I Amsterdam?

Tonight I learned that Amsterdam is the biggest internet hub in the world, holds the 9th place on the list of cities with biggest airports in the world, is the fastest growing city where cruise-ships board new passengers, but has the lowest possible ambition when it comes to developing itself into a metropole. That's at least what the deputy-director of the city council's town planning office thinks. And now he is trying to move politicans in more visionary metropole development policies.

It is true that the current development plans do not meet the needs for fast-growing economy, nor that there's a good enough vision in general in the Netherlands to challenge the fast growing economies in the world that soon will become competitors for our service-based, mainport-based and distribution oriented country. Such vision also lacks at the European level. We want to be the most knowledgeable and competetive economy in the world, at least that's what they say. I also want it, but I miss sufficient tools to realise this.

Our Dutch Cabinet is foremost concerned with the lack of support to EU, and instead of promoting it it tries to negotiate a weaker EU, with less competence to be competetive, and with less competence to promote human rights. When our little country would look into the mirror it would soon see that this country is too little to carry responsibilities that we are nowadays facing all alone. But mirrors can be frightening.

Back to Amsterdam. It is so nice to see politics at a local level every now and then, maybe becuase things get concrete much easier. It concerns the environment which you see every day. I hope that the city council is a bit more visionary and tries to take up some leadership. The plans I heard tonight are good for the city's development as well for the environment in general (though I didn't like the idea of having an enourmous amount of ferries bringing people accross the city - all development needs to be sustainable!).