Amsterdam likes to pro­file itself as a city of the future. In order to achieve this, pro­gress has to be made in the field of sus­tain­able archi­tec­ture and city life.

Two areas where this can already be seen are the Houthavens and Noord. The Houthavens used to be the wood ship­ping har­bour of Amsterdam. Sev­en arti­fi­cial, car-free pen­in­su­las have been cre­ated in the former har­bour, lined by build­ings of max. 4–5 storeys. In total there will be 2700 apart­ments with 20% social rent­al apart­ments. The area will be 100% cli­mate neut­ral.

On the oth­er side of the water lies Buik­sloter­ham, which used to be a har­bour area and an enclave for poor work­ing class fam­il­ies. In the last 5 years, how­ever, a redis­cov­ery of Noord has star­ted. Buik­sloter­ham has the ambi­tion to become the first “cir­cu­lar” neigh­bour­hood in Amsterdam, with closed cir­cuits for waste and energy.