Our mission
The businesses and organizations in the PIB Circular Neighborhoods provide comprehensive solutions to issues, such as:
• Space – availability of building sites as well as recreational areas
• Liveability – as global warming makes cites unbearably warm
• Availability of clean water – as droughts and overuse threaten supplies
• Mobility – as cities become congested.
Innovative circular solutions using proven technology can help cities and citizens achieve their sustainable ambitions. Cities throughout the world can benefit from guidance and support in the making and implementation of circular laws, policy and regulation on both municipal and national level. How? By drafting a general blueprint that can be copied and tailored to suit local situations facing similar global challenges. When multiple stakeholders in government, business, knowledge institutions and local residents collaborate right from the start, they can smooth the path to building circular neighborhoods:
• removing legislative obstacles, attracting investment from local and international businesses;
• utilizing the latest ideas; and
• harnessing local support.
When we join forces and share ideas, experience and knowledge in the field of waste and resource recovery, we can raise circularity in neighborhoods to a higher level.
A circular neighborhood may leave no-one behind. Using bottom up, inclusive initiatives, the talents of all residents can become part of the movement. Making sure the local community benefits from circularity from the outset will make them want to be involved. Community-based projects improve the liveability of a neighborhood.
The Dutch approach
The Netherlands can be a partner in advancing circular cities by sharing ideas to keep cities liveable.
Doughnut economics
The City of Amsterdam is piloting doughnut economics together with its initiator Kate Raworth to prevent overexploitation of natural resources by its citizens. The Dutch capital’s Buiksloterham district has become a designated circular neighborhood with experimental circular self-build housing. And in the same district, its sustainable houseboat community Schoonschip has inspired similar projects to take living on water to new levels of sustainability worldwide. Vertical urban farms and green roofs will feed and cool the city as temperatures increasingly soar in the summer. And circular water systems will close the loop, greatly reducing demand on water supplies.
Sustainable mobility
The Netherlands has the highest number of car recharging points (90,284) in the EU and is home to 30% of the EU’s electric cars. Also, mass transit measures such as electric public transport busses, metros and trains also help relieve congestion while reducing CO2 emissions. The City of Amsterdam has replaced its diesel ferries with hybrid ones and will retrofit them entirely once zero-emission vessels form a viable alternative.
Bike lanes
Since the pandemic the popularity of cycling has increased worldwide. It not only relieves congestion, biking uses less space and it is a healthy and convenient way to get around. In the Netherlands cycling has been encouraged since the 1970s by building infrastructure that makes cycling safe with bike lanes separated from motorized traffic. As a result, people of all ages and walks of life take up cycling. It’s a way of life that keeps the population healthy.
Build by design
The United States and the Netherlands have teamed up before. After Hurricane Sandy devastated New York in 2012, Dutch water envoy Henk Ovink was called in to help. He created the concept of rebuilding by design, in which international experts and local residents rebuilt the city together using innovative bottom-up ideas.
At the same time, the Netherlands can learn from the decades of good practices pioneered in California’s Culver Valley ─ a beacon of circularity to the world.