Managing the flip side of success by Claartje van Ette and Eric van der Kooij c.van.ette@amsterdam.nl / e.van.der.kooij@amsterdam.nl
Amsterdam is a city popular with residents, businesses and visitors from the Netherlands and abroad. To manage the city’s and region’s growth, the City in Balance project was set up in 2015, looking for solutions to the complex issue of striking a balance between crowding and peace and quiet, between living, working and leisure and between the advantages and disadvantages of a busy, popular city.
Amsterdam is flourishing. In recent years the number of visitors has grown by 5% per year, outpacing the growth of its population (1% on average). The property crisis, which started in 2008, seems to have been long forgotten. In 2015, the city built 8,000 new homes as well as many new hotels and buildings providing different combinations of short term housing, work and overnight stay. The pace of change is growing ever faster, which is particularly noticeable in those parts of the city where space is at a premium. More people are cycling more often, more residents go out and about more often to explore the city or the surrounding countryside and more jobs have been created. The sharing economy is boosting the consumption of goods and services, resulting in the rapid rise of car sharing concepts and companies such as Airbnb and WimDu, which broker between suppliers and users of rental holiday accommodation. The city’s success is down to a set of key characteristics which Amsterdam shares with many other European
04
Plan Amsterdam
cities, including an attractive city centre, good transport links and high quality cultural amenities. In light of global urbanisation and Amsterdam’s abiding popularity, the city has a bright future if it can take advantage of the opportunities that are there. If the city keeps growing at the current rate, Amsterdam will have a population of 950,000 people by the year 2025. This means new housing, more jobs and an increase in bicycle traffic. The number of visitors is also expected to keep rising at the current rate of 5% a year. Including day visitors, the current amount of visitors is 17.3 million per year. So if the forecast is correct, this number will have risen to 23 million per year by 2025. How is Amsterdam going to deal with this growth?
Traffic and public nuisances Amsterdam’s growth and increasing scale also has its drawbacks: the increase in traffic and public nuisances can disturb the social balance and lead to social division. >