We have started a series of ‘Shortreads’ on our website in which our researchers and affiliated authors publish essays, columns, summaries and previews of their work. Weekly contributions give you an insight into the results of INTI-research. The latest essay features the Garden City of Kaloleni in Nairobi, originally designed by the British colonial power and built by Italian prisoners of war; nowadays it’s a highly contested green oasis in crowded Nairobi, which the inhabitants are striving to rescue from developers eager to swallow up the area.
In Shortreads you will also be able to read the pre-publications of the forthcoming publication New Towns on the Cold War Frontier, a cooperation between Crimson Architectural Historians and INTI; a political-spatial history of cities built in the developing countries during the Cold War period.

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The public lecture course The New Town: From Welfare City to Neoliberal Utopia is in full swing at the TU Delft. You have just missed the lecture ‘Modernity, suburban culture and daily life in New Towns in Western Europe’ by urban sociologist Ivan Nio. The next lecture will be on June 10th, at 13:45hr, by Sophie van Ginneken and is titled ’Visionary dreams and exclusionary enclaves in Africa’.
The most recent lecture by Michelle Provoost can be viewed on the website of the TU Delft, or you can watch all lectures in INTI’s own videos section.

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Linda Vlassenrood (Program Director INTI) will speak at the 2nd Shenzhen International Low-Carbon City Forum (June 10-11). She will talk about the lessons learned in Guangming New Town. INTI’s New New Towns program organized design workshops with Chinese and Dutch professionals to rethink contemporary planning concepts for this new low-carbon city in Shenzhen. The Shenzhen International Low-Carbon City Forum is designed to understand and promote China’s low-carbon development agenda. More then 500 leaders from government, industry, investors, academia, international organizations, business associations and media from over 40 countries will gather to seek new knowledge and business opportunities on low-carbon development in China’s urbanization process.

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Recently we have strengthened our international network with new partners, with whom we will be collaborating in the New New Towns program. We will sign or have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the International Federation for Housing and Planning (IFHP) in Copenhagen and the African Centre for Cities (ACC) in Capetown, Guangming New Town (Shenzhen), the Technical University of Kenya and the Centre for Urban Studies (CUST) of Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology. We are also pleased to announce that UN Habitat will be our partner.
To improve the quality of urban living in the new cities around the world, INTI cooperates with local academic, private and governmental partners. Signing a MoU confirms a collaboration which is not confined to a single project, but indicates a long-term relationship. This way we aim to strengthen the network of planned cities working on similar challenges.

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Representatives from INTI participated in the Abu Dhabi Ascent, a two-day international conference organized by the UN, held in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates from May 4-5, 2014. The goals of Abu Dhabi Ascent were “to catalyze ambitious action on the ground to reduce emissions and strengthen climate resilience, and to mobilize political momentum for an ambitious, global, legal agreement in 2015.” Welcoming addresses were given by Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber (Minister of State and Special Envoy for Energy and Climate Change, UAE), Ban Ki-moon (Secretary-General of the UN) and John W. Ashe (President of the 68th session of the General Assembly, UN).
Al Gore, former US Vice President, opened the conference with a stirring keynote presentation about the effects of global warming, ending with a stern warning that this may be mankind’s last chance to reverse the changes brought about by industrialization. During the conference, speakers repeatedly stressed that the event was being held to give attending ministers the opportunity to work out ideas so they would be better able to present concrete targets and innovative projects at the Climate Change Summit later this year. It was clear that no one wanted to repeat what was largely seen as the “failure” of the 2009 Copenhagen Accord.
INTI was represented at the conference by Rachel Keeton and Simone Rots, who took part in the Transformative Projects for Cities session. The Abu Dhabi Ascent was intended as a precursor to the Climate Change Summit scheduled for September 23rd in New York.

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After only twenty years, it is not surprising to see that Cape Town still bears the marks of the Apartheid spatial practice; after all, nothing has a longer lasting impact on the city than the urban layout, petrified in infrastructure and housing and regulated by zoning.

Cape Town is a highly fragmented, spatially segregated city, full of barriers separating black from white, poor from rich inhabitants. The Density Syndicate, a cooperation between INTI and ACC (African Centre for Cities), combines the design intelligence of Dutch and South African architects and planners to come up with innovative solutions for three locations in Cape Town, which bear the marks of Apartheid but also offer chances to overcome the existing social and spatial barriers. In this project, Density is not interpreted as a simple increase of volume and mass, but as an increase of use, urbanity and inclusivity. The first results will be presented at the Department of Design, July 10th, in Cape Town. Future Cape Town published the first article on the Density Project.

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INTI will be present at the Biennale di Venezia, where on June 5th the exhibition A Clockwork Jerusalem will be opened in the British Pavillion, curated by Fat Architects and Crimson Architectural Historians. The exhibition deals with the legacy of English romanticism in high modernist New Towns like Milton Keynes and Cumbernauld. The Financial Times published the first article on the exhibition.

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Commissioned by Atelier Rijksbouwmeester, INTI developed the next edition of Oog voor de Buurt. With this program, the Rijksbouwmeester started numerous projects in many Dutch cities, aiming to use design creativity to improve living circumstances in problematic neighborhoods.
For this new edition, INTI proposed three locations in New Towns in the Netherlands: Almere-Buiten, Spijkenisse and Lelystad. Despite their differences, all share the signs of their common DNA, which will make the outcomes of the project highly interchangeable. Multidisciplinary design teams will work in cooperation with local stakeholders on social as well as physical issues: dilapidated private housing, neglected public space, shopping centres in decline etc. The aim of the project is also to engage the ‘social capital’ of the neighborhoods to counter the negative trends in livability that can be perceived in many Dutch New Towns presently. The project was co-developed with Arnold Reijndorp (Han Lammers chair, UvA). Other participants in the design teams include: DUS Architects, LOLA Landscape architects, Hans Kars, WE Architects, Woonerven.nl and Shift Architects.

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INTI’s international student workshop from March 29 – April 7 built on the research themes decided upon during a previous workshop:
– The Lived City (urban sociology + art & urban identity)
– Speculative urbanism
– The Democratic City (participation and inclusivity)
– Urban history (Heritage & conservation)
– Climate change, sustainability and resilience
– Nairobi Masterplan
Under these umbrella themes, students presented individual research proposals based on their academic backgrounds and personal interests. For the Dutch students, these topics ranged from planning for inclusiveness, collective action and community participation to investigations on representation and identity. On the Kenyan side, students were concerned with research questions ranging from permaculture as a design tool for New Towns, New Towns and climate change mitigation to increasing long-term governmental investment in development and the introduction of Betterment Taxation to fund urbanization in Kenya. This wide array of interests and expertise provided fuel for discussion and feedback.
Over the course of the semester, both Dutch and Kenyan students conducted fieldwork, interviews and literature reviews to prepare their graduation projects. In September, a new group of graduating students from participating universities will begin work on the second semester of the New New Towns: Nairobi student exchange.

During this pilot semester INTI was able to provide the students with a variety of informative and participatory exchanges, as well as exposure to many interesting projects already happening in Nairobi. This workshop and student exchange follows a series of events organized in Nairobi by INTI over the last two years, and (after evaluation) will be used as a model for the long-term student and staff exchange between Dutch and Kenyan universities.