Open in gAIa The BuurtBij project is a green neighbourhood initiative made possible through the Municipality of Amsterdam's BuurtBudget (neighbourhood budget) programme, with involvement from greening and sustainability pioneer Frank Alsema. The project that gAIa supported in the summer of 2026, brought people and wildlife together in Amsterdam Noord, one neighbourhood at a time.
Lars (19) and Robin (10) paired up for a quest. Every Monday and Tuesday, they travelled around a neighbourhood in Noord Amsterdam by bakfiets. A type of bicycle commonly used in the Netherlands to transport children. They were searching for different bee, plant, insect, and tree species. Sometimes, they used gAIa to learn more and share their stories with the trees they visited.
As Lars and Robin explored the area they got to know its trees up close: their stories, their struggles, their neighbours. Through gAIa, those discoveries now live on with the trees themselves. Open the app, find a tree Lars and Robin visited, and ask it what they learned along the way.
Interaction tips
Please note this is a simplified version of the gAIa app. You don’t need to login to interact with the trees in this panel.
- Explore the map: Zoom out to see all the trees, or zoom in to explore a specific tree.
- Chat with gAIa: Click the conversation icon on the left side of the panel to ask gAIa questions about trees and nature.
- Talk to a specific tree: Click its gAIa leaf icon to ask about the tree itself, the stories it holds, or the ecosystem benefits it provides.
Explore more in gAIa: Click “Open in gAIa” for more details and a richer experience. View charts showing the tree’s current and potential future contributions, discuss them with the tree, and read conversations from other visitors. Creating a free account and logging in gives you access to the full experience.- Change the language: Open the settings menu on the WebApp to choose your preferred language, including Dutch.
Learn more about BuurtBij Project
If you want to learn more about the project and the adventures of Lars & Robin, visit www.buurtbij.net. There, too, you can also see a simplified version of gAIa. We create such web embeddings for the project so that kids or some other users could interact with the trees anonymously, on any website, without needing to create an account on our platform.