This summer I had the privilege to speak at TEDX Maastricht about urban development. One of my collegue speakers at that TEDX was the famous architect Riccardo Marini from GEHL architects. He spoke the famous words:

»Why smart cities – What about Happy«

Riccardo spoke about that »the notion of efficiency dominates everything we do; this has distorted the value system we use to gauge success. A successful city is not one that is only economically powerful. Perhaps we need to rethink the way we build cities. The happiness of people should be more important than making cities efficient.«

Spread the world
Making cities happy again, that is what we want to do! This is one of the reasons we chased so hard for a few undesirable spaces in the city center of Rotterdam, to be used by entrepreneurs, students and creatives with one purpose: »Make this place happy again!«

First success
Besides this project, the city of Rotterdam, wanted to transform the Stadhuisplein, which is now an empty square with lots of empty spaces in the middle of the city center into a lively city square. These were the messages I took with me towards the owner of the buildings, which is a big investment company. Normally those companies are not really co-operating, but we kept on “stalking”.