De Week van Kraaiennest #1: The Just City Index

On an annual basis, all 22 areas in the city of Amsterdam come to an area plan, in a greater or lesser extent together with residents and entrepreneurs. A plan that formulates the needs of the neighborhood, which interventions must take place and which investments are required. Neighborhood platform Hart voor de K-Buurt has taken up the idea to form an area plan for their own neighborhood through the design framework: The Just City Index.

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I want a Just City where all people, but especially “the least not,” are included, have equitable and inclusive access to the opportunities and tools that allow them to be productive, to thrive, to excel and to advance through the ranks of social and economic mobility

– Toni L. Griffin (The Just City Lab – Harvard Graduate School of Design).

Program

12.00 AM – 13.00 PM   FREE LUNCH

Available for all people who registered for the event.

13.00 PM – 16.00 PM     JUST CITY INDEX

During this event, the identity, challenges and possibilities of De K-Buurt will be introduced, as will the what&how of the Just City Index. Participants will take part in thematic tablediscussions, together with local and (inter)national guests. We round up the event with the gathered recommendations for the bottom-up development of the area plan for De K-Buurt.

About De K-Buurt

De K-Buurt (K-neighborhood) is located around the Kraaiennest metro station in the South-East of Amsterdam. It is a neighborhood that faces many challenges: in the old flats, poverty, unemployment, low literacy and economic disadvantage are still rampant, often with a stack of many social problems. At the same time, after a stand-still of 10 years due to the economic crisis, the focus for the (physical) development of the area has strengthened in the 2 years. This brings another challenge; gentrification in the Southeast is advancing. Agrowing group of new residents with a lot of social, financial or cultural capital are flowing into the area, threatening to displace the group of old residents. The dichotomy is big: the neighborhood is improving, but for whom? The K-neigborhood is on the front line of this development.

The neighborhood collective Hart voor de K-buurt, therefore, aims to contribute to an integrated area development. An important goal in this context is to develop a bottom-up Area Plan for the neighborhood. The development framework that ‘Hart voor de K-buurt’ wishes to use for this is “The Just City Index” of Toni L. Griffin (Professor in Practice of Urban Planning), which contains of 12 values and multiple measurable indicators. What are the most important values according to those who live in the neighborhood?

During this afternoon, the various groups involved in de K-Buurt and the SouthEast – assisted by international and local experts – enter into discussions with eachother to arrive at the principles and design of The Just City Area Plan 2020 for De K-Buurt.

About The Just City Index

One of the keynote speakers during the first edition of WeMakeThe.City, in June 2018. was Toni L. Griffin. She is Professor in Practice of Urban Planning at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, where she leads The Just City Lab, and founder of Urban Planning for the American City. Last year, she gave a workshop “A Just City Index for Amsterdam Neighborhoods”, which inspired De K-Buurt  to use the framework of the Just City Index in their area development plan for 2020.

The Just City Index is developed by The Just City Lab, which investigates the definition of urban justice and ‘the just city’; and examines how design and planning contribute to conditions of justice and injustice in cities, neighborhoods and the public realm. The Lab has been developing and testing a set of core principles, values and metrics to assess and evaluate design’s role in achieving urban justice; and researches design practices that exemplify the achievement of the Just City and its values. The Just City Index uses these ten values as the initial metrics for designing for the just city: