Amsterdam 'Urban Parks' Strategy

"Urban Parks" is one of the strategic scenarios within The Quality Impulse Green (Kwaliteitsimpuls Groen), Amsterdam's city-level spatial plan to improve green infrastructure by 2025. In 2015, the Amsterdam municipal government in the Netherlands planned strategic actions for the scenario with the goals of creating new parks, expanding existing parks, and transforming extensive parks into intensive use parks. The specific actions the municipal government intends to pursue include: (1) creating new city parks by expanding existing recreational spaces; (2) transforming green spaces into city parks through transforming private green areas into public spaces, making private green areas more accessible via bike and walking paths, and increasing maintenance of private green areas; and (3) expanding walking and cycling paths within extensive-use park to attract more people, and (4) improving the maintenance of all city parks.

Overview

Type of instrument:

Legislative, regulatory and strategic instruments›Dedicated strategy, plan, or law

Challenges addressed

Reconnection to the biosphere / environmental education
Human health, comfort and well-being

Consideration of nature-based solutions:

The strategy aims to improve human well-being and achieve climate and environmental goals through creating new and improving existing green areas, increasing recreational opportunities in nature, increasing access to green areas, contributing to biodiversity conservation by making parks less intensively used, etc.

Targeted (peri-)urban areas:

Parks and (semi)natural urban green areas

Urban green space connected to grey infrastructure

Good practice characteristics:

Potential to be replicated / upscaled

Innovative

Governance

Government body/bodies

Initiating body:

Amsterdam Municipality

Instrument design:

Details about how the instrument was designed:

The Amsterdam Municipality suggested strategic actions for the scenario "Urban Parks." The scenario was developed by De Urbanisten, an consultancy firm for urban research, design, and landscape based in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. The parks scenario originates from long-term urban plans for Amsterdam.

Involvement of non-governmental actors:

Private sector, corporate, business

Researchers, university

Type of actor involvement:

Hiring of a private firm to develop the scenario

Instrument implementation:

Type of non-governmental actors involved:

Citizen science

Targeted actors:

Private: household, real estate developer, business , financial

Financing

Sources of funding:

Unknown

Monitoring, evaluation and impacts

Is a monitoring framework in place?:

Did an evaluation take place?:

Achieved outcomes and impacts:

A wide range of impacts are striven for within this parks scenario. For example, the expansion of walking and cycling-paths by 198km is foreseen. Furthermore, researchers project a 0.04 degree Celsius decrease in the urban heat island effect.

Success factors and lessons learned:

The strategy provides a critical framework for future urban developments, and does so in an innovative manner by expanding and combing existing green spaces and increasing access to them. Since the policy is new and not much is available about its impacts, it is difficult to ascertain its success, however, the strategy can be replicated elsewhere to quickly and efficiently increase the amount of green space in cities by building on preexisting sites and efforts.

Sources and further information

References

List of references:

Paulin, M., R. Remme, and T. de Nijs. 2019. “Amsterdam’s Green Infrastructure: Valuing Nature’s Contributions to People.” Bilthoven, The Netherlands: National Institute for Public Health and the Environment. https://www.rivm.nl/bibliotheek/rapporten/2019-0021.pdf.

“Science for Environment Policy”: European Commisson DG Environment News Alert Service, edited by SCU, The University of the West of England, Bristol..

Photos

@openresearch.amsterdam