News: the Dutch city of Almere has won a bid to host the World Horticultural Expo in 2022 with proposals by MVRDV for a square-shaped peninsula covered in gardens.
As well as hosting the six-month festival, the 45 hectare development will create a new city quarter over a lake and will accommodate a university, offices, homes and leisure facilities.
MVRDV are also the urban planners for Almere and will develop these plans as part of a wider strategy to expand the city with 60,000 new houses and 100,000 new work places.
"We will build a city that is literally green as well as ecological," said MVRDV's Winy Maas. "A city that produces food and energy, cleans its own water, recycles waste and holds a great biodiversity."
Maas also suggests that the merging of city and coutryside could "offer essential argumentation to the global concerns regarding of urbanisation and consumption."
Yet another horizontal urban expansion? :(