Urban Development

Creating a healthy living environment is an expertise

Urban Development

One of our expertise

Ballast Nedam deploys a lot of expertise daily, urban development included, which goes further than just building houses. Urban Development involves developing a healthy and sustainable living environment in urban areas.

Throughout the Netherlands, innovative and sustainable solutions are devised and applied, powerful partnerships are sought at local, national and international levels, and processes for stakeholders are accelerated. The highest quality standard in urban development contributes to a world in which people and nature live together in harmony.

Our role as an urban developer

Onno Dwars, CEO of Ballast Nedam Development and winner of ABN-AMRO Sustainable 50 in 2019: “As an urban developer, you lay the foundation for a long, healthy and happy life in an area. You must fulfil this role consciously and with the greatest care. The interaction between hard and soft aspects of our profession is becoming more important year after year. Our creative and resilient development teams continue to take this further, and we encourage that. What we do is not only of economic value but also of social value. Our team members are given the space and confidence to make a difference. This creates innovative solutions, such as in sustainability and health, in which the business unit distinguishes itself.

Challenge ourselves and others

We have a collaboration with a large number of municipalities. Still, NGOs such as JOGG (Youth at a Healthy Weight), Jantje Beton, Bird Protection, various universities, and the UN's Sustainable Development Goals are leading in every facet of the organisation. Area developments such as Food Center Amsterdam, Cartesius Utrecht, Hart van Zuid Rotterdam, Berckelbosch Eindhoven and the Groene Loper Maastricht are just a few developments constantly being looked at to increase ambition in the social field and the physical environment.

Passion and dedication

Our passion and dedication are fully reflected in the De Groene Loper project in Maastricht. A team of 35 colleagues poured their heart and souls into their work on a future-proof and high-quality development area with 1,145 homes. We are giving new use to an area that was anything but attractive for living, working and recreation.

The homes we constructed are energy neutral, and we promoted biodiversity by designing green lots, maintaining the mature greenery in parking courtyards, and sowing a bee ribbon. We also used built-in bricks for birds and bats. Furthermore, a social program stimulates involvement and community building. We do justice to the name De Groene Loper (The Green Avenue) here. We can only achieve this with passion and dedication for the buildings, the environment and all stakeholders.

Selection of projects

We develop healthy and sustainable living environments in urban areas. A selection from our portfolio:

Be a frontrunner

You must dare distinguish yourself qualitatively; otherwise, nothing will change, says Dwars. Examples of this are:

1. Healthy urbanisation

We create a healthy living environment, where you can live healthily and happily for longer, partly through new forms of mobility (such as shared cars) and by stimulating community formation and exercise. Because of the well-thought-out design of the environment, people go out and visit each other more quickly. All these developments lead to an increase in well-being. We show our cooperation partners that we are decisive in developing quality and ensure acceleration and resilience in the processes.

2. Radical change by making an impact yourself

Ballast Nedam Development was the first major developer to make a radical decision to build exclusively gas-free, long before it became part of the coalition agreement. We have implemented this directly and decisively in all our projects. We were also the first large-scale area developer in the world to develop all land-based homes in an energy-neutral or energy-positive way.

3. Giving space to nature

As David Attenborough says, “If we take care of nature, nature takes care of us”. We see it as our duty to give nature space by preserving and developing biodiversity and building nature-inclusive, adding a bee ribbon that attracts dozens of different bee species, for example, or including nest boxes in the façades and regulating water. Even before the construction of the houses, the public area was laid out with mature greenery coming from a specially designed Groene Loper nursery.

4. Smart buildings

Polluted air is one of the top three pathogens. One of Ballast Nedam Development's innovations is the Pure Air concept, in which the indoor air of the home is purified. The system continuously monitors and controls air quality.

  • Ballast Nedam Development

    • Aert van Nesstraat 45, 3430 BN Rotterdam
    • Postbus 1564
    • 3430 BN Nieuwegein
    • Tel: +31 (0)30 285 33 33
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