Features

Amsterdam - Urban Islands

In the most densely populated area of the Netherlands, the city of Amsterdam undertook the monumental challenge of designing a community for 45,000 inhabitants on 495 hectares of nonexistent land. Creating a new landmass by reclaiming seven islands from dredged sand in IJmeer, a lake on Amsterdam’s east side, residents with a fondness for waterfront property will have their choice of custom homes or high-rise apartments.

The mixed-used development known as IJburg is the first integrated and sustainable urban development project of its size constructed in an environmentally sensitive area. A multibillion euro project that will increase Amsterdam’s housing capacity by 6 percent and provide shelter, education, employment, and leisure activities for its residents, the project includes the design and construction of 18,000 single-family homes as well as apartment buildings, schools, office complexes, city parks, and beaches. Construction began in 1996 and is scheduled to be completed by 2020.

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The city of Amsterdam’s physical planning department designed the infrastructure and public spaces, and allocated plots for development by corporate and private investors, housing developers, and individuals. The new urban area requires a light-rail connection to Amsterdam, more than 80 bridges to connect the islands to one another and the mainland, roads, water and sewer systems, utilities, and sports and leisure areas.

Development of IJburg is proceeding in phases. Each of the seven islands will have its own unique characteristics, but the common urban design scheme is based on a rectangular grid of neighborhood blocks, green strips, and waterways. The blocks are being designed by teams of architects overseen by one supervisory team, while private plots are being developed without oversight. While the urban design concepts will be experimental in nature, the design of public spaces will provide cohesion among the communities.

As the gateway to IJburg, the island of Steigereiland is a “collage city” with eight individualized neighborhoods, including more than 200 floating homes. Haveneiland, the largest island, is divided into east and west districts with a diverse mixture of housing, businesses, restaurants, and bars. Centrumeiland is the central junction and will have a distinctly urban character. On the three smaller islands, including Rieteiland, residential plots are being developed by their owners.

Island neighbors
An estimated 3,000 people will ultimately be involved in the IJburg development. The Bentley-enabled environment provides a unified vision and quality control. “Within this integrated environment, our design team can easily exchange information with governmental departments inside and outside of Amsterdam, as well as with companies in the Netherlands and abroad,” said {sidebar id=211 align=right} Arjan Molenaar, project coordinator for the physical planning department. “Once created, the information is reused many times and can be exported in multiple file types, such as DWG, JPEG, and PDF, to support all members of the project teams as well as third-party suppliers -- even those not standardized on Bentley software.”

A major challenge the design team faced on the IJburg project is its location in a densely populated area with a complex network of roads, canals, and air corridors. Designs must consider safety aspects such as minimum pass-height of bridges, flooding risks, and the height of buildings on the approach paths to Schipol airport. A further challenge is the location of the project in a government-protected European bird-migration zone that cannot be disturbed.

Project planning and coordination is divided among multiple public and private project participants. “The Bentley portfolio of solutions allows us to use collaborative workflows for land mapping, urban development, infrastructure design, and road and rail track to design IJburg’s new infrastructure and model the cityscape in 3D for planning purposes,” explained Molenaar. “The breadth of Bentley’s solutions for local government has allowed us to standardize citywide on Bentley geospatial and civil engineering technology.”

The city’s design approach considered ecological, social, and economic factors to make the development a success. The result will be a sustainable land development project that creates an environment where people can safely and comfortably live and work, and at the same time protects the environment for birds, fish, and other aquatic life.

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At this time, roughly half of the IJburg project area is ready for development. Housing construction on Steigereiland began in 2002, the first buildings on Haveneiland West were completed in 2001, and residential areas on Haveneiland East were completed in 2007, marking the end of the first phase of IJburg’s development.

With Steigereiland, Haveneiland, and Rieteiland well under way and 12 years to go before construction on all of the islands is complete, calculating the total costs and potential savings over the nearly quarter-century project lifespan is difficult. However, the physical planning department estimates that Bentley solutions will ultimately save at least 50 man-years, or about $6.3 million.

“Bentley provides a software portfolio that is allowing us to execute our project strategy exactly as any municipality would hope to do -- in an integrated manner, making the most of collaborative workflows, within time constraints and cost budgets, and with a high-quality result,” Molenaar concluded.