Una finestra su: Amsterdam

Amsterdam è in una fase di delicata transizione. L’articolo propone e affronta una lettura critica di quattro temi chiave: la diversificazione della struttura demografica e socio-economica, la liberalizzazione della politica abitativa, l’approccio organico dello sviluppo urbano e la governance metropolitana. Oggi la città di Amsterdam è più etnicamente e socialmente frammentata che mai. La geografia sociale mostra una crescente diversificazione tra centro e periferia che sottolinea importanti asimmetrie economiche e culturali. Stanno avvenendo anche cambiamenti nella tradizione degli interventi su larga scala e della pianificazione pubblica: in tempi di austerità, gli interventi urbani sono infatti prevalentemente su piccola scala ed orientati a stimolare imprenditorialità in determinate aree urbane e spesso legate a sperimentazioni ed ‘economie creative’. Infine alla base di questi trends si configura un nuovo panorama politico composto da partiti liberali e progressisti, che sfidano gli equilibri politici della città-regione

Towards an urban degrowth: Habitability, finity and polycentric autonomism

Over the last decade, degrowth has offered a concrete alternative to eco-modernization, projecting a society emancipated from the environmentally destructive imperative of competition and consumption. Urban development is the motor of economic growth; cities are therefore prime sites of intervention for degrowth activists. Nevertheless, the planning processes that drive urban development have yet to be questioned from a degrowth perspective. To clear a path for a degrowth urban agenda, this paper rethinks the institutions governing urban development in growth-dependent contemporary economies. It starts by problematizing the regional territorialization of economic competition, ideology of land scarcity, and institution of zoned property rights, which together make urban development an engine of growth. It then outlines three transitions toward urban degrowth, arguing for a regional imaginary of polycentric autonomism, a paradigm of finity in development, and care for habitability as principle of spatial organization

Urban peripheries: The political dynamics of planning projects

The urban periphery has become a highly dynamic space. The consolidation of polycentric urban patterns and the emergence of outer urban poles raise fundamental questions for planners. Spatial planning needs to redefine intervention approaches and instruments to address new spatial dynamics in times of weaker economic growth, stable real-estate markets, and post-modern household life choices. The innovative potential of the periphery lies in two particular challenges. First, there is a need to experiment, define, activate, and institutionalize new spatial qualities in these outer areas. Second, there is a need to achieve better coordination of spatial policies across jurisdictional borders and to institutionalize polycentric spatial concepts. The thesis investigates the political processes that drive the redevelopment of the urban periphery. It explores how major planning agents reconfigure their relationships in order to respond to changed symmetries between core locations and peripheral zones. It aims at understanding why, given the spatial, functional, and economic conditions of today’s metropolitan areas, we see particular planning approaches to peripheral development occur while others fail to address the challenges of collective action. It hypothesizes that more progressive planning concepts and the strategies of outer areas depend on the realignment of core municipality planning strategies and national planning policies with regional market investment strategies