TEDxAmsterdam

Dinsdag 30 november was Carolien Gehrels een van de sprekers tijdens TEDxAmsterdam. Zij deelde er haar voorliefde voor steden en benadrukte de rol die netwerken spelen in een stad. Hieronder vindt u de spreektekst van haar toespraak.

N.B. Alleen gesproken woord geldt

Max Weber viewed the city as a marketplace. A place where anybody may buy and sell, give and take or enter into relationships and associations - as they see fit. This idea of a city has great appeal for me. The city is, above all, a facilitator. It generates exchange between citizens, between companies and a combination of both. The city has to ensure that all ideas, services and initiatives can in fact be disseminated. For me, that’s an essential part of the city’s role.

Ten years ago, I spent two weeks alone in Rome. My partner had left me a few days before. I went there to look and drink in Rome’s cultural heritage. It didn’t turn out quite as I had expected. It was in fact much more exciting. Rome is, of course, immersed in the past, but the present is also very much in evidence. The air and the nightlife beat to the city’s own distinctive rhythm. And not, of course, forgetting all the wonderful food on offer. The colourful mix of young, old, Classic, modern, offbeat and typically Roman creates a real energy and buzz. It is a contemporary city at ease with, but not overwhelmed by its illustrious past.

Rome made a huge impression on me and fuelled my fascination for cities. Cities intrigue and amaze. As a visitor, you want to unlock their secrets on the one hand, and to avoid taking them for granted on the other. If you can avoid getting too familiar, you can maintain your sense of wonder and curiosity. You want to continue to seek out what goes on within a city instead of being led astray by the exterior. Although politicians and newspaper headlines may define the issues confronting a city, its occupants are the ones who give shape to life in the city. The people are the city.
That applies to Amsterdam. Six months after my Roman trip, I was the consultant who prepared “I Amsterdam”, the new city marketing strategy for Amsterdam. I Amsterdam stands for the optimal interaction between the individual and the collective. It’s beyond individualism and beyond collectivism. All those ‘I’s together form Amsterdam.

That is not just idle talk. I truly believe that this is an essential characteristic of our city. I would like to illustrate this by giving you two examples.

Let’s go back in time. Not to the 18th, not to the 19th century. We don’t talk that much about these eras. Berlage for example called the 19th century the ugly century. No, we go back to a period people from Amsterdam are always happy to refer to. You’ve probably already guessed: the 17th century.

For foreigners in the room, this era is referred to as the Golden Age; the time when the residential houses on the canals started to appear, when Rembrandt painted the Night Watch and Spinoza propagated the importance of freedom and tolerance. A period in which Amsterdam was in full bloom.

The city had always known a great degree of independence. But with freedom comes responsibility. Amsterdam created a model in which freedom was obtained through sharing responsibility. A large part of public life was formed by the private sector. By the citizens. It was this outlook that helped form the basis for civic culture. A culture based on practical benefits and effectiveness rather than on strict rules and hierarchy.

This mindset is still in our DNA and you can smell it walking passed the coffeeshops for example. 

Amsterdam was a city, but more importantly a market.  When does a market perform at its best. What does it need? Trust. And how do you create trust? Through information. Amsterdam realised early on that the key to successful trading is reliable information.

That meant that anyone who contributed was appreciated. From cabin boy to merchant. From immigrant to traveller. At the stock market all of the networks converged and interlocked. It was this horizontal exchange of information, this linking structure, which propelled the city to greatness.

I often compare it to granite, the coarse-grained rock. It gets its strength through the countless connections between its crystals. They’re all intertwined. Single connections could never establish such strength, as one source of information could never have established such market trust and thus strength.

I believe that we have never lost this exchange culture. It is ingrained in our collective urban memory. Amsterdam has become a state of mind, which affects all those who live here.

Although we can say what we like and believe in what we say, it’s always good to have your self-image assessed by an outsider. By someone with greater detachment who can see with fresh eyes and who can still be captivated, as I was in Rome.

Following on from this reality check, I think it’s a good idea to see the city through our own rose-coloured glasses again... With a second example.

Amsterdam is now also a hive of information in 2010. The largest internet hub of the world is situated right here in this city. But that actually depends on how you keep score. A cynic could argue that Frankfurt is the winner. But I’m like a calculator and can come up with the right formula which makes us number 1!

It all started in the early nineteen-nineties when Internet was rapidly gaining ground. One bold occupant of Amsterdam realised that Internet was not performing optimally. It was slow because data coming from next door had to go all the way to the US and back. What if that distance could be reduced? What if all providers of digital information could be brought together in Amsterdam? With this idea in mind, Job Witteman and a number of his peers set up the Amsterdam Internet Exchange, AMS-IX

Each internet service provider, hosting party and content provider represented a node of users and/or content. By physically joining these parties, and by facilitating the direct exchange of traffic between them, the internet experience could significantly be improved. That was the central idea behind the internet exchange. AMS-IX started out with 20 participants who agreed to interconnect directly at a central location and make the exchange of traffic amongst each other ‘settlement free’. For those taking part, internet was therefore not only quicker but also cheaper.

Shortly after the establishment of AMS-IX, the Netherlands became the first country to open the telecom market. This caused quite a stir. Why did the Netherlands always have to be goody two-shoes? Why couldn’t we just hold on to our protectionism, just like the rest of Europe did? But the outcome was unexpected. Opening our gates brought us a lot of unanticipated new business. New potential parties flocked to Amsterdam. AMS-IX today now comprises almost 400 networks. It was an idea that spread like wildfire. Why? Because AMS-IX as a neutral hub which provided parties with an efficient way to exchange traffic and at the same time left technical responsibility and commercial decision-making to these parties themselves.

Ladies and gentlemen, what idea worth spreading have I intended to highlight?
Amsterdam is a city of networks and exchange. I chose AMS-IX as an example, because it offers the perfect story. But we see this mindset with most of our professionals. From lawyers to architects, from scientists to businessmen and the creative industry. All achieve their goals by sharing responsibility. By creating horizontal liaisons. This mentality flows through the canals and the blood of this city. But it is also under pressure. From navel-gazing and fear of differences. The examples teach us that collective value is achieved through the interaction of individual merits. By acknowledging the differences, a common ground is created that forms the basis of alliances. This is what we should be becoming more aware of. That a network of networks obtains its value through diversity. That being connected is not the same as being absorbed. That you can join the network without loss of individual identity. A model beyond individualism and beyond collectivism. That’s how to build a linked society. A linked city. Because what Plato said about Athens applies in equal measure to Amsterdam: “This city is what it is, because our citizens are what they are”.