Nextdoor: digital platform for neighborhoods – Interview with co-founder Sarah Leary
Nextdoor is a free private social network for neighborhood communities. It launched in 2011 in the US and at the beginning of 2016 in the Netherlands, its first European rollout. It has become quite popular: in the US 75 percent of all households use it, and in the Netherlands over a third of the neighborhoods have adopted it in just the past year and a half. In the UK, where the app was launched last September, it now represents 44% of the country’s neighborhoods, and release in France and Germany is pending. “It took us four years to attain the growth in the US that we have already experienced here in the Netherlands,” says co-founder Sarah Leary. “The Dutch love smartphones and are early adopters of social networking services.”
Ruins of a perfect world
I first saw work by the French-Luxemburg artist duo Martine Feipel and Jean Bechameil two years ago at Galerie Fontana. It was the exhibion ‘Un monde parfait – In dust suspended’. I wrote an article for NRC about the way they use their sculptures to come to grips with the desolation of the modern utopia that was realized in concrete on the edges of Paris – as in many other cities.
Aug 2017
16/08/2017 - 18/08/2017 – Spreker bij 'Designing Resilience in Asia' in Singapore
29/08/2017 – Moderator bij ERSA congres “Social Progress for Resilient Regions”
30/08/2017 – Spreker bij de summerschool van Academie van Bouwkunst
Weekvlog 15: Scottish design and skinny dipping
This week I fed my interest in polar exploration by visiting ‘The Discovery’ the ship of Robert Scott, who went on an unfortunate polar expedition to the Antartic. Also, I got a peek into the V&A Dundee, the very first museum for Scottish design and in the studio of the fashion designer Katie Gibson of Gibson & Birckbeck. I talked to Neil Scott of the Highlands and Islands Enterprise about communitybuilding in rural Scotland and discovered that Scotland has actually many windfarms. And yes, we went skinny dipping in our hottub in our Airbnb garden.
De stad in De Ochtend: plannen tegen drukte Amsterdam
Elke dinsdag ben ik tussen 10 en 11 uur te gast in het KRO NCRV radioprogramma De Ochtend op Radio 1 om actuele ontwikkelingen op het gebied van architectuur en stedelijk leven te bespreken. Vandaag: Rollende trolleys, mensenmassa’s op de Dam en onophoudelijke rijen voor het Anne Frank museum. De binnenstad van Amsterdam slibt langzamerhand dicht. Maar dat laten de Amsterdammers niet zomaar gebeuren. De onafhankelijke denktank Stad-Forum bedacht tien radicale plannen om de drukte tegen te gaan.
