CircuLaw Amsterdam

Dark Matter Labs, City of Amsterdam and Wageningen University & Research (WUR) are developing and testing CircuLaw, a digital platform, open public service and community of practice for policymakers and civil servants in Dutch municipalities to effectively leverage legislative and regulatory systems for timber construction. The aim is to overcome regulatory silos and the complexity of the policy landscape to accelerate cities’ adoption of timber. 

The project comprises of a research consolidation phase, to build upon the pre-existing analysis of the policy landscape in the Netherlands carried out by WUR. The research is then structured into action-oriented recommendations and use cases organised on an online interactive platform, to guide cities as to how to best leverage policies and regulations to support timber at various governance levels and across municipal departments across the Metropolitan Region of Amsterdam. This area hosting 2.5 million inhabitants is leading the charge nationally with bold timber goals of reaching 20% of new buildings in 2025, which comes with a set of legal and implementation challenges that the project is trying to address. On top of the digital platform, the team also supports the city teams directly through a community of practice established within existing city networks.