Airport City
The most important and ambitious of Chipshol’s plans was the development of a center of a major 24/7 Airport City with a gross floor area of approx. 2 million sqm, AMSITY, located between the airport and the city of Amsterdam.
The AMSITY concept comprised a high quality, integrated urban development with hotels, convention centers, offices for multinational companies, shopping centers and recreational and cultural amenities. Experience in other countries has demonstrated the need for centers with international status, close to large, rapidly growing, international airports. Chipshol’s pioneering vision will remain a concept for now: the entire land position acquired for the development of AMSITY was sold to Schiphol Airport Real Estate in March 2020.
A center of this kind between Schiphol and Amsterdam would have offered a major opportunity to improve Amsterdam’s position as a center for congresses. More important Schiphol’s position as a major European mainport would also be strongly improved. The area between the A4, A5 and A9 motorways is an ideal location for the center, and large enough to realize the development with a gross floor area of some 2 million m2. Initial studies suggested that a people mover system (possibly based on a similar concept as the PRT 2000 system, that Chipshol first conceptualised in the 1990s – see video) would be the backbone of internal traffic in the city and as a connection with the airport, railway networks and the high-speed rail links.
