ABSTRACT
After many years of seemingly unlimited development in Dutch cities, the market has become traditional and supply-driven, allowing no innovations. The financing of new projects is based on statistics and was, until recently, relatively easily obtained. However, reliance on statistics has led to backward-looking practices with little insight into the future, and even less insight into the changing needs of customers. This has resulted in inflated values and the needs of users being neglected. The long period of growth has come to a sudden halt. When the economic crisis struck, office and business markets as well as the residential market were hit. Real estate values dropped, sales decreased dramatically and vacancy rates went sky high. At the same time non-financial values such as sustainability, livability, safety, and ecology became more important. How well have we city planners, urban developers, researchers and politicians prepared our cities for the future? In our shortsightedness we overlooked resilience and went after building volume instead, which has resulted in the current crisis.
