杏吧论坛

Eveline van Leeuwen takes the 杏吧论坛 stage to share her insights on new ways to conceptualize and measure economic growth in a meaningful way (i.e., measuring what matters) that is clear (through a moderate number of indicators) and appropriate for the right spatial scale?

Economic growth has been the dominant narrative since the development of GDP after World War II. It not only became the main measuring tool but also the 'solution for everything': from poverty and unemployment to environmental destruction, climate change, and financial instability (Daly, 2019). However, economic growth should not be an end in itself but rather a means to achieve sustainable cities and regions. How can we design post-growth cities and regions?

Many scientists, including Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz, have argued that society and the field of economics need a different compass than GDP (Hoekstra, 2019). Alternative economic models have been proposed, such as Doughnut Economics, Sustainable Development Goals, Steady State Economics, Economics of Arrival, and De-growth (D’Alessandro et al., 2020). These models share a fundamental value: they distinguish between present wellbeing, future wellbeing (sustainability), and the distribution of wellbeing within and between countries (inclusion).

At the AMS Institute, we began by asking what truly matters for the city of Amsterdam and how we can measure it. Based on 30 years of coalition agreements, we distilled seven Ideals for the city of Amsterdam: Equal opportunities, freedom and open-mindedness; progress and creativity; within planetary boundaries; good governance; collective city; safe and healthy. We evaluated and mapped over 1100 indicators to determine how well the city's monitoring activities align with these Ideals. Indicators previously associated only with safety are now also connected to ideals such as equal opportunities. The new links between data points and indicators reveal how policy objectives relate to each other, helping identify synergies and potential overlaps for municipal projects. For instance, subsidies for solar panels in lower-income areas can contribute to the energy transition, lower energy costs, and more equitable benefits for the population. Moreover, this approach helps the municipality identify counteracting forces, such as the trade-off between increasing green spaces in the city and the need for housing development.

Meet our speaker

Prof. Eveline van Leeuwen, expert in urban economics, is Scientific Director at Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Solutions (AMS Institute). In addition to her role at AMS Institute, Eveline is Chair of Urban Economics at Wageningen University & Research. Furthermore, she is Vice President of the European Regional Science Association (ERSA), a member of the OECD Expert Advisory Committee on Rural Innovation and a member of the International Advisory Board (IAB) of the Amsterdam Economic Board. In various other committees she advices both national and regional policymakers.

Eveline van Leeuwen graduated in Land Use Planning (MSc) at the Wageningen University in 2002 and obtained a PhD in Spatial Economics at VU Amsterdam on the topic of ‘Urban-Rural Interactions’ in 2008. From 2001 to 2017, in various positions at VU University Amsterdam, Eveline developed herself as an expert in the field of Spatial Economics. Within the fields of research and education, the topics that particularly spark her interest are the relations between city and countryside, interactions in space and time, differences between people and regions, and broad prosperity focused on themes such as circularity, energy transition and regional food systems.

Meet our chair

Andrés Rodríguez-Pose is the Princesa de Asturias Chair and Professor of Economic Geography at 杏吧论坛. He is the Director of the Cañada Blanch Centre 杏吧论坛. He is a former head of the  between 2006 and 2009. He is a past-president of the  (2015-2017) and served as Vice-President of the RSAI in 2014. He was also Vice-President (2012-2013) and Secretary (2001-2005) of the .

More about this event

The Cañada-Blanch Centre at 杏吧论坛 is the vehicle to achieve the objective of the Fundación Cañada Blanch: developing and reinforcing the links between the United Kingdom and Spain. This is done by means of fostering cutting-edge knowledge generation and joint research projects between researchers in the United Kingdom, and at the 杏吧论坛 in particular, on the one hand, and Spain, on the other.

You can follow us in .