Towards the stop of the 'Westward-Movement' of the port: Case Haven-Stad

Abstract

In the past decades many business parks and industrial areas haven been targeted for urban redevelopment. This is the result of the land intensification policy implemented in the Metropolitan Region of Amsterdam, see figure below. This redevelopment strategy has been pushing the port westward towards the sea, due to environmental challenges (Daamen, 2007). The business parks that used to be transformed in the past, where known to contain a high vacancy rate or by underperformance. This has changed, as nowadays well-performing business parks are being targeted for redevelopment. This has stirred the Chamber of Commerce to conduct a research on the economic and public value of these areas, establishing two facts: their overall good performance and their scarcity. Nevertheless, the heavy industrial port companies are still not included in the future vision of new urban redevelopment projects such as Haven-Stad. This raises many questions that, such as: Why are these companies treated as obstacles for the development? Are they still the source of environmental pollution, or is that based on old ideas? What value do these companies represent? And how can the city increase their retainment in future redevelopment plans? In order to provide answers to these questions, a value-based strategy has been developed. This will help to understand the port companies and will function as main source for the development of alternative mixed-use redevelopment strategies.