Transformcity

Cities are shifting from top-down development of new areas towards transformation and densification of existing ones. As a local government you have limited property in these areas and in order to reach your local development goals and boost resilience on issues like real estate, public space, energy and mobility, you need on-going and active collaboration with the different local stakeholders.
A new way of working is essential for you and your team to effectively manage these increasingly complex processes while maximizing the societal impact of your work. Our award-winning and fully interactive online platform brings together all stakeholders and the local government to directly share and discuss data, plans, ideas and resources and collaborate on local projects. The platform helps you to build a local community and empower it to structurally self-organise.

The result of our first pilot is two-fold. First result is the successful transformation of Amstel3 office district from monofunctional area with ca. 30% vacancy rate into a lively mixed-use urban neighbourhood. Second result is a well-connected, informed, inspired and activated neighbourhood consisting of various stakeholder groups that is self-organising and resilient to change. We believe the platform needs at least two years of implementation and local coordination in order to achieve this, especially the latter. At the same time it makes the process of urban transformation with so many different initiatives and stakeholders a lot more efficient.

Transformcity was founded by Saskia Beer, an Amsterdam-based urban entrepreneur (trained architect). She developed the concept during eight years of pioneering with collaborative urban development in Amstel3 office district in Amsterdam. She built the first test pilot with the help of the local community of real estate owners, the municipality and a national subsidy (Beter Benutten). In 2018 Transformcity was a Startup in Residence and the City of Amsterdam became its official launching customer. The platform was further developed from pilot to fully scalable software service and is implemented in the areas Amstel3 and Sloterdijk2. We have a research collaboration with Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences and TU Eindhoven, they will research and monitor us the coming three years and support us with co-design and (rapid) prototyping. Since December 2018 Tim van den Heuvel became partner in Transformcity.

1. We are continuously monitoring and improving our toolkit together with our pilot areas Amstel3 and Sloterdijk2, including the online platform but also our offline tools and methods for community building and multi-stakeholder collaboration. We are exploring collaboration with more areas in the Metropolitan area.
2. We are setting up collaboration with different cities nationally and internationally to help them make their urban development process more collaborative. This often includes implementation of the online platform, but can also consist of the training and consultancy packages we provide. Also we are open for collaboration in EU projects.

Others can learn from the integral online and offline method in which our platform is implemented as a catalyst. We help cities build local communities and local business models and embed the platform in their own work processes. We invest in storytelling and offline activities as well in order to put the urban transformation on the local agenda as an accessible, relevant and fun subject to think about and engage in. This is an important success factor for the adoption of the platform and the level of self-organisation in the community.

The platform can be replicated to other cities, accompanied by the training and support package for setting up a local community, internal workflow, transformation agenda and business model.