Shenzhen and Almere: Evaluating New New Towns

On June 21st the Dutch International New Town Institute (INTI) presented and evaluated the results of its “New New Towns. Why we need to rethink the city of tomorrow today” multidisciplinary research programme by means of a comprehensive public forum. Together with INTI's partner, the city of Almere, the forum celebrated one year of successful activities in Shenzhen which have included a number of student workshops and professional exchanges. Taking place at the new Shenzhen Centre for Design, design professionals and tutors elaborated on the city’s strengths and proposed extraordinary alternative models for urban planning and concepts for economic growth. Included in the discussion was Almere's mayor Annemarie Jorritsma, who shared her views on the future of Almere, one of the Netherlands' newest new towns, focusing on how to make cities greener.

The programme was centred around various themes including speakers from both China and the Netherlands. Speakers included Huang Weiwen, Director Shenzhen Center for Design and Deputy Chief Planner of Shenzhen Municipality, who spoke about the challenges of attracting creative workers to new towns. Tat Lam of the Urbanus Research Bureau raised the pressing issue for creating balance within the urban planning and further development of new towns - between hyper-density and liveability, between mega-structures and granularity and between (retro) futurism and preservation.

Apart from populating new towns and the urban development aspects, the socio-economic issues of new towns were also discussed. Arnold Reijndorp, a professor of social-economic and Spatial Development at the Centre for Urban Studies, University of Amsterdam shared the findings of students of his department. In the past six months ten master students explored social-economic and spatial changes stemming from Shenzhen's evolution from the world’s largest factory to a veritable World City. Some of their explorations clearly showed that the transition Shenzhen is aiming for is under way and in a pace faster than academic research can master. Much of what is reported in academic journals is already outdated calling for new methods of research.

Stephen Read (Chair of Spatial Planning and Strategy at Delft University of Technology) discussed the findings of his students of the MSc program in Urbanism at the TU Delft who participated in the research studio ‘Shenzhen Scenarios’. They explored development processes in Shenzhen with the aim of tackling some of the contradictions linked with rapid urbanization, migration, and policy focusing too exclusively on the economic side of development. Students focused less on the production of strategic plans and more on locally based studies of the dynamics of urban socio-spatial development. The presentation was a preliminary assessment of the results focusing on the way we differentiate and spatially organize different processes, and on the roles of stakeholders and local governance structures in any solution to problems of urban development.

At the conclusion of the conference, an agreement was signed between the City of Almere and the City of Shenzhen to establish future cooperation in the field of sustainable urban development.

(Resource: Netherlands Embassy in Beijing, China)