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Newsletter May 2016

Alamar, Havana, Cuba (photo: Mike Emmerik)
Alamar expedition

Born out of necessity, Cuba has one of the most extensive systems of urban agriculture in the world, providing the population with a high percentage of their green vegetables. The country also has a well-functioning healthcare system based on prevention which makes it both cheap and effective. Furthermore, the beautiful 17th century downtown area of Havana is an exquisite case of colonial heritage preservation. All of this may be endangered as the country is opening up to the world. How can Havana initiate a unique, fitting form of urban transformation, that will redefine its strengths in a more open society and economy?
This question, especially relevant in the redevelopment of the historic port and the satellite city of Alamar, was studied by a group of 60 architecture students of the Technical University of Delft and CUJAE, the technical university of Havana.

Dutch embassy, Havana
(photo: Mike Emmerik)

INTI’s director Michelle Provoost took the students to Havana’s youngest and most adventurous area, Alamar, a large urban area consisting of mainly prefab apartment blocks with 90.000 inhabitants, on the eastern side of Havana. After researching the existing challenges and opportunities, the students presented short and long term visions for necessary improvements, using local economy, agriculture and (beach)tourism as transformational tools. The results were a.o. presented to the Dutch Ambassador at the Embassy of the Netherlands in Havana and will be published in the Travel Guide to Alamar (June 2016).

In cooperation with CUJAE and TU Delft: the chairs of Urban Design (led by Prof. Han Meyer), Design as Politics (Prof. Wouter Vanstiphout) and Complex Projects (Prof. Kees Kaan). The case of urban agriculture in Alamar will also be presented at the International New Town Day, June 30th.

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Talking Urban Africa: Ville Verte Mohammed VI, Morocco

New Towns are built all over Africa, as we speak. Morocco stands out from other countries in the fact that it has also adopted projects focusing on sustainable new towns. The most profound example of Morocco’s new green cities is Ville Verte Mohammed VI, 60 km from Marrakesh. Also known as VVM6, it is meant to become a green and ecologically responsible university city.
In the third week of May, Rachel Keeton has conducted fieldwork in this particular new town. VVM6 is the first LEED certified urban development in Africa. The city can be said to be the brainchild of OCP, the world’s largest exporter of phosphate fertilizers and one of Morocco’s biggest companies, which is also designing and developing the project. University Mohammed VI Polytechnic lies at the heart of the new town, and is the research and development base and the engine behind the entire project. VVM6 is designed for 100,000 future residents, although the university is currently the only functioning part of the project. It is one of many new towns currently under construction in Morocco, as the country moves forward with massive development projects and a national-scale social housing plan. The research will contribute to INTI’s forthcoming book Urban Africa (2017), undertaken in collaboration with UN-Habitat. 

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Two New INTImi!

INTI is proud to announce that INTImi now has two new members. BPD (Bouwfonds Property Development) and the city of Milton Keynes (UK) have joined INTI’s list of cities and companies that support INTI’s activities. BPD is a leading European area developer, with an international portfolio varying from complete neighborhoods to the transformation of large urban areas. Milton Keynes may be Europe’s most widely known New Town. Once built to relieve London’s congestion, the city has now come to embrace its own identity and heritage and aims to become the Cultural Capital of Europe in 2023. Both BPD and Milton Keynes are part of a second wave of INTImi members who connect to our network in preparation of the International New Town Day on June 30. The INTImi network is a global network of urban planners, policy-makers, architects, developers, scientists and students, who all share an interest in the planning and development of New Towns and want to support INTI. To become a member of INTImi, see our website.

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Sponge City Guangming

In order to tackle its severe water resource problems, both in quality and quantity, China launched a program to develop 16 model “Sponge Cities”. They include Wuhan, Chongqing, Xiamen and Shenzhen. Each city will receive financial support to implement projects that can absorb, store, drain and purify water. Guangming New Town will be the pilot zone for Shenzhen and needs to appoint projects to start implementing the Sponge City. Unsurprisingly, the Netherlands – fighting its century-long battle with the sea – is the prime candidate to lend Guangming its expertise. The Dutch have a long and rich tradition on how water defines and enriches urban planning, adopting an integrative urban design strategy with water as its most significant fundament.

Since two years, INTI cooperates with Guangming New Town in order to improve the overall quality of the urban development of the city, through multidisciplinary advice and capacity building provided by a Consultant Team of dedicated Dutch experts. The next workshop from May 30 until June 3 will be related to Sponge City. The Consultant Team will examine a first selection of projects on their feasibility for implementing the Sponge City within a short-term, medium-term and long-term framework.
The team consists of Markus Appenzeller (architect and founder of architecture office MLA+), Jasper Hugtenburg (landscape architect, H+N+S Landscape Architects), Christiaan Pfeiffer (urban planner and landscape architect, City of Almere), Tiffany Tsui (director strategic business and sustainable development region China, RoyalHaskoning DHV), Wouter Spijkerman (project developer SITE urban development) and Linda Vlassenrood (program director INTI).

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Research by Design, Feeding the City, Nairobi

During the last weeks of April, students of the Technical University of Kenya (TUK) and the University of Amsterdam (UVA), together with professionals from Nairobi and the Netherlands, have worked together in the first Research-by-Design workshop within the Feeding the City curriculum. The first year of this program, which INTI has initiated together with the Urban Design department of the TUK, is focused on mapping the metabolism of Nairobi in order to learn more about the combination of food and urban planning. For the students of the UVA (Human Geography), the workshop was the closing event of a period of fieldwork for their theses, which are all linked to themes of the ’Feeding the City’ program.
During the two-day workshop, the six groups of students addressed a variety of topics, ranging from agriculture policies and food value chains to (super)markets and peri-urban situations, always within the context of the physical structure of the city. Thanks to the combination of students and interdisciplinary professionals, their research has been translated into a concrete spatial analysis and design guidelines. The results of this workshop could be seen as the first steps towards one of the ultimate goals of the Feeding the City curriculum: a complete analysis of the development of a new town based on agriculture.