jan 7th, 2019 | Architectuur, Nieuw, Stad, Stedenbouw, Video
America’s ‘Automotive City’, Detroit, has suffered its share of setbacks: the demise of car manufacturing, white flight, black flight, the economic crisis and a huge mountain of debt. Thousands of houses still stand derelict, inhabited by drugdealers or with trees growing through the roof. The city went bankrupt in 2013 – a blessing in disguise, as its 18 billion dollars of debt were erased. The city is on its way back up: downtown is undergoing a marked renaissance and Ford Motor Company, believe it or not, is actually returning to Detroit. Ford will be setting up a new mobility research center in Detroit’s beautiful old train station, which stood empty for decades.
In Detroit I made a video interview with the head of urban planning, Maurice Cox, about Detroit’s upturn – and what still remains to be done.
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mei 29th, 2018 | Architectuur, Publicaties, Stedenbouw, TRACY•TV, Video
For its entry to this year’s Architecture biennale in Venice, citizens of Tirana lent their doors – a symbol of the country’s hope that the EU will open its doors to Albania. I spoke to Tirana’s mayor, the fireball Erion Veliaj, about his plans for the city and the role he sees for contemporary architecture in making the city more liveable.
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sep 24th, 2017 | Architectuur, Nieuw, Publicaties, Stedenbouw
Hong Kong: that is the world’s most densely populated city, an island of glistening skyscrapers, fashion and fast money, the most expensive real estate in the world against a backdrop of rugged mountains. Right? But the city also has a hidden life, on high and down below. Two fascinating books – as well as the ‘Homes for All’ video that Max Hirsh and Xiaoxuan Lu made for the digital magazine of my talkshow Stadsleven – shine a stark light on Hong Kong’s housing dilemma’s.
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sep 9th, 2017 | Architectuur, Design, Nieuw
I’ve been coming to Barcelona regularly now for about eight years. Our balcony looks out over Gaudi’s Pedrera (‘the ant hill’, we call it), the Sagrada Familia in the distance and in between a gingerbread castle-like building with six pointy towers that we dubbed ‘The House of the Witches’ Hats’. But only now have I seen it from the inside.
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aug 15th, 2017 | Publicaties, TRACY•TV, Video
Citydwellers are reclaiming the streets! See the ‘leefstraten’, the ‘living streets’, like the Kersstraat in Utrecht, where for a few weeks the neighborhood uses the space normally reserved for cars. And in the New Institute, curator René Boer reflects on how decades of squatting have impacted the city of today. And meanwhile there is music on the canals of Amsterdam, thanks to the Canal Festival!
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