Uploaded on 2019-09-05 by Arda Gocmencelebi

Buiksloterham is an old industrial waterfront area north of central Amsterdam. Gas and oil producer Shell used to be located here, as was an airplane factory, shipbuilder and other assorted manufacturing. But the companies have moved out, leaving an empty site with polluted soil. Amsterdam city planners took a novel approach: they opened Buiksloterham to bidders for temporary use, with the site development criteria of building structures without foundations (due to soil issues) and fixing up the area. Rather than imposing a detailed urban plan for the area, they established “rules of development”, which allowed latitude in terms of construction, but made requirements regarding mixed commercial/residential use, and the height and density of buildings. The Czech Republic is a country that has much lower levels of social trust than the Netherlands: there, trust in others lies below the OECD European average at 5.3, versus 5.8 out of 10, according to our study. Historical relations also loom large here, though not as beneficially as in the Dutch example: under the old Soviet-led regime, planning was highly intrusive. In the early days of the new parliamentary republic — the so-called “wild 1990s” — there was backlash against this intrusion.