Workshop cities in alphabetical order:

• Amsterdam: How to build the city in a cooperative way?
• Antwerp: How to rework the productive city?
• Brussels: How to reconcile local expectations with strong international challenges when renewing a city?
• Delft/The Hague: How to create a sustainable knowledge region?
• Deventer: How to implement a (national) legal framework through local integrated planning?
• Dortmund: Ruhr Region, Germany: How to leverage economic growth from spatial projects?
• Eindhoven: How to react when traditional industries move away?
• Groningen: How to sustain energy resources?
• Maastricht: How to overcome national borders?
• Rotterdam: How to develop unprecedented port-city synergy?
• Schiphol -Amsterdam: How to connect in a globalized world?
• Wageningen: How to feed the world’s metropolises?

Twelve Cities – Twelve Workshops

How to build the City in a Cooperative Way? – Amsterdam

Host: Pakhuis de Zwijger, City of Amsterdam, (Platform for creation and innovation)

This NGO is facilitating local active participation. For the workshop two brownfield sites are chosen along the IJ river, one in North Amsterdam, the other in derelict Eastern Dockland. They are being redeveloped from the bottom up with active participation of inhabitants, and cooperatives, who are engaging in self-build and self-management.

• How to harness local human resources creatively?
• What adaptation of the existing planning system are required to facilitate such a cooperative approach in negotiation with the authorities (city of Amsterdam which is the planning authority and often also the main landowner) without antagonising the mainstream planning procedures?

More information on this theme here.

How to Rework the Productive City? – Antwerp

Hosts: Region of Flanders, City of Antwerp, cooperation with Louvain Catholic University

The objective is to put production back into the 21^st century city and find solutions to overcome the mismatch between job opportunities and unskilled labour. Two sites are chosen as case studies, a multicultural run down inner city area and a brownfield site in the harbour close to the city.

• How to bring jobs to a run down multicultural inner city regeneration area, while bringing urbanity to brownfield development in a derelict harbour area?
• How to incorporate the informal economy which plays an important role among precarious populations into urban strategies, with the view to transforming some of it into mainstream activities.

More information on this theme here.

Additional information: http://www.vrp.be/mod_calendar/isocarp-2015-workshop-antwerpen/. All participants should indicate their choice for for walkshops and talkshops (registration form of the VRP).

How to Reconcile local Expectations with strong international Challenges when renewing a City? – Brussels

Host: Brussels-Capital Region

Brussels is a capital inspired by both the inhabitants of its neighbourhoods and by the stakes of its international outreach.

Like in many European metropolises the development of Brussels has to combine the expectations of its inhabitants in terms of jobs, infrastructures, housing and facilities with the necessity to develop its international dimension.

The workshop organised in Brussels will focus on finding answers to the precise question of “How to reconcile local expectations with strong international challenges when renewing a city” in a special policy field: urban renovation.

Illustrated by examples taken in the Canal area of Brussels, the workshop will study the issues related to the necessity to act at different scales and to articulate local dimensions with global dimensions. The workshop will focus on the consequences of those new approaches in 3 different areas:

• urban renovation policies: how are evolving the methods and approaches to regenerate the city? how to act at different scales?
• actors and professionals intervening in urban renovation: which actors and know-how must be deployed to meet the different expectations and needs? which consequences for urban planners’ job?
• different ways to construct the city: what are the changes in the way we design and renovate the city? how to articulate the local dimensions with the global dimensions when renovating neighbourhoods?

More information on this theme here.

How to Create a Sustainable Knowledge Region? –  Delft-The Hague

Hosts: Technical University of Delft, City of Delft

Delft is a medium size city with 100,000 inhabitants but its university is of regional and international importance. The university campus is being restructured internally with more flexible uses of buildings and as a more open site to outside users, aiming at better integration between the university and the city. The nearby station redevelopment frees land (Technopolis) and a brown field site (New Delft) is available for larger scale mixed activities which provide an opportunity to implement such a strategy of spatial integration.

• How to open up the university campus to the city?
• How to reconnect the city with the university?

More information on this theme here.

How to Implement a (National) Legal Framework through Local Integrated Planning? –  Deventer

Hosts: Dutch Pilot Cities, on Legal Frameworks, City of Deventer, local business association (energy community)

Deventer has been selected as a pilot city to implement new planning strategies which involve structural change of local governance. Other pilot cities are Breda, Bussum and Venlo which may also participate in the workshop.

Deventer, a historic city with a industrial base in decline is using participatory governance to restructure its local economy and spatial regeneration. It is using the development process to experiment with new forms of governance, including vertical relations with neighbourhoods on the one hand, the region and central government on the other hand.

• How to govern with today’s challenges?
• What flexibility is required to implement an integral local plan in a changing economic situation?
• How to involve the business community in sustainable urban regeneration?
• How to build eco-capacity into new development?
• How are such planning and development issues incorporated in the local plan, and in response in the national spatial framework?

More information on this theme here.

How to Leverage Economic Growth from Spatial Projects? – Dortmund

Hosts: Metropole Ruhr in Dortmund, Technical University of Dortmund, regional planning institutions of the Ruhr area

The objective is to generate local employment after the IBA Emscherpark environmental regeneration process and the preservation of industrial heritage, and to enhance the polycentricity of this urban region and harness its economic potential.

• How to deal with large structures and generate post-industrial structural change?
• How to reconcile the Compact City idea with the Challenge of a Low Density Region?

More information on this theme here.

How to React when Traditional Industries Move Away? – Eindhoven

Host: Brabant Academy

The focus is on bottom-up revitalisation of a city which has lost its main traditional long standing employer. Interestingly, Philips has re-established itself as a high tech high value added R&D institution in Eindhoven, although in a new science park on the edge of the compact city. Cooperation between the community initiatives and the transformed company requiring highly qualified staff may be difficult, but desirable as the city still benefits of the Philips brand. These issues are of international interest.

• How can the city preserve its unique character, its own ‘pearl’?
• How should the city present the attractiveness of its unique history?
• What actions are needed for a city to ‘dream, dare, do’?
• How can communities benefit from each other and from social transformation?
• How can top-down and bottom-up planning be combined to meet as sustainable practice?

More information on this theme here.

How to Sustain Energy Resources? – Groningen

Hosts: Energy Valley, City of Groningen, Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Groningen, is an energy generating city which deals with energy transition. It aims to formulate innovative and sustainable approaches to complete this transition. The objective is to turn Groningen into a sustainable, self-sufficient (energy) region by 2035 by means of an integral sustainable energy package.

• How can local governments succeed in generating a low-carbon energy system despite national inertia?
• What measures have proven successful and how to they relate to physical urban planning?
• How can cities increase the energy efficiency of their built environment?

More information on this theme here.

How to Overcome National Borders? – Maastricht

(and possibly city of Liege, city of Aachen)

Hosts: City of Maastricht, Dutch Province of Limburg, Bureau Europa Maastricht

Euroregion Meuse-Rhine

Maastricht in the Netherlands, Liege in Belgium, Aachen in Germany and smaller cities among them have formed a trans-border region for some time and have carried out a number of cooperative projects. The workshop addresses issues of international cooperation and their links to local developments. They will use an on-line platform under construction by Bureau Europa, with the network of Departments of City Planning and Architecture of universities and academies in the European Region Meuse Rhine. Locals will contribute case studies.

• How to compare international experiences of transboundary urban agglomerations?
• What lessons can the local population and other participants learn from such comparisons?

More information on this theme here.

How to Develop Unprecedented Port-City Synergy? –  Rotterdam

Hosts: City of Rotterdam, Port of Rotterdam

The aim is to re-establish a connection of the urban economic system with the international port and traditional maritime-related expertise. It is a matter of starting to make things in the city again. The method will be incremental organic redevelopment capable of reconnecting the port to the city.

• How to harness the thousands of SMEs who are (potential high and low value) suppliers for the harbour industry (e.g. cruise ship construction and refurbishment)?
• How to link the economic network of the port and the city together?
• How to develop the quality of life that is required for the new economic development strategy?
• How to make use of the river as pivotal element in the spatial economic development strategy?

More information on this theme here.

How to Connect in a Globalising World – Schiphol – Amsterdam

Hosts: Amsterdam Airport Schiphol, Amsterdam Zuidas, Municipality of Haarlemmermeer

Airports affect urban interaction. This workshop is not only focusing on the development perspective of an international airport hub.  It focuses on the links local inhabitants and businesses, as well as the historic city centre, with the view to creating greater synergy between diverse interest groups, besides usual mitigation and alleviation measures of adverse effects of airports. A plan for the ‘Kerncorridor’ (central corridor linking the airport to the city centre via other activity centres) is under development which needs to deal with adverse airport effects such as noise, air pollution, energy, water and general integration between the land and their airline networks.

• How to create synergy between the business district, the new town of Hoofddorp, the airport and the historic city centre?
• How to achieve an integrated airport region as cornerstone for a better competitive city region, while incorporating the needs of local inhabitants and existing SMEs?

More information on this theme here.

How to Feed the World’s Metropolises? – Wageningen

Hosts: Wageningen UR, FoodValley region

Food is a sustaining and enduring necessity. Yet among the basic essentials for life — air, water, shelter, and food — only food it has not been an ISOCARP congress theme so far. The conventional food system activities take up a significant amount of urban and rural land, regards both the rich and even more important the poor in our society, represents an important part of world economics and trade as well as community and regional economies and has everything to do with ecological sustainability.

We tend to see food production through the lens of agriculture, but in reality it comes from an integrated system in which the planner plays an important role. It is evident that food is an emerging field within planning with

• social,
• economic and
• environmental dimensions.

It is at the intersection of land use planning, food planning and planning for climate change -and needs your input!

More information on this theme here.