A City Beyond Growth : GETEC's students learning expedition in Amsterdam 2023

From February 21 to 24, 2023, the student from the Master Governing Ecological Transitions in European Cities of the Urban School, visited Amsterdam to discover the “Doughnut Economy”!

This holistic approach of Circular economy (and more) developed by Kate Raworth aims at “ensuring that no one falls short on life’s essentials while ensuring that collectively we do not overshoot our pressure on Earth’s life-supporting systems”.

As explained by the Doughnut Economy Action Lab, “In April 2020, during the depths of the COVID-19 lockdown, the City of Amsterdam provided a much-needed surge of hope worldwide by publicly embracing the Doughnut as a tool to guide their social and economic recovery from the pandemic. This announcement came as a milestone in the ongoing engagement with the Doughnut by Dutch officials and changemakers […]. Momentum picked up in Amsterdam during a series of workshops run in collaboration with DEAL’s locally based partners Circle Economy in 2019, where city officials came together to design one of the city’s most ambitious initiatives: Amsterdam’s strategy to be 100% circular by 2050”.

During this four-days Learning expedition, GETEC's students met with a series of partners involved in the implementation of this ambition policy. They welcomed us throughout the City, to let us know about the politics and policy of the Doughnut – hopes and difficulty in implementing it, as well as social, economic and environmental, waste or agricultural issues faces by Amsterdam:

• Kees Stants, Line Kvartborg Vestergaard and Froukje Anne Karsten from the Amsterdam Municipality Sustainable Department, in charge of the implementation of the Doughnut, for a 3-hours workshop on Urban Sustainability,
• Claudia Alessio and Pau Ruiz from Circle Economy, the consulting firm that helped implement the Doughnut in Amsterdam,
• Nuri Tayfun Yalcin from Towards Nature, a grassroot organisation that deals with Doughnut implementation through permaculture projects in the Amsterdam area,
• Caroline De Cristofaro and the whole AEB Waste Treatment Plant Amsterdam team: for half a day, we discovered the backstage of waste management and the way it can be valorised through recycling, reused, and other forms of economic value like urban heating systems,
• James Hallworth, Commercial Manager Circular & Renewable Industry at the Port of Amsterdam, with whom a great conversation broke on the Port’s strategy in light of economy and sustainability issues, as the Port is a major actor of Amsterdam circularity objectives,
• Thieu Custers from de Waag for the project "Centrinno", or how to keep professional skills inside the City to make circularity socially and economically reachable,
• Joppe van Driel,  Jasmin Heidaryand Aukje van Bezeij for the AMS Institute and Zuiderlicht, for an academic point of view on the Doughnut policy and a concrete example of its implementation through a social project of recycled solar panels development,
• Marieke van Doorninck, former Deputy Mayor of the City of Amsterdam, who was at the root and the heart of the Doughnut implementation at the City level, as she was the one who initiated this policy.