Decision making
We are building a unique Amsterdam city district, where thousands of people live, work and enjoy recreational activities. That’s our job. We’re doing it on behalf of Amsterdam’s city council. At the same time, we’re cooperating as much as possible with the residents, those living in adjoining areas, companies and institutions, employees and anyone else who feels involved with Zuidas.
The Zuidas Vision (Visie Zuidas – in Dutch only) (pdf) serves as a guide for the long-term development of the neighbourhood: what should Zuidas become and how do we intend to achieve this? Answers to these questions result in plans for new local neighbourhoods within Zuidas itself, separate construction projects or plans for the public realm. In Amsterdam, planning and decision-making about it usually follows a set process.
Consultation
During the preparation of a new development, the City of Amsterdam has a statutory duty to make documents public at certain times. Decision-making about a new development generally involves four stages: the planning and decision-making process for spatial measures (abbreviated to plaberum information in Dutch). In many cases when the City Executive decides to make a decision, you can file an objection (information in Dutch). A common way of objecting is to submit what is known as an opinion. This enables you to provide a formal response to a plan or decision that the City of Amsterdam intends to take. Another way of objecting is to make your position known in a City Council committee (information in Dutch) or in a city district committee (information in Dutch). There are also other ways of exercising an influence (information in Dutch). After the Council has made a decision, you can lodge an appeal against it to the Administrative Justice Division of the Council of State.
Resident participation
In order to ensure that it makes effective decisions, the City of Amsterdam goes further than the formal consultation process alone. Indeed, on 1 July 2024, the local consultation legislation dating from 2016 was replaced by another bye-law specifically on the issue of participation (referred to in Dutch as the participatieverordening). Even in the past, the City of Amsterdam aimed to engage in dialogue with residents, businesses and other stakeholders in order to ensure that plans effectively reflect what the city wants. But now, participation is a compulsory part of decision-making. Whereas consultation takes place at the end of or during the development of plans, resident participation enables you to exercise an influence at an early stage. Since effective participation is never standard or straightforward, the approach for every plan is slightly different. The degree of influence that residents can have over a plan will depend on a range of factors. If much of the plan has already been established as part of other plans in the neighbourhood, in policy or in national legislation, the opportunities for making changes to the plan will be limited. If not much has been predetermined, there are more opportunities to give residents an influence or allow residents to have the final say.
Join the dialogue
We ourselves are also very eager to engage in dialogue, in order to ensure that plans reflect as far as possible what people want to see. We are happy to discuss all of these matters with you. You are welcome to visit us at the Zuidas-Zuidasdok Information Centre, you can telephone us (0800-5065) or simply use the contact form. You can also make your voice heard via this website, on our social media channels and at the regular meetings that we organise. We are also experimenting with new forms of participation. For example, people living in one of the side streets off George Gershwinlaan had an opportunity to use an app in order to help decide what the public space should look like. Residents around Prinses Irenestraat were also able to contribute their ideas on the landscaping of a small park.
