October 28, 2025
SimCity, but make it spicy
3D printed maquette of Amsterdam on scale 1:2000
70m² mini-Amsterdam lands — fans cheer, AR crowd rolls eyes
TLDR: Amsterdam unveiled a 70m² 3D-printed city model—interactive, updated yearly, and free to visit. Commenters are split between awe and nostalgia, worries about plastic waste, and calls for augmented reality, while DIY fans hunt lidar data to build their own; it’s a flashy new lens on urban planning.
Amsterdam just got its own real-life SimCity: a 70-square-meter, 3D-printed model of the entire city, gifted for the 750th birthday and free to visit. It’s hyper-detailed (down to garden sheds), interactive via touchscreen, and built to be updated yearly. But the internet showed up with feelings. One camp is swooning over the museum vibes and the projected overlays that light up buildings and subway lines. Another camp squints and says: “All that plastic.” Cue the eco side-eye and questions about sustainability.
Then there’s the tech purists: why print when you could just use AR (augmented reality) on a tablet? The “there’s an app for that” crowd insists a phone screen would be cleaner and cheaper. Meanwhile, DIY tinkerers got busy asking where the data came from—dreaming up homebrew versions using public lidar (laser mapping) and joking about not accidentally “printing trees” as lumpy blobs. One commenter flexed that Stockholm has a giant city model you can literally walk on, dropping this link.
So the vibe? Wonder vs. waste. Nostalgia vs. “do it digital.” Lovers of tiny airports and city halls versus the AR evangelists. Either way, Amsterdam’s mini-me just became the city’s hottest new conversation starter.
Key Points
- •A 70 m² interactive 3D‑printed scale 1:2000 model of Amsterdam was gifted to the Municipality by Cor van Zadelhoff.
- •The model is displayed in the WTC Amsterdam (Zuidas) lobby and was officially received by Mayor Femke Halsema.
- •Twenty 3D printers produced individually identified buildings; architect Roberto Meyer’s team worked for a year.
- •The model includes fine details and features a touchscreen to search and highlight buildings and categories.
- •Future development areas up to 2030 are included; the modular model will be updated annually and is free to visit from next week.