Stad van de Zon (City of the Sun) is a housing and building project in

Heerhugowaard Heerhugowaard (; West Frisian Dutch: ''Heerhugoweard'', ''Heregeweard'' or ''De Weard'') is a city in the Netherlands, in the province of North Holland and the region of West Friesland. Heerhugowaard was previously a separate municipality, whic ...

, The

Netherlands , Terminology of the Low Countries, informally Holland, is a country in Northwestern Europe, with Caribbean Netherlands, overseas territories in the Caribbean. It is the largest of the four constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Nether ...

, based on a concept developed by Bert Smolders, then urban planner with Kuiper Compagnons, and further realized by the architect and urban planner Ashok Bhalotra. The goal was and is to build homes that are directed towards the

sun The Sun is the star at the centre of the Solar System. It is a massive, nearly perfect sphere of hot plasma, heated to incandescence by nuclear fusion reactions in its core, radiating the energy from its surface mainly as visible light a ...

, and that a big part of the energy used by those homes is provided by

solar power Solar power, also known as solar electricity, is the conversion of energy from sunlight into electricity, either directly using photovoltaics (PV) or indirectly using concentrated solar power. Solar panels use the photovoltaic effect to c ...

. This way, the project is to become the first

carbon neutral Global net-zero emissions is reached when greenhouse gas emissions and Greenhouse gas removal, removals due to human activities are in balance. It is often called simply net zero. ''Emissions'' can refer to all greenhouse gases or only carbon diox ...

as well as the largest

photovoltaic Photovoltaics (PV) is the conversion of light into electricity using semiconducting materials that exhibit the photovoltaic effect, a phenomenon studied in physics, photochemistry, and electrochemistry. The photovoltaic effect is commercially ...

neighbourhood worldwide.Best practices
''Cleantech Holland'' As of 2007, about 1,500 residential homes have been completed.

References

External links

Kuiper Compagnons page on the project2017 interview with Ashok Bhalotra about the project
Populated places in North Holland Geography of Dijk en Waard {{NorthHolland-geo-stub