City Of Delft, Netherlands Project Description

The Delft Proposal for the Employment Cluster
Proposal A: OPERA

The Delft economy is strongly based on knowledge and tourism.

But the potentials for economic development within the city-boundaries are relatively small because of the lack of land to develop. Delft is fully developed up to its boundaries.The only land available (some 35 ha) for new developments is the Delft University.

With no land available companies are leaving because we can't supply them with the necessary plots to grow. As a result the Delft economy is changing. For a long time the number of jobs within the city exceded the local workforce. Three years ago this picture turned around. The workforce became bigger than the amount of available jobs.

The city council of Delft is working together with TNO (The Dutch Institute for Applied Reseach) to analyse the local economy with a model, developed by INRO-TNO, called OPERA.

This model is based on a long time collection of data on all kinds of subjects.

OPERA makes it possible to analyse the local economy and to compare it with the situation 20 years ago. Because TNO also has data on many other cities the economic strength of Delft and its development can be compared to reference cities. This results in a kind of bench-marking on some 20 subjects.

Delft has just finished the first phase of the OPERA-model. Some of the conclusions are that the Delft economy is still healthy, but the growth is too small compared to the size of the workforce.

Delft still is a strong knowledge-based city, but the reference cities are developing their knowledge base much stronger than Delft.

Another characteristic of the Delft economy is a strong concentration of the educational, government and care segments and a relative small number of SME's. Because small and medium sized companies are important for job growth this can be defined as a weak point of the Delft economic structure.

Fortunately, there is also a potential strength. Tourism could be developed to a much more important industry with a large amount of jobs.

OPERA Phase 2

The second phase of the OPERA-model is to develop different strategies for the development of the local economy for the next two decades. The model can predict the effects of the chosen strategies on the local economy (like the number of jobs, the type of jobs, etc.)

Because Delft wants to build on its knowledge base and its tourism, these two will play a central role in the second phase of the OPERA-model.

The strategies to Delft wants to use as an input for the model are:

• a strong emphasis on Tourism
• the development of the university land into an science park for international businesses
• a claim on the territory of neighbouring small towns (new boundaries)

Of course the city is not interested in the analyses only. The aim is to influence the economic development both quantitative and qualitative. That is why parallel with the second phase of the model, action plans will be developed to generate the wanted economic developments.

The Importance for the Bertelsmann Network

The Delft project is strongly oriented on the awareness of the local economic infrastructure. The strategy is to strenghten the economic base by using OPERA as a analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats).

Other cities can learn from the way our local econmy is analyzed and compared to reference cities. But even more important are the lessons that can be learned from the results of the interaction between the predictions of the model on the effects of the different strategies and the action plans that will be developed based on the different strategies.

Is it really possible to develop local plans based on a model of the economy and the predicted effects of different strategies ?!

Because the second phase of the OPERA-model has just started, the Delft project fits perfectly in the time-schedule of the Bertelsmann-planning for this cluster.

Proposal B: Short List of Creative Plans

Delft is not only working on its economic infrastructure. The city is also very active on the developments of programs to activate the unemployed. The different institutions dealing with the unemployed and those looking for a job have set up an organization called WERKPLAN.

The idea of proposal B is to produce a short list of all kind of initiatives, not only generated in Delft, but also elsewhere in the country. Some of the initiatives will appear to be related to the specific Dutch situation, but many of them will be of interest for other countries.

The projects that are potentially usable in other countries can be developed on a database that is available via the Internet.