World Expo 2025
Sector
Health & Wellbeing
Services
Place Vision
Strategic Development
Delivery
Team
Jorick Beijer
Marije Blok
Partners
Shinsekai
PosadMaxwan
CHALLENGE
To develop spatial and business case concepts for health & wellbeing at World Expo 2025. The Netherlands is doing a lot to grow and move towards a sustainable economy and society. But still more is needed. A large and growing group of Expo Partners – companies, civil society organisations, local and regional governments – is convinced that World Expo 2025 is a powerful tool to accelerate this transition: not with a one-time event, but with a 10-year programme to tackle the main societal challenges and work towards a future-proofing The Netherlands.
RESPONSE
We started in the far future, with a global overview of trends shaping vital cities and thriving communities: micro-mobility, urban farming, gastronomy, gaming, technology, culture, music, play, and sport. We envisaged these not as stand-alone phenomena, but fully merged into our daily urban system in Rotterdam and the wider metropolitan region, the user experience of the city, and the Rotterdam metropolitan region.
We then took a scenario-planning approach, conceptualising spatial theories and tactical placemaking interventions that turn Rotterdam into a global destination for healthy living. Blossity socialised these concepts with local public-private partners and turned them into a clear toolbox with tangible interventions for the Bidbook – not just a collection of wild ideas, but interventions that can be made happen in Rotterdam today, have local heroes to piggyback on, and a funding framework that is not a subsidy card house.
THE IMPACT
The bid book for World Expo 2025 shows how a large-scale urban project can only thrive through active public-private partnerships. The bold innovative connection of 100+ companies and governments at all levels brings €12.5M funding on the table for proposition development. The 10-year investment agenda for World Expo 2025 is projected to give a boost of around €50 billion to the Netherlands’ GDP.
