From Amsterdam to Amsterdam Metropolitan Area: A Paradigm Shift

Abstract

The Amsterdam Metropolitan Area is searching for new ways to position itself on the global economic stage as a full-fledged and sustainable European metropolis. While repositioning, the City of Amsterdam and its surrounding municipalities have made a shift to a more urban–regional narrative to serve the region and tackle its planning challenges. This paper will discuss the current situation of the Amsterdam Metropolitan Area and analyse the scale and scope of the metropolitan thinking, with emphasis on the importance of international competitiveness and sustainability policies – and the balance between them – in this process of metropolitan capacity-building and consciousness-building.

Notes

As of October 2009: 16,564,029 inhabitants (www.cbs.nl).

All these formal and informal bodies have overlapping and different members.

Originally, Almere was part of the city-region, but it left at the beginning of the 1990s in order to secure administrative autonomy and reduce the influence of Amsterdam on its local policies (Haran, 2010:127).

It probably is typically Dutch that it is assumed that Amsterdam is not yet a fully-fledged metropolis. Over the past few years the Dutch planners spent many hours discussing whether the Netherlands had a metropolis at all, and if that would be Amsterdam or the Randstad (Janssen-Jansen, 2009).

In Dutch: ‘de sfeer, de traditie, de cultuur, de moderniteit, de dynamiek, het klimaat, het groen, het water. Niet de afzonderlijke gemeenten, maar de Noordvleugel als geheel heeft daarvoor de beste papieren’.