease in the Netherlands and probably throughout the world. The peaceful citizen project detects stress by using smart phone sensors. Based on code from the Oxford Universities Center for Evidence Based Medicine the Peaceful Citizen project aims at reducing stress with specific mindfulness techniques. Chill out and share this project.

2. Movby
An attitude change to consumption has taken place recent years with the upcoming of the sharing economy or collaborative consumption. Movby’s objective is to connect people with local ride owners to share their transport means. By providing an online platform ride owners and potential ride renters can meet each other even when they are geographically dispersed. Interested in this project? Visit Movby’s project page and spread the word.

3. Toogethr
In 2016 there was a 12% growth in traffic jams, in 2015 that growth was even bigger (20%). One solution for this problem is ridesharing. Toogethr, a Dutch startup, developed a platform for ridesharing that removes all traditional barriers. By automatically matching colleagues to each other based on a set of variables, ridesharing becomes fun and easy. This project recently won The Hague 2017 Innovators public prize. Beat traffic jams and visit this project’s page.

4. Smart Port of Amsterdam The Port of Amsterdam is one of the biggest ports in Europe, every day bulk carriers that lie to deep for IJmuiden’s locks transfer their load onto smaller ships. Using sensors to improve shipping movement and optimizing rigging schedules is this project’s aim. Unlike human beings sensors work 24/7 and the data they provide is used to optimize the human part of the job. Shorter and faster rigging was the result of this project and we are curious to see what their results will be in the future. Check this project and see what you can learn from using sensory data.

5. Electronic park sign
Many tourist visit Amsterdam by coach however, parking space is limited in Amsterdam’s historic center. The electronic parking project has found a solution, a parking sign that communicates with the coach drivers. The sign is activated when a coach stops at the parking zone and clock starts counting down as an indicator for the driver when to depart. Also the signs are able to provide information to the drivers for optimizing their route. Do you know a sport where these signs are an absolute necessity? Check out this project and contact the owners.

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AMS Institute, Re-inventing the city (urban innovation) at AMS Institute, posted Apr 16th

Do you want to learn from and network with the best researchers and scientists working to tackle pressing urban challenges?

AMS Institute, is organizing the AMS Scientific Conference from April 23-25 at the Marineterrein, Amsterdam, to address pressing urban challenges. The event is organized in collaboration with the City of Amsterdam.

The conference brings together leading institutions in urban research and innovation, thought leaders, municipalities, researchers, and practitioners to explore innovative solutions for sustainable development in Amsterdam and other global cities.

Keynotes, research workshops, learning tracks, and special sessions will explore the latest papers in the fields of mobility, circularity, energy transition, climate adaptation, urban food systems, digitization, diversity, inclusion, living labs experimentation, and transdisciplinary research.

Attendees can expect to gain valuable insights into cutting-edge research and engage in meaningful discussions with leading experts in their field. You can see the full program and all available sessions here.

This year's theme is 'Blueprints for messy cities? Navigating the interplay of order and messiness'.

The program

Day 1: The good, the bad, and the ugly
Keynotes by Paul Behrens of Leiden University and Elin Andersdotter Fabre of UN-Habitat will be followed by a city panel including climate activist Hannah Prins. The first day concludes with a dinner at the Koepelkerk in Amsterdam: you're welcome to join our three-course meal with a 50 euro ticket.

Day 2️: Amazing discoveries
Keynotes by Carlo Ratti of MIT and Sacha Stolp of the Municipality of Amsterdam discuss innovation and research in cities. Corinne Vigreux, co-founder of TomTom, and Erik Versnel from Rabobank will participate in the city panel.

Day 3️: We are the city
Keynotes by Paul Chatterton of Leeds University and Victor Neequaye Kotey Deputy Director of the Waste Management Department of the Accra Metropolitan Assembly, Ghana. They discuss how we shape the future of our cities together. This will be followed by a city panel including Ria Braaf-Fränkel of WomenMakeTheCity and prof. dr. Aleid Brouwer of the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen.

To buy tickets: You can secure your conference tickets through our website.
Dinner tickets: On April 23 we’re hosting a dinner at the Koepelkerk in Amsterdam. Tickets for this can be added to your conference pass or bought separately.

Rihards Dzelme, Inclusive Cities & AI / Trained Architect and Urbanist , posted Apr 15th

We hebben uiteenlopende en interessante reacties ontvangen van stedenbouwkundigen, architecten en gemeenten. Als u wilt weten wat andere professionals denken, vul dan deze enquête in met uw e-mailadres en wij delen de inzichten met u.

Bedankt! 😀

Follow Playground on LinkedIn

We've received varied and interesting responses from urban developers, architects, and municipalities. If you want to know what other professionals think, please fill out this survey with your email, and we will share the insights with you.

Thank you! 😀

Herman van den Bosch, professor in management development , posted Apr 14th

A previous post made it clear that a 15-minute city ideally consists of a 5-minute walking zone, a 15-minute walking zone, also a 5-minute cycling zone and a the 15-minute cycling zone. These three types of neighbourhoods and districts should be developed in conjunction, with employment accessibility also playing an important role.

In the plans for 15-minute cities in many places around the world, these types of zones intertwine, and often it is not even clear which type of zone is meant. In Paris too, I miss clear choices in this regard.

The city of Melbourne aims to give a local lifestyle a dominant place among all residents. Therefore, everyone should live within at most 10 minutes' walking distance to and from all daily amenities. For this reason, it is referred to as a 20-minute city, whereas in most examples of a 15-minute city, such as Paris, it is only about the round trip. The policy in Melbourne has received strong support from the health sector, which highlights the negative effects of traffic and air pollution.

In Vancouver, there is talk of a 5-minute city. The idea is for neighbourhoods to become more distinct parts of the city. Each neighbourhood should have several locally owned shops as well as public facilities such as parks, schools, community centres, childcare and libraries. High on the agenda is the push for greater diversity of residents and housing types. Especially in inner-city neighbourhoods, this is accompanied by high densities and high-rise buildings. Confronting this idea with reality yields a pattern of about 120 such geographical units (see map above).

Many other cities picked up the idea of the 15-minute city. Among them: Barcelona, London, Milan, Ottawa, Detroit and Portland. The organisation of world cities C40 (now consisting of 96 cities) elevated the idea to the main policy goal in the post-Covid period.

All these cities advocate a reversal of mainstream urbanisation policies. In recent decades, many billions have been invested in building roads with the aim of improving accessibility. This means increasing the distance you can travel in a given time. As a result, facilities were scaled up and concentrated in increasingly distant places. This in turn led to increased congestion that negated improvements in accessibility. The response was further expansion of the road network. This phenomenon is known as the 'mobility trap' or the Marchetti constant.

Instead of increasing accessibility, the 15-minute city aims to expand the number of urban functions you can access within a certain amount of time. This includes employment opportunities. The possibility of working from home has reduced the relevance of the distance between home and workplace. In contrast, the importance of a pleasant living environment has increased. A modified version of the 15-minute city, the 'walkable city' then throws high hopes. That, among other things, is the subject of my next post.