- A clear Vision for Footing  28 kb |
by Verhagen, Evert | evertverhagen@planet.nl  |
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| Short Outline |
| The most important aspect of any successful project is the team; a project is meant to be used by people and it is made by people. Good teams make good projects. To create a good team one needs leadership and vision. |
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| Abstract |
| In my professional career as a project manager in Amsterdam I have been working on many different complex projects. Most of the time these were projects having to do with the transformation of the existing city. In the seventies it was urban renewal of the nineteenth century social housing quarters. In the decennium that followed we had to work on a reconstruction of the modernist housing areas that only had been build 20 years before like Bijlmermeer. At the end of the twentieth century when harbor activities started to look for more space and industrial activities started to leave our cities (and after that our countries) a huge reconstruction of the post industrial city started. In working on these projects and in learning from professionals elsewhere a general understanding started to grow on what should be done and on where many of these projects go wrong. The most important aspect of any successful project is the team; a project is meant to be used by people and it is made by people. Good teams make good projects. To create a good team one needs leadership and vision. But you also need to connect and to learn to speak each others language. In our modern network based society a linear or a bureaucratic approach no longer works. In my paper I will look at four or five different transformation projects, some in Amsterdam, others elsewhere. I will look at the vision of these projects and discuss the question what a vision should be. I will look at all the aspects that make a good project: the soft ones and the hard ones. I will argue that only a creative approach (others call this a holistic or an ecological approach) can make these projects really work. |
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| Keywords |
| Reconstruction of the existing city |
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| Case Study presented on the ISOCARP Congress 2007: Urban Trialogues |
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