I somehow managed to get food poisoning in Amsterdam. I feel awful and I’m not in the headspace to write anything remotely thoughtful today. So regularly scheduled programming will resume tomorrow — hopefully.
P.S. It looks like Toronto will be getting its first Michelin restaurants guide. Good timing given this recent post.
I somehow managed to get food poisoning in Amsterdam. I feel awful and I’m not in the headspace to write anything remotely thoughtful today. So regularly scheduled programming will resume tomorrow — hopefully.
P.S. It looks like Toronto will be getting its first Michelin restaurants guide. Good timing given this recent post.
Back in 2014, Amsterdam became the first city to have what is called a "night mayor." The role of a night mayor is what the name suggests. They are intended to be the chief executive officer of a city's nighttime economy. And so it was and it continues to be recognition that the night can be an important economic development tool.
This seemed to work out well for Amsterdam, which is why many other cities quickly followed suit with their own night mayor elections. During this time, a number of us here in Toronto also started advocating for our own nighttime CEO. (FYI, here is a link to the current night mayor of Amsterdam.)
But fast forward to today and the tone seems to have changed in Amsterdam. The city's daytime mayor, Femke Halsema, is now actively concerned about over-tourism and, in particular, the way that some tourists behave when they check-in to Amsterdam.
Here's an excerpt from a recent interview that she did with Bloomberg:
We have to tackle two problems. The first problem is what I’d call the London problem: Our city is becoming too expensive. That is also part of being an international city and having many expats living here. But it has consequences for the middle classes. It’s very difficult to find a house in Amsterdam except for the highest incomes, so our middle class — teachers, police officers, people working in health care — are leaving the city. We’re very alert about it. For a city to survive in the long run you need social stability and people from middle or lower classes to also feel at home.
Our second problem is the Venice problem: The people who live here become estranged especially in the city center, because it’s no longer part of their city. We have to find a new balance, in being a home for people from Amsterdam and at the same time welcoming international visitors and tourists.
More specifically, the Venice problem seems to be a problem of behavior:
It’s not a form of tourism we welcome or don’t welcome — it’s a form of behavior. What we do not welcome is people who come here on a vacation from morals. They express a form of behavior they would not express at home. People coming here to lose their morals is a problem for us.
It is for this reason that the city is hoping to relocate its red light district to outside of the city center. The intention is not to get rid of it, or for the city to turn its back on its long history of tolerance, but it does want to move it somewhere else in the hopes that Amsterdam will become more associated with culture than hedonism.
But does moving it actually change any behaviors? If one were to develop a purpose-built "erotic center" from the ground up, is it even possible to make it more integrated with the broader city (minimize the Venice problem) and, to use the mayor's words, make it more chic than what currently exists?
These are all exceedingly tough city building questions that can't really be untangled from questions of morality.
For the full Bloomberg interview with mayor Halsema, click here.
Slate Asset Management, RAD Marketing, and the top producing brokers for One Delisle were fortunate enough to be able to tour a Studio Gang-designed project in Amsterdam today called the Q Residences. A huge thanks to the developers — Kroonenberg Groep and Neoo — for their time and hospitality this afternoon.
Here are two photos of the exterior:
The building, which is a mixed-income rental apartment, is still under construction, and occupancy is expected sometime this fall. The structure is poured-in-place concrete, but the balconies were all pre-fabricated and installed on site. You can tell this by looking near the top of the above photo.
Here are a few other interesting takeaways from the tour:
- 40% of the complex is social housing (which is housed in an entirely separate but similarly impressive building); this is a mandatory requirement
- The land is owned by the city and is being leased to the developers; the lease rate was discounted to account for the social housing requirement
- The entire building uses in-floor heating and cooling, so there are no ducts or bulkheads in any of the suites (slabs are all about 300mm to accommodate this)
- The balconies all have a rainwater collection system, which is mounted and concealed on the exterior of the building (it rarely goes below freezing here I am told)
- The parking ratio for cars is very roughly about 0.5 per unit and the bicycle parking ratio is very roughly 3 per unit (remember this is the bicycle capital of the world)
- Structural system is mostly shear walls; they also have some post-tensioning in the slabs
- Less reliance on metal wall studs; instead they use a more expensive block-like system that offers more rigidity and better sound attenuation (I will look for the exact specification)
- There is also this odd/interesting requirement that all of the suites have an operable window that can provide both natural ventilation and sound attenuation; in other words, it needs to let air in and block sound at the same time
Here’s what that looks like at Q Residences:
We don’t have a requirement like this in Toronto and so that’s why I used the word odd. We have ventilation and sound requirements, but they don’t need to be solved simultaneously in this same way.
Why I also think this is interesting is because I think it speaks to a greater reliance on natural ventilation over active mechanical systems. In Toronto, the underlying thinking is that if it’s too hot and noisy, it’s just a matter of shutting your windows and turning on the AC.
Of course, we obviously we have to manage around a very different climate, so I don’t mean this as a criticism of Toronto codes. It’s just an observation.
If you aren’t familiar with the Q Residences, or the work of Neoo and Kroonenberg, I would encourage you to search around online. The project is gorgeous and so is the rest of their work.
Back in 2014, Amsterdam became the first city to have what is called a "night mayor." The role of a night mayor is what the name suggests. They are intended to be the chief executive officer of a city's nighttime economy. And so it was and it continues to be recognition that the night can be an important economic development tool.
This seemed to work out well for Amsterdam, which is why many other cities quickly followed suit with their own night mayor elections. During this time, a number of us here in Toronto also started advocating for our own nighttime CEO. (FYI, here is a link to the current night mayor of Amsterdam.)
But fast forward to today and the tone seems to have changed in Amsterdam. The city's daytime mayor, Femke Halsema, is now actively concerned about over-tourism and, in particular, the way that some tourists behave when they check-in to Amsterdam.
Here's an excerpt from a recent interview that she did with Bloomberg:
We have to tackle two problems. The first problem is what I’d call the London problem: Our city is becoming too expensive. That is also part of being an international city and having many expats living here. But it has consequences for the middle classes. It’s very difficult to find a house in Amsterdam except for the highest incomes, so our middle class — teachers, police officers, people working in health care — are leaving the city. We’re very alert about it. For a city to survive in the long run you need social stability and people from middle or lower classes to also feel at home.
Our second problem is the Venice problem: The people who live here become estranged especially in the city center, because it’s no longer part of their city. We have to find a new balance, in being a home for people from Amsterdam and at the same time welcoming international visitors and tourists.
More specifically, the Venice problem seems to be a problem of behavior:
It’s not a form of tourism we welcome or don’t welcome — it’s a form of behavior. What we do not welcome is people who come here on a vacation from morals. They express a form of behavior they would not express at home. People coming here to lose their morals is a problem for us.
It is for this reason that the city is hoping to relocate its red light district to outside of the city center. The intention is not to get rid of it, or for the city to turn its back on its long history of tolerance, but it does want to move it somewhere else in the hopes that Amsterdam will become more associated with culture than hedonism.
But does moving it actually change any behaviors? If one were to develop a purpose-built "erotic center" from the ground up, is it even possible to make it more integrated with the broader city (minimize the Venice problem) and, to use the mayor's words, make it more chic than what currently exists?
These are all exceedingly tough city building questions that can't really be untangled from questions of morality.
For the full Bloomberg interview with mayor Halsema, click here.
Slate Asset Management, RAD Marketing, and the top producing brokers for One Delisle were fortunate enough to be able to tour a Studio Gang-designed project in Amsterdam today called the Q Residences. A huge thanks to the developers — Kroonenberg Groep and Neoo — for their time and hospitality this afternoon.
Here are two photos of the exterior:
The building, which is a mixed-income rental apartment, is still under construction, and occupancy is expected sometime this fall. The structure is poured-in-place concrete, but the balconies were all pre-fabricated and installed on site. You can tell this by looking near the top of the above photo.
Here are a few other interesting takeaways from the tour:
- 40% of the complex is social housing (which is housed in an entirely separate but similarly impressive building); this is a mandatory requirement
- The land is owned by the city and is being leased to the developers; the lease rate was discounted to account for the social housing requirement
- The entire building uses in-floor heating and cooling, so there are no ducts or bulkheads in any of the suites (slabs are all about 300mm to accommodate this)
- The balconies all have a rainwater collection system, which is mounted and concealed on the exterior of the building (it rarely goes below freezing here I am told)
- The parking ratio for cars is very roughly about 0.5 per unit and the bicycle parking ratio is very roughly 3 per unit (remember this is the bicycle capital of the world)
- Structural system is mostly shear walls; they also have some post-tensioning in the slabs
- Less reliance on metal wall studs; instead they use a more expensive block-like system that offers more rigidity and better sound attenuation (I will look for the exact specification)
- There is also this odd/interesting requirement that all of the suites have an operable window that can provide both natural ventilation and sound attenuation; in other words, it needs to let air in and block sound at the same time
Here’s what that looks like at Q Residences:
We don’t have a requirement like this in Toronto and so that’s why I used the word odd. We have ventilation and sound requirements, but they don’t need to be solved simultaneously in this same way.
Why I also think this is interesting is because I think it speaks to a greater reliance on natural ventilation over active mechanical systems. In Toronto, the underlying thinking is that if it’s too hot and noisy, it’s just a matter of shutting your windows and turning on the AC.
Of course, we obviously we have to manage around a very different climate, so I don’t mean this as a criticism of Toronto codes. It’s just an observation.
If you aren’t familiar with the Q Residences, or the work of Neoo and Kroonenberg, I would encourage you to search around online. The project is gorgeous and so is the rest of their work.
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