Recap of the ‘Stadsmakerscongres’
On Friday, 15th of November, the annual Stadmakerscongres was held in Rotterdam. At this congress, ‘city makers’, residents, local professionals, public servants and many others convene, discuss and work together to make the city, and in particular Rotterdam, a better place. Red&Blue was represented as well. Ellen van Bueren (Full Professor of Urban Development Management at TU Delft) and Ted Veldkamp (Professor of Water and Climate Risk at Hogeschool Rotterdam) participated in different discussion panels, and a workshop was organized together with AIR (Architectuur Instituut Rotterdam). The workshop was a continuation of the workshop ‘Who Pays the Bill?’, which was held in June and offered various perspectives on the financial side of city transformations.
Patrick Joosen (Area Director at BPD) kicked off by giving a pitch from his perspective as a real estate developer. During this pitch, he discussed, among others, difficulties BPD experiences when trying to hand over a natural area they developed in conjunction with a housing development: although they had to develop this, no party is interested in taking over the maintenance of this area. Annius Hoornstra reacted on the pitch and used Patrick’s example of nature development to illustrate how important it is to involve other ‘non-traditional’ parties in development, such as waterboards or nature organisations.
After the pitch by Patrick Joosen and the reaction of Annius Hoornstra, workshops were given at eight different tables. These included tables on how long-term investments, such as some climate adaptive measures, can be better accommodated in a GREX (Ground Exploitation Model) and tables on (climate) justice during city transformations. Besides hearing different opinions and positions, the main aim of the overall workshop was to engage a broader audience and to make them aware of the different perspectives on finance in the realm of (climate-related) city transformations.
