Smart City Planning
NDSM is a rare alternative development case formed through the collective efforts of many, excluding the dominance of a single consortium.
NDSM is an abbreviation for Nederlandsche Dok en Scheepsbouw Maatschappij, the Dutch shipbuilding and dock company. It is located in the northwest of Amsterdam, adjacent to the canal, and about a 15-minute ferry ride from the city center. The old factory site covers approximately 8.6 hectares, which is equivalent to 10 football fields. During its heyday, up to 8,000 workers were employed in shipbuilding here from the 1920s until the company's bankruptcy in 1984, making it a significant hub of the shipbuilding industry in the Amsterdam region.
After the bankruptcy of the shipbuilding company, the entire old factory site remained idle, leaving behind numerous factory buildings, warehouses, office buildings, and open spaces. On the other hand, as property prices in the Amsterdam city center skyrocketed in the 1990s, many artists and creative professionals who were originally located there could no longer afford it. They began searching for more affordable spaces to live and work. Against this backdrop, the vacant factory site gradually attracted many artists and creative professionals.
After a series of occupations, evictions, and social movements in the 1990s, the Amsterdam city government finally released the goodwill to hold a planning competition in 1999, granting the winner the leading role in the planning. As a result, the Kinetisch Noord Foundation, composed of artists and activists who had been active in the area for a long time, successfully won the competition and obtained a 25-year lease, allowing them to develop a reuse plan for the shipyard.
After initially investing 15 million euros, the foundation repaired the roofs of nearly 20,000 square meters of factory buildings and created "rooms within rooms" inside the vast shipyard that catered to human-scale, providing space for 250 artists to work and create. It gradually became an important subcultural hub in the Amsterdam area, with over 250 artists and small-scale cultural and creative studios registered there. The annual "Over het IJ Festival," a major event in the Dutch theater scene, and the monthly large flea market "IJ-Hallen" are also held here. It has become the largest creative economic cluster and an incubator for new cultural industries in Amsterdam.
Amsterdam Towards 2025 Plan
After NDSM became a cultural hotspot, it attracted the establishment of European headquarters for major companies such as MTV, HEMA, and RED BULL in the surrounding area. Taking advantage of this, the Amsterdam city government introduced more commercial development-oriented office buildings, waterfront residences, and hotels in the vicinity. It is projected that 1,300 residential units will be constructed by 2025. The profits from these development projects are partially used to subsidize the rent of art studios, ensuring that rents remain below market rates and sustainably attract creative talents, achieving a win-win situation.
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