Green Infrastructures in Amsterdam: A Case Study on the Governance Challenges of Green Infrastructure Implementation

Abstract

Over the last few years, urban Green Infrastructures (GIs) have shown promise in improving urban resilience. As a result, GIs have become an essential component of cities' approaches to urban resilience and climate adaptation. However, despite growing interest in the potential of GIs to tackle urban issues and positively contribute to urban resilience, there are limitations and challenges for their implementation and mainstreaming in practice. This study focuses on the governance challenges and limitations of GI implementation in Amsterdam. The aim of this thesis is to examine how much Amsterdam's GI policy has learned from previous governance challenges regarding GI implementation and how they reflect on these challenges in their recent greening strategy. The empirical data collection for this study is undertaken by a combination of semi-structured interviews, observations and qualitative data analysis (policy documents and secondary data). Despite Amsterdam's active promotion of GIs in the past, Amsterdam struggled with many governance challenges of GI implementation prior to the introduction of the Green Vision. Based on how Amsterdam has previously reflected on GI governance challenges in new GI policy, it is reasonable to conclude that Amsterdam has made significant progress in their greening strategy and has learned a lot from previous GI governance challenges. However, future GI policy in Amsterdam could still solve a significant number of governance challenges.