Copenhagen and Amsterdam are attracting wild nature to the city
Parool spoke with Mette Skjold (SLA) and Steven Delva (DELVA) about two ambitious plans in the two cities.
The Nodhavn neighborhood in Copenhagen and Strandieland in Amsterdam will each receive their own nature park of over 20 hectares. SLA in Nordør and DELVA in Amsterdam are thus literally bringing nature into the city.
It’s the largest project of its kind in decades, says Mette Skjold, CEO of SLA, which will oversee the development of Nordørpark for the recommended years. A new park of such size – thirty hectares – is something the current generation of Copenhageners has never seen before. It’s an opportunity to connect the city’s residents with the coast; Copenhagen is, after all, a coastal city.
“In Nordør, sea, coast, and city converge. “That’s how powerfully nature ultimately enters the city,” Mette Skjold.
Similar developments are also coming to Amsterdam, says landscape architect and urban planner Steven Delva of the eponymous firm DELVA. In the Netherlands, he says, it’s not possible to achieve this solely through a business case; it’s difficult to demonstrate that investing in nature is profitable.
“That’s a big difference compared to a city like Copenhagen. In the Netherlands, we don’t just create nature; we constantly consider whether it can be integrated into the many urgent challenges that lie ahead. That’s not a problem, because it always pays off. So, it always works to get nature projects through if we can address current issues: purifying soil, expanding water surfaces, improving water quality or water flow, reducing construction costs. We continually link other urgent issues to the creation of new nature in the city.”
“In the increasingly complex urban environment, we need answers that are grounded in nature, with nature’s workings as our starting point. Then we’ll accelerate the radical greening of Amsterdam,” Steven Delva.
The merging of city and nature isn’t going badly in Amsterdam, says Delva, but it can always be improved. Sometimes there are projects that make you think: damn it. Which projects?
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