Speakers

Bob van der Zande is Urban Strategist. Advisor of Cities, Regions, Investors and Developers. Focus on building-in-wood and mass timber, social impact, inclusive area development, public-private collaboration (Triple Helix).

He is director Mass Timber Programme in residential development in the Metropolitan Region Amsterdam (MRA): 20% of all new homes are to be built biobased/in mass timber by 2025.

He is organiser of the Urban Land Institute (ULI) Waterfront Cities Council. Past chair of ULI the Netherlands, member and past chair of the European Urban Regeneration ULI Council, participant of 5 ULI Advisory Services Panels and Global ULI Trustee.

Bob van der Zande has been working in the public sector for decades at the City of Amsterdam and the Metropolitan Region of Amsterdam. He was Director Residential Markets for the City of Amsterdam 2009-2019. Responsible for several residential programmes in the city and the region, such as the midsegment rental housing, the self-built housing programme and student and youth housing.

He graduated as urban designer at the Delft University of Technology in 1978.

The Amsterdam Metropolitan Area (AMA), known in Dutch as Metropolitan Region Amsterdam, is comprised of 30 municipalities, two provinces (North Holland, Flevoland) and the Transport Authority Amsterdam. Around 2.6 million people live within the AMA. It is the country’s most robust economic region and the AMA also performs well on the international stage.

The Amsterdam Metropolitan Area strives to be an internationally competitive region, with compact cities, a landscape that is attractive to day-trippers and holidaymakers, as well as a perfectly functioning infrastructural network that interconnects the residential cores and connects them with the countryside and the rest of the world.