Smart City Development in Amsterdam

Due to Amsterdam's development limitations and vast urban challenges, the city needs attentive comprehension and a strategy founded on citizens' needs and routines to preserve the city's distinctive and rich historical character; and stimulate its economic development to maintain its economic role in the European Union. Thus, Amsterdam's smart city building perfectly fits into this realm, expecting to deliver creative urban solutions by the city's policymakers, innovative entrepreneurs, and other experts.

The enthusiasm to solve urban issues and create a more sustainable environment through creative innovation has been observable in Amsterdam relatively early. It was the first municipality in Europe that started a smart city project in 2009 through cooperation between the private and public spheres (Jameson, et al., 2019); (Gemeente Amsterdam, 2019). The Amsterdam Smart City (ASC) program is the soul of a complex smart city ecosystem, which initially focused on sustainability in four primary areas: living, working, mobility, and public spaces. The thriving public-private relationship established a prosperous smart city network between various organizations, companies, and education institutions (Figure 13.), making Amsterdam's smart city characteristics and development vastly different compared to the other cases discussed above (Chapter 5.-6.).

The Figure was made by Mario Vladar. The network structure is based on partnerships observed in different projects between 2009 and 2020. Although the Figure includes the most critical actors in Amsterdam's smart city building, it is for representation only because it does not precisely illustrate the connections and does not consists

of all actors who worked on Amsterdam Smart City projects.

Figure 13.: The Amsterdam Smart City Network:

As Figure 13. displays above, many private companies (Metabolic, Arcadis, KPN), education institutions (Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Solutions, Hogeschool van Amsterdam), civil organizations, governmental entities, and startups construct a network, cooperating with the ASC. Each actor can work separately or collaborate with smart city partners, but the final goal is the same: to improve the lives of citizens in Amsterdam. The central entity is the ASC, which has been created by the municipality and acquires annual fees and commitments from permanent partners, such as the Alliander or the Hogeschool van Amsterdam. This governance structure makes the Amsterdam municipality's role less significant, especially in contrast to Shenzhen or Dubai, where the municipality (with the central government) was obligated only with the planning, leaving any other urban actors out of the decision-making.

The ASC early phase (2009 - 2011) introduced various programs displayed in Figure 14., including bottom-up challenges that incorporated citizens, company employees, and entrepreneurs and other educational programs in schools. This early stage of smart city development's two main purposes was to raise awareness of energy consumption among citizens and businesses and test innovative technologies in pilot programs on a small scale that companies and the municipality can integrate later on (ASC, 2011). In most cases, the programs equipped households or offices with different intelligent tools such as smart meters, energy displays, smart plugs, and smart scans. On average, each program used at least 3 different smart tools to improve energy efficiency and reduce consumption (ASC, 2011).

Figure 14.: Smart City projects in Amsterdam between 2009 and 2011

Project’s dimension Projects Carbon reduction effects Sustainable Living • Buurzaam Wonen (smart

meters)

• West Orange (smart meters and displays)

• Onze Energie (renewable energy - wind)

• Smart Challenge between companies

Yes (small scale): West Orange yield energy and CO2 savings of about 14% for 500 households. In the Onze Energie campaign some people switched to renewable energy (wind)

Project’s dimension Projects Carbon reduction effects Sustainable Working • ITO Tower

• Monumental Buildings

• Online

Monitoring(municipality)

• Zuidas Solar

Yes (small scale): Improved energy efficiency through analyzing and visualizing energy consumption in the ITO tower. It reduced electricity consumption by 18%. Zuidas Solar Challenged installed 3,000 solar panels.

Sustainable Mobility • Ship to Grid (Ship grid electricity points)

• Moet je Watt (safe charger)

Yes (small scale): 195 ship grid electricity points were being installed that potentially reduce GHG emissions.

Sustainable Public Spaces • Klimaastraat

• Smart School Contest

Yes (small scale): Klimaastraat reduced energy consumption.

An important aspect worth noting is that Amsterdam started the awareness campaigns and other initiatives in developing neighborhoods, such as Geuzenveld, located in the Nieuw-West district. If we compare that area with the city center, where an average home value per square meter starts at 8000 euros¹², the price of Geuzenveld is about half of it, making it more affordable for young families and people with immigrant backgrounds (Gemeente Amsterdam, 2021). For example, the ‘Buurzaam Wonen’ project's objective was to encourage awareness of the citizens' energy consumption patterns which eventually enabled them to improve their consumption and save money in the households of Geuzenveld (Buuzraam Wonen, sd).

Accordingly, it indicates the municipality's purpose to provide a sustainable environment, reduce living costs, and improve the mindset of citizens even in less fortunate communities, making sustainable urban space, not a privilege for a few but a universal right for everyone.

One of the other main sub-projects was the establishment of the Climate Street/Klimaastraat (Utrechtsestraat), a living lab to examine which technologies, cooperative agreements, and approaches are the most beneficial to alter the city’s (shopping) streets into a more sustainable one. The project included 40 entrepreneurs who run a business in

‘Utrechtsestraat’ and voluntarily participated with other multinational and Dutch companies such as Vodafone, Philips, and PostNl. In the two-year test period (2010-2012), the businesses were provided with a total of 47 energy display systems, 40 smart meters, 171 smart plugs, and 39 smart scans that monitor the cooling, heating, and lightning (ASC, 2011). The street lab resulted in a 37% carbon emission decrease, equivalent to emission reduction capabilities of 60.000 tresses – 226 football field territory (Klimaatstraat, 2011); (ASC, 2016).

12 even reaches 10,000 euros or more according to the municipality database

The overall impact of the ASC early period resulted in a total 13,2% energy reduction in Amsterdam, with a negligible 0.5% CO² emission decrease (ASC, 2011). However, the Amsterdam Smart City's main contribution was to bring different parties together at every level of the city in order to implement innovative solutions to urban problems. Thus, it can be noted that the early stage of ASC acted as an innovation accelerator for the climate/energy industry and aimed to bring behavioral change to everyday life through awareness campaigns (ASC, 2011); (ASC, 2020). Moreover, instead of large, costly projects, ASC began with multiple but small experiments to test how the implementation of some techniques and tools could fit with the existing city structure and benefit the locals without the distortion of their accustomed lifestyle. Additionally, it should be noted that this stage of smart city building was rather technology-centric and mainly beneficial for companies that provided the technology and conducted research about the pilot programs. On average, one project was performed by 6 different partner companies that were conducted together with the small-scale tasks. These companies generated tangible knowledge thanks to these pilots with a relatively insignificant impact on society and the city's ecological sustainability.

After the early pilot programs, Amsterdam's smart city approach shifted even more toward the private sector and their innovative bottom-up projects, creating various public-private partnerships that even attracted significant E.U. funds and cross-border collaborations. The decision-makers learned that 'it is better to innovate with residents than innovate for residents' (ASC, 2020, p. 1), indicating that the city seeks to integrate a wide range of actors into the decision-making procedure to find solutions for urban challenges and design an urban environment that is desirable for the citizens. However, the municipality did not implement a comprehensive roadmap for smart city development; instead, it backed various programs, created by different actors.

For example, the Startup in Residence (SIR) initiative perfectly resembles the municipality's efforts in which innovative startups can receive funds from and other forms of support from the municipality to work on particular urban problems that the government explicitly prioritizes (Macpherson, 2017); (Digitale Overheid, sd). In this situation, the municipality is able to test various solutions in perhaps a cost-effective and less speculative way by leveraging the city's profound knowledge-based and mature entrepreneur base and, in the meantime, boosting innovative industries. Between 2015 and 2018, more than 340 different entrepreneurs have applied to work on solutions for a wide range of challenges, from EdTech improvements to urban issues, resulting in that 34 startups being granted (Innovative Partners,

2021); (Collette, 2019). Most of the startups aimed to find solutions for sustainability issues, in which 23% of the selected startups developed a project. For example, the Bubble Barrier initiative aims to deliver clean, plastic-free water to Amsterdam. The smart equipment was first installed in the Westerdock in 2019 and stopped as much plastic outflow from Amsterdam’s city center as possible while stimulating the natural ecosystem - unfortunately, there is no available data on the overall impact and the cost of the Bubble Barrier (The Great Bubble Barrier Team, sd); (Gemeente Amsterdam, sd).

Another project supported by the ASC in 2014, called City-zen, wants to empower tenants and homeowners to save energy and involve them in delivering a sustainable energy transition (City-zen, 2014); (City-zen, 2019). The project was funded by the European Union and implemented in two cities: Amsterdam and Grenoble (France). The core idea behind the project is to enhance the energy performance in as many houses as possible by subsidizing homeowners, housing corporations, and property investors' projects. From 2014 to 2016, 2,6 million euros were awarded to the renovation projects that companies could spend on retrofitting residential buildings to improve their energy consumption (Somers, 2016). Thanks to the initiative, the ASC has selected 66 projects with 535 dwellings, resulting in renovated apartments mainly in the Slotermeer neighborhood, in Nieuw-West, and other parts of Amsterdam, of which 68% were social housing (Franksman, 2019); (City-Zen, sd); (City-Zen, sd); (Bot, 2019). Due to the renovation, tenants had a significant annual energy reduction (88%

on average per project), equivalent to 2945 CO² tones/year decrease at the cost of 29,256 euros per dwelling (Bot, 2019); (Bijman, 2019).

Historically, energy transitions were almost exclusively driven by the exploitation of a new energy resource with little consideration for social or environmental consequences. Still, the shift requires immense social and behavioral adaptions, usually pushed by a central authority without considering individual needs (Lennon, et al., 2019). It can be seen that Amsterdam smart city project challenges this historical pattern by involving locals, letting the process go through carefully with the approval of citizens that voluntarily join to different initiatives. Amsterdam follows a district-by-district approach to establish alternatives to natural gas resources in collaboration with other city actors that encourages local ownership over energy capabilities (City of Amsterdam, 2021). For example, in the ‘City-zen’ project discussed above, tenants are enabled to have ownership of energy generation with their solar panels, and the energy surplus can be transferred to others, generating (technically) even revenue (City-Zen, sd). Similarly, in the Onze Energie campaign (mentioned in Figure 14.), residents were encouraged to finance the construction of windmills in Amsterdam-Noord that

enable them to generate their own energy. In the early phase of the project, 180 dwellings switched to wind energy thanks to the first windmill built due to the program (ASC, 2011).

7.1.1. The Nature of the Smart City Projects

The Amsterdam Smart City (ASC) committed that its projects are being created with a value-first approach, which means they see tech as means, not the end. Accordingly, the ASC is devoted that the projects need to serve the citizens’ needs, and they will only be implemented if they are beneficial to them. The ASC acts only as an ‘open platform’ to enhance collaboration between different actors, creating a possibility for those willing to participate in designing smart urban solutions (ASC, sd). However, having a somewhat insignificant role may limit the ASC's filtering capabilities, leaving possible 'green washing'¹³ and other negative tendencies unmonitored. On the other note, the ASC projects generally share two vital characteristics not seen in the previous cases (Chapter 5-6) that potentially ease the skepticism behind the project's nature. First, most projects attribute a careful consideration of privacy-related issues to protect individual privacy and digital freedom. Second, the projects usually operate with open-sourced licensing, enabling others to review and reuse codes and datasets to enhance transparency over project and encourage innovation through collaboration.

For example, one monumental step was the establishment of an open-source database about the city to abolish information limitations for other stakeholders (Amsterdam Economic Board, 2019). As a result, today, everyone can reach any relevant information and data about the city - many are even visualized on maps. Another example is the Public Eye project, a crowd monitoring solution to measure public spaces, that also follows these principles. While analyzing public spaces to help design safer, less crowded, and more sustainable city experiences for locals and visitors, it processes the data carefully and securely that is accepted based on transparency guidelines (TADA) and legislations sustain privacy-friendliness (Gemeente Amsterdam, sd).

Experts in the Marineterrein pilot program even implemented the newest mmWave technology, which can analyze moving objects (people) without identifying individuals, which is meant to solve privacy concerns as opposed to traditional surveillance systems. The project was developed with the primary purpose of showing how essential values such as privacy,

13 ‘…when companies invest more time and money on marketing their products or brand as “green” rather than actually doing the hard work to ensure that it is sustainable’ (Acaroglu, 2019, p. 1).

autonomy, and transparency can be integrated with smart city design, especially in typically controversial public sensor systems (Living Lab, sd).

Amsterdam's comprehensive approach to disruptive technologies was first introduced in 2019 in the Agenda for the Digital City (Agenda Digitale Stad). The idea is that the data ought to be used for the interests of ‘Amsterdammers’ instead of at the expense of the citizens' privacy and digital freedom, which was defined explicitly in the TADA manifesto, designed by different professionals and decision-makers from Amsterdam (Renzenbrink, 2019); (Gemeente Amsterdam, sd). It contains six essential principles that serve as pillars for guiding the digitalization of the city. The manifesto claims first that Amsterdam is inclusive and equality is vital; second, data is controlled by the people to serve people; third, the system is tailored to the people, meaning algorithms do not decide; fourth, citizens and users own the design that the government and civil societies facilitate; fifth, transparent data and results; sixth, every data generated about the city are held in common not in private (TADA, sd); (Gemeente Amsterdam, sd).

The municipality introduced several initiatives to fulfill most of these ambitious principles. For example, every year, thousands of data from public spaces (parking cars, trash collection) are analyzed by algorithms and AI-based identification, in which the municipality, if needed, routes to the citizens to enforce a penalty (Gemeente Amsterdam, 2020a). In 2020, there were a record number of 20,000 waste fines in which people were caught throwing away waste incorrectly (Koops, 2021). Regardless of the contradictions, the systems are designed to fulfill citizens' concerns since each case will be conducted with a neutral audit to ensure the system's fairness, filtering the possible algorithmic biases and other fallacies (Cities Coalition for Digital Rights, 2018). Furthermore, in the 'Algorithm Register' initiative, citizens are provided access to understand and overview the AI systems and algorithms used by the city. It alters the previously alien administration procedure for residents to a standardized, searchable, and archivable form by documenting the decisions and assumptions made by an algorithm (Haataja, et al., 2020). Another initiative (OpenStad – Open City) enable low-threshold participation in decision-making, so that more Amsterdammers can contribute with ideas and decide what happens in the city (Gemeente Amsterdam, sd); (Cities Coalition for Digital Rights, 2018).