Urban plans tend to regulate new neighborhoods in great detail. Especially in the Dutch context, plans tend to leave little room for individual entrepreneurship. This practice will have to change; the planning system in the Netherlands will have to start accommodating much more building activity by individuals and community groups. The Dutch practice must innovate to create more room for the entrepreneurial spirit of inhabitants.

Age Fluitman of Urban Progress Studio Amsterdam has specialized in working with client groups to realize communal housing projects. At Hulshof Architects, he was the project leader for the Wallisblok project, one of the larger communal housing regeneration projects in Holland. This project has won the Netherlands Renovation Award in 2009.

Urban Progress is convinced that these practices will have to become more commonplace in the Netherlands. It is keen to use Age’s experiences to create a form of urban planning that allows entrepreneurial citizens to take a stake in their city. The work on this theme will also be fed by the experiences of the team in the US market. Urban development in the US is much more a matter of private initiative. The lessons learned here will feed into the project approaches that Urban Progress is applying in its Dutch and European practice.