Changes in Dutch streets throughout the years (photo album)
imgur.com
imgur.com
Even in the last decade, they've still been hard at work upgrading streets, and even some of them more subtle redesigns are absolutely stunning. Dutch street design is really one of the wonders of the modern world, IMO.
The piano software is going to be my next decade, stay tuned for some interesting developments.
The weather isn't. (I don't think it's the main reason for people to leave though)
- Amsterdam thinks the rest of the Netherlands is just greater Amsterdam
- the rest of North Holland disagrees
- the rest of the Netherlands also disagrees, but thinks the province of North Holland is greater Amsterdam
I'm oversimplifying for the sake of a joke of course, but like every good joke there's also a kernel of truth in it.
House prices are also a common and global problem. At least in urban areas around the world.
The lack of mountains is objectively true.
The lack of nature is subjective. If only you dare go outside of the Randstad. I originally lived in Limburg and I now live in Zandvoort. Both have plenty of non-farmland nature.
With regards to the bad weather: it only rains for 10% of the time in The Netherlands, so it's not that bad.
We have more of them than others. It's very noticeable when you come back from Italy, France or even Germany how the mentality in the Netherlands is Different. After a week in Italy I have seen 0 people not complying to COVID rules. I'm in the airplane back to NL and immediately I'm greeted with hordes of people wearing chin diapers (and giving you a big mouth if you say something about it).
> With regards to the bad weather: it only rains for 10% of the time in The Netherlands
It's more the cloudedness. Gloomy days just like this whole week. May not always count as rain, but when it's dark and gray all day, all life is sucked out of me anyway.
A full-spectrum light does wonders, though we had to leave ours behind in the US (120V only).
Feels like buying fancy cheese in Asia.
Any road or pavement changes in the UK seem to come with total deforestation, and sticking some 2yo saplings back in to replace them.
It's remarkable how they squeezed a protected bike lane in there while keeping all of those trees.
- The highway that was transformed into a canal actually used to be a canal originally as well.
- The group of taxis on the Museumplein were there in response to the murder of a taxi driver [1]. I'm not sure what it usually looked like, but probably not back-to-back filled with taxis.
[1] https://www.nationaalarchief.nl/onderzoeken/fotocollectie/ad...
Since you can reach the city very easily by public transport (and is very easy to traverse on foot or by bike) it is quite delightful to be in.
Up until the 1970s there were plans to add a freeway that would cut right through the city. Some of that infrastructure did get built (visible in the photos that now show a canal again) but thankfully they didn't demolish too many historic buildings along the way...
If you are interested in the ways that The Netherlands tries to keep its cities comfortable and reduce car-centricness (car-centricity?) I can recommend YouTube channel "Not Just Bikes".
It is hard to predict the future, but luckily there is now more thought put into which buildings to preserve. But even then I wonder what whill happen to the ugly buildings of the 1960s, will they all be torn apart, or are there some that we already can see as valuable.
In NYC, the World Trade Center was often thought of as an architectural abomination. Two boxes stood on end without soul or character. Once they were gone however (notwithstanding how they were taken down) people had to admit they did have a unique character and were representative of a time and a place.
Again in NYC, the beautiful old Penn Station was destroyed to be replaced soulless office towers and a “modern” sports arena. Train travelers were reduced to a rats nest of a filthy underground station. When the developers came for Grand Central Station the public responded with a hearty “NO!” and it was able to be saved. And yet Penn Station does about double the ridership of Grand Central (and according to Wikipedia is the busiest transport hub in the Western Hemisphere.)
I guess my point is, we’re all trying to do our best — including city planners past and present — and as times change we should endeavor to continue, but cut some slack to the planners of the past and hope those of the future will do likewise with us.
City planning is about managing the interactions of complex functions. It is surprisingly relevant to software engineers!
Must read, really. But only the once.
Fortunately his plans never came to much because of fierce opposition. They are representative of a certain way of thinking at the time though.
They did awful stuff there like Hoog Catharijne.
Crime, drug abuse etc. were are totally common when I went there to ride my skateboard on rainy days.
This to me is the main reason cost of housing in the cities has skyrocketed - the lack of cars has a profound positive feedback loop towards the quality of life here.
Everything you want to do in the dense city (from shopping to entertainment) happens faster, safer and happier using bikes.
No matter how much you love cars, they're just too big for the density of a city.
But at the end of the day people are in charge of this decision. If the majority of people don't see that bikes are better they will not vote for legislation that will build more bike infra.
It's a testament that Dutch people actually prefer bikes over cars.
Or it's just investement funds. We have a chance to find out in 2022.
Everyone should watch the channel Not Just Bikes https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0intLFzLaudFG-xAvUEO-A, by a guy who moved to Holland and learned what makes those transformations possible, in my opinion.
The videos are short, informative, engaging, and thought-provoking. Hopefully action-provoking too, since my country, the USA, can use a lot of that change. People here act like it's impossible, but they thought so there too. It's possible and role models help.
Throw in the mostly empty county the town is in and Netherlands is ~35 times denser.
The same things aren't going to apply to such a different situation.
Of course cities in the US can do better, but lots of things just aren't going to be very practical in most of the country by area.
See excuse #3, "our population is too spread out"
There's a not-yet-connected separated path growing between here and the smaller town ~10 miles away, but the local casino paid for a bunch of that!
Head west and the population really thins out.
It seems like you're saying that "My town has to be built for cars because we live so far away from everything. Obviously the Netherlands can afford to build for people because they live so close together."
It could also be the case that people in your town live so far away from everything because it is built for cars, whereas since the Netherlands is built for people they can live close together.
It might be the case that density is not independent at all, and indeed is changed when you change the type of infrastructure.
(Not to mention that bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure is far, far cheaper than that for heavier vehicles.)
The point is: sub-urban US could be designed to be more dense to be on the other side of that switch over point.
I do wonder how this works for families? If you have a nice 4 bed family home in a Dutch city, how do you drive your kids to school, or to a holiday destination, etc? Is it anything like here in the UK where cities are increasingly inhospitable for working class people trying to raise families and only really work for students or those who are single and wealthy so can therefore afford a flat close enough to their office that they can bike?
On another note I also used shop in my city centre regularly, but in the last 5 or so years I've started ordering most things from Amazon instead, not because I want to, but because it takes about an hour to get into the city now that they've removed several roads in favour of mostly unused bike and bus lanes. Plus, parking is increasingly hard and costs several pounds an hour these days. Sure, I could catch a bus, but that only really works if you're not buying much. I can't exactly carry a new desk or dinning room chair on a bus. I wonder if this is the reason that city centres seem to be increasingly filled with restaurants and lack shops other than a few convince stores? If I lived in a city I'm not even sure how I would do my weekly family shop without access to a car. Again, I guess I would need to order it online? Are these things not problems in Dutch cities?
I have seen more cargo bikes with two or three kids in them on some kind of recreational road then I seen parked near grocery store.
For groceries, you just have bike bags. To drops kids at school or daycare, you have kid seats on a normal bicycle (one on a front and one on a back).
And yes, there's plenty of these on the streets, not only owned by rich people.
1500 to 1750 will get you a very good one, and an even better one if you shop for second hand. A bike that costs 1/3rd of what a car costs is overpriced.
You use a bicycle. There are cargo bikes or bike seats. From age 7 or so they can be on their own bike and you can cycle alongside them. After a few more years, they can go on their own.
It's marginally harder. They make do, the ones majorly affected by the slight change in margin go elsewhere. Same as with every other quality of life issue.
Look at the incentives. Large organizations with diffuse responsibility (e.g. government) don't have values other than following the incentives.
Families and seniors suck up tons of the city's social services budget and don't engage in much taxable activity per capita. The incentives are there for the city to want them gone and there is no incentive for the city to not to things that make them want to leave.
The counter incentive that applies to all the people (politicians, bureaucrats, etc,) in the system but not to the system as a whole is the incentive not to do anything too terrible or mean spirited and society likes families and doesn't want to harm them. That's what causes things to reach some semblance of an equilibrium.
I asked you a polite and to the point question.
>I asked you a polite and to the point question.
We're all capable of reading between the lines here. You asked the question because a more snide "tell me you've never lived in NL without telling me you lived in NL" or "yikes" doesn't fly here so you phrase it as a question (just like asking the question wouldn't fly elsewhere where the local norms are to be snide or offensive). I say "no" you use that as justification for saying I have no idea what I'm talking about. I say yes and you assert my experience is not relevant or whip out a No True Scotsman. It's just a bunch of BS rhetoric that serves as a barrier to whatever the actual disagreement and debate is.
If my knowledge is so far off base, from lack of experience or otherwise then this should be a short debate.
Do you disagree with my analysis on the incentives that cause government policy that makes life marginally more difficult for families to be formed?
It appears you disagree with some part of it, so which part and how and why?
And for the record I've lived there for months but not in a major urban area and not raising a family.
Edit: edited to answer his question.
The degree to which you are breaking the HN guidelines with this comment is off the scale, so you probably should re-read those. Sometimes a question is just a question.
Ok, so you've lived here, that makes the discussion a lot simpler.
If you split up NL into cities, towns and rural then cars have a several major functions:
- to travel between cities and towns where public transport coverage is bad
- to travel longer distances
- to carry larger loads than you can on a bike
- to help those with limited personal mobility get around
- various emergency services
Bikes are - to the Dutch - a way of life. Everybody here has a bike, even the elderly. And with everybody I mean everybody that's is capable of cycling will have a bike (and often more than one). Simply because for the very large majority of your outings it will be the fastest and most practical solution. Society here is quite literally designed around cycling to the point where you can take your bike on the train if you want, and if it's a folding bike you can do so for free.
For someone not born here it is obvious that this takes a lot of adjustment. If you are used to having a car at your disposal and using that car for every trip that is too long to walk then obviously it will be frustrating. Because you will find that parking fees are high, that finding parking is next to impossible and that the speeds of cars in towns are as low (or lower!) than cycling.
It is mostly a matter of expectations. When I lived in the USA I found it hard to stomach that I could not cycle wherever I wanted. There simply wasn't a safe way to cross certain roads or areas without being in a vehicle. Walking was frowned upon and often unsafe.
Both of these are the result of urban planning: the dominant vehicle for NL is the bicycle, the dominant vehicle in the USA is the car. To desire a vehicle for which the environment is not explicitly designed is going to result in impedance mismatch that manifests as frustration. The solution is to go with the flow, and to realize that if millions of people are doing something, then you too can get used to it.
Is there a way to find other areas that are similarly bike friendly. In all honesty I have an aversion to moving to a country below sea level given the consequences of climate change we will soon face.
As for the below the sea level bit: NL is probably one of the few countries that is actually prepared for this, the water management here is second to none. Besides that we also have cities above sea level.
Our dikes have been recently upgraded and maintained and one of the responsible public workers said he would expect we could handle a 2m rise right now.
No, you have it backwards. Most big cities see a lot of people on wellfare, often living alone. A city like Rotterdam is known for this kind of poverty. The city government really does try to be there for the people.
The centre of Amsterdam is not a great place for raising children. Going 5 km to a quieter neighbourhood will already be much better, often it is a choice by the people themselves. By the way, these old city centres were never great for raising children. Up to the 1960s these were the poor parts of town, if you could get away from the rot you were much better off.
The Netherlands is densely populated enough that you can often walk to primary school. Mine is located about 300 meters away, with another primary school about 1 km away. I used to walk by myself without parent supervision.
Secondary high (middle school + high school are one single entity here) are fewer in number so that's when kids start needing bikes. Many kids can bike to school in 30m, but I had classmates who lived in some nearby village and biked for an hour.
My niece in Amsterdam bikes for about 35-45m depending on school location (they have multiple) and biking speed. She takes public transport (tram and metro) on rainy days but door to door commute time is the same.
These days, long bike commutes from villages could probably be more comfortable thanks to electric bikes. No need for car.
One of the clients I've worked for had their office at an airport outside Amsterdam. On most days, I travelled by bike in 45m.
> holiday destination
Holiday destinations tend to be in rural places that are inconvenient to reach by public transport. If younhave a family, then a car is indeed ideal for these destinations.
I find Amsterdam's center to be quite crowded if you're trying to raise a family. But smaller cities' centers don't have that much of a problem even for families.
I do most of my grocery shopping either by walking or by bike. I only use the car if I have to buy a lot. Though quite a lot of people use their car for weekly grocery shopping.
Whenever I'm forced to drive a car, I really hate that the most expressive I can be toward other people in traffic is various lengths of honk or light flashes.
Joking aside: that's not unusual at all here. Kids from Monickendam and Volendam go to school in Amsterdam for instance. That's easily 45 minutes, rain or shine and nobody really complains, it's just normal.
The feeling of independence of movement from your parents is more than worth the effort, it also gives you a ton of options after school. Compared to having to be chauffeured everywhere it certainly has its perks.
We still have this bike, 6 years on and it's been a real champ, never a problem (though well maintained), it's done many thousands of KM per year and it still looks like the day it was made modulo some scratches on the wood paneling. Christiania, aluminum frame.
That's a nice bike!
As someone who just moved to the NL, that's really surprising to me: Do kids from Volendam really go to school in Amsterdam? Are there no schools in Volendam, or is it just kids whose parents want them to go to a "nicer" (or private) school or something?
Younger children will go to elementary school (basisschool) from 4 to 12, every village and neighbourhood has 1 or more of these. Often christian (protestant or catholic) and agnostic.
I'm a Briton living in Amsterdam so let me be blunt - those pudgy fat kids you see all over Britain simply do not exist here.
I'm 59, I bike everywhere, I've never been in such good shape, though the pandemic has been a drag for this.
45 min sounds horrible. What if the kid get sick? Parent take a 90 min to pick them up?
You don't. School is in walkable distance and kids can cycle themselves since the age of 8 or around. You also don't really live in a city center with kids.
>If I lived in a city I'm not even sure how I would do my weekly family shop without access to a car.
You take more smaller trips to grocery store which is also around the block, since cities are compact.
>Are these things not problems in Dutch cities?
No they aren't really. Life is possible without having a car, but a lot of people still do have them, just not for daily commute in and out of city center.
New developments however have a cap on how many parking places a project can have. Like a project with 9 units (8 of which are family houses) is only alloweed to have 4 parking places and it's not even city center with scarce land, it's newly-build planned district on reclaimed land.
Municipality is not strictly against cars, it's against the city being car-dependent and car-oriented.
At first glance this seems contradictory – did you mean that there are schools within walkable distance, even though you're not living in the city center?
But 97% of the days it's bikes.
But I lived in a quiet area, I could imagine kids in central Amsterdam wouldn't be trusted to cycle to school at that age. Though there schools are everywhere too.
It was quite doable. One vivid memory from those days: the fire in Hotel Polen, all the ambulances and firetrucks and having to detour because of that, huge column of smoke and then later reading about it in the newspaper. Pretty heavy day. I think I had just turned 12, that was one of the last trips through the center to go to school.
The problem of school being too far away is created by low-density developments, where car is a problem not solution.
Add: middlebare schools are not that spread out, but older children (from 12yo) are also independent enough to either cycle for half an hour or take public transport unsuperwised, with choice left to them.
see for example https://www.dutchnews.nl/news/2021/06/dutch-education-system...
EDIT: not to mention the housing prices. Apparently, even the teachers are priced out of living and raising a family in Amsterdam which is one of the reasons for the current teacher shortage.
Our kids go to a school further away though because the nearest one was a "vrije school" (free school, different system), the nearest one may also be (not) religious or different religion than you seek. And yes, this is a bit of a shock to Americans, we have schools for religions. Never really extreme though. Although I really disliked my christian education when I was young.
In winter we often do go by car, it's about 10 min, by bike it's the same time (shorter distance, nicer ride through a park). What I hate about the car is that me and a lot of other cars really produce poor air around the school.
Which I guess is pretty universal and depends on a neighborhood.
The places in the photos are mostly inner city centers. There aren't much family homes there. That said, most kids go to school by bike and often without the parents. So, no need to drop them off by car. If you live in an inner city center and want a car you can rent parking space, for example in the closest parking garage.
I think the contrast with the UK is that our public transport and bike lanes are used very much. It makes sense to remove cars here because the space will actually used by people walking, biking, etc. We try to build walkable/livable cities. Most people live very close to a supermarket or small shopping center. No need for everyone to go to the city center for groceries or many other things.
> I can't exactly carry a new desk or dinning room chair on a bus.
You don't buy those very often. For those you can still use your car. If you live in a car-free inner city zone you can usually still get to your house by car if you need to. Usually there are certain hours/days where destination traffic is allowed, or you can get a permit.
I would recommend you have a look at Not Just Bikes on YouTube, a Canadian that moved to the Netherlands. He talks about car independent cities in Europe, more specifically The Netherlands and compares it to car dependent North America. Here is a video that talks about how these "car independent" countries are still the best to drive in compared to others: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8RRE2rDw4k.
Regardless, I would recommend you check out a few other of his videos, most importantly his series on the US non profit organisation "Strong Towns": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_SXXTBypIg&list=PLJp5q-R0lZ.... It think it's about sharing the message that placing public transport, cyclists, and pedestrians in the forefront is better for almost everyone involved, including drivers, and especially people who live in cities and towns.
Of course they are -- there is less traffic, since everybody doesn't have to be on the same road at the same time in most-inefficient mode of transport.
If you want to have empty roads -- you better support public transport and bike infrastructure.
I live in Amsterdam, as a carless family in a reasonably affluent neighbourhood (not in the city centre). I'd guesstimate that 1/3 to 1/2 of the families in our child's classmates don't own a car. AFAICT every neighbourhood has a few primary schools within walking or cycling distance. (I can reach 3 within 15min walking or 5min cycling.) Anecdotally, it seems roughly 10-20% of the kids are bought by private car (more when the weather is bad). I think for most of those, the parents head straight to work afterwards. Starting age 10 or so, pretty much all kids walk or cycle themselves (between 5 and 10 most of them do so under adult supervision). For holiday destinations reachable by car we rent one, maybe once or twice a year.
> On another note I also used shop in my city centre regularly, but in the last 5 or so years I've started ordering most things from Amazon instead, not because I want to, but because it takes about an hour to get into the city now that they've removed several roads in favour of mostly unused bike and bus lanes. Plus, parking is increasingly hard and costs several pounds an hour these days. Sure, I could catch a bus, but that only really works if you're not buying much. I can't exactly carry a new desk or dinning room chair on a bus. I wonder if this is the reason that city centres seem to be increasingly filled with restaurants and lack shops other than a few convince stores? If I lived in a city I'm not even sure how I would do my weekly family shop without access to a car. Again, I guess I would need to order it online? Are these things not problems in Dutch cities?
We do groceries in person every day or every other day, often on our way to/from school. I can reach 3 supermarkets within 5 minutes cycling. For larger furniture, home delivery is usually more convenient, though occasionally I'd take the street parked shared cars (which are around €30 for 3 hours).
> I do wonder how this works for families? If you have a nice 4 bed family home in a Dutch city, how do you drive your kids to school, You don’t, you take them in your bakfiets (cargo bike) or they cycle themselves
> or to a holiday destination, etc? You rent a car? It’s actually easier to drive in a Dutch city than other cities because everyone is not reliant on a car for literally every journey they make, people only use cars when they need to you can still drive cars on the streets, the streets are just not built for cars 1st.
> Is it anything like here in the UK where cities are increasingly inhospitable for working class people trying to raise families and only really work for students or those who are single and wealthy so can therefore afford a flat close enough to their office that they can bike?
I would say having to own a car to live in a city is far more anti-working-class than making a city completely livable without the need for a car.
I highly recommend watching the YouTube channel Not Just Bikes to get a better understanding of just how brilliant the urban planning is.
Western cities in the 20th century ignored all the tradeoffs presented by cars, so that any time there was a conflict of interests cars simply won. Every time. Of course, the tradeoffs didn't go away. We just declared cars the winner in every case. A re-evaluation of those priorities is going to necessarily mean driving gets marginally harder, because there was no other direction for it to go. Cars were given every single affordance for 100 years. Anything in the opposite direction is going to look like a loss.
Frankly, I doubt that driving in your area is actually all that difficult. You're just used to being prioritized and now you're experiencing a modicum of de-prioritization. You're used to rolling up to your destination and parking directly in front for free. Now that you're being asked to pay some of the actual costs of that convenience, it looks like a burden. You're used to cars being allowed everywhere, no matter the cost to the people who live in those areas you formerly breezed through, and now that they aren't, it looks unfair. When you’re accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression, as they say.
You don't. Please just listen to yourself. Children are more than capable of locomotion. Why would you need to drive them anywhere?
> Is it anything like here in the UK where cities are increasingly inhospitable for working class people trying to raise families and only really work for students or those who are single and wealthy
Inhospitable? Do you mean unaffordable? That's not really the same thing. Them not being affordable is a separate problem. Houses in desirable cities have all been bought up by landlords decades ago at this point. It's essentially impossible to buy a house in many cities in the UK. You have to rent. I don't like it, but it has nothing to do with town planning.
Kids walk or cycle to school. Groceries can be done on bicycle. There is good public transport.
But I'm quite sure the majority of the people still commute to work by car.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uhx-26GfCBU&t=72s
200 000 people live there, and in January, during polar twilight their daily average temperature is −8C (17F) and 50% school trips are on bikes.
> now that they've removed several roads in favour of mostly unused bike and bus lanes.
Why don't you bike or take the bus, then?
> If I lived in a city I'm not even sure how I would do my weekly family shop without access to a car.
Before the pandemic, we did it entirely on bike.
On the other hand, Dutch cities are designed differently, where markets are interspersed with the housing itself.
In fact, we used to just walk to the supermarket about 200m away, but then a bigger version of that supermarket opened up 5 minutes bike ride away, so...
Checkout is super-fast - shopping is so fast many people go every day, if only to get fresh bread. When I lived in New York, we would have one big shop once a week, it was such a chore.
----
In your world, we all drive cars and destroy our biosphere. Is that really what you want for your children?
Reminds me of SF.
“Why can’t we have more bike lanes?” - never said by a poor person.
I bought second-hand bike two years ago and didn't spend a euro on it.
Yes, the inner cities and in big cities the next ring of neighbourhoods are often expensive, prices drive out less wealthy people. But even if you live in a neighbourhood on the edge of a big city, or in an average town or village, you will see these improvements being made. And taking the bicycle into the city centre, these improvements are really for you. Even in the city with the least amount of cyclists, Almere, which is an overflow city for Amsterdam, there are continuous improvements. A city like Utrecht has highway bike lanes where you can get to the centre really fast.
https://i2.wp.com/cityobservatory.org/wp-content/uploads/201...
One of the reasons it took so long in the Netherlands (ignoring the politics for a moment, which were not as smooth sailing as many assume) is because the Dutch were, literally and figuratively, paving the way—they had no other country to copy. Protected bike lanes, protected intersections, protected roundabouts, bike superhighways, best-practice bike parking and curb design and bike lane texture and lighting...it was all more or less invented by the Dutch, which took time.
But now that the Dutch have spent 40 years figuring out what works, other countries are free to copy all of it. (The Dutch have even translated their best-practice guide into English: https://crowplatform.com/)
Of course, construction takes time. But it doesn't have to take 40 years—you can accomplish a lot with political will and quick-build infrastructure (see: Paris [1]). I think most US cities (NYC, Boston, Portland) could start looking like the Netherlands in about 10-20 years as soon as they get serious about infrastructure.
[1] https://twitter.com/BrentToderian/status/1472894991177371648
In my country every new bike lane is a new battle. And after some initial progress, it seems governments have given up.
Also, during the time of the transition there was a very vocal parents group ( mothers iirc ) who protested all the traffic deaths.
And everybody uses a bike, even our Prime Minister.
Regarding the shop owners : maybe it is part of their problem and maybe they could reclaim a part of their clientele if only there was short term parking in the street ( for boomers ).
Also, plenty of retailers did migrate to hybrid or online only.
But your 'mid-nineties writing on the wall' is just irrelevant hindsight.
Even I was skeptical about some of the more outlandish stuff and it all came true, and then some. We had live video in the browser in 1995. Yes, it's hindsight, but it couldn't be anything else because time has passed. But there were lots of people with actual foresight back then and all you had to do was listen to them to see where the future would go, it was as inevitable as the tides. Even the .com bust was more of a temporary setback (and the implosion of many bubbles that urgently needed imploding) than a real problem.
The point is, and we can bicker about the timing but I don't think that is all too relevant here: there were plenty of indicators that brick & mortar stores would sooner or later have competition. Minitel in France was a pretty strong vision of what the future could be like and it had a ton of online services, including ordering goods (and pizzas).
Sure, it needed time to gather steam. But the expression 'the writing was on the wall' applies: if you wanted to see it, you could have.
The problem with most business owners that are on to some kind of success is that they forget that everything has a beginning and an end, this goes for buggy whip makers just as much as it does for buggy whip store owners, if the automobile didn't get you then internet would have and if the internet had come along a little later then the pandemic would have. But somewhere in the 90's savvy business owners saw the shift and prepared. They're the ones doing very well today. The ones that decided to fight a rearguard action against the inevitable: not so much.
I'd love to know how Dutch urban planners overcame the automotive mindset after WWII. Resistance to the status-quo is fierce in the U.S. The former mayor of my city (which is considered very progressive) rails against even minor concessions to improving bike and pedestrian infrastructure. At our planning meetings, he counters any mention of the Netherlands with a loud "our city isn't Amsterdam!" and people go wild with applause. The pro-auto train of thought ends exactly there. It's as willfully ignorant as it is soul crushing.
Of course, some people were complaining can't get anywhere in the City anymore after a first redesign to a one way street model. But change is always criticized and the criticism soon died out. Sometimes it is the exact same people who now applaud such changes.
Maybe our multi party political system ( also in play at municipal level ) helps too.
> In the 1960s, Dutch cities were increasingly in thrall to motorists, with the car seen as the transport of the future. It took the intolerable toll of child traffic deaths – and fierce activism – to turn Amsterdam into the cycling nirvana of today
https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/may/05/amsterdam-bic...
The photos are from Utrecht, population 360,000, and Amsterdam, population 1,2M.
Looking at https://worldpopulationreview.com/world-cities, Amsterdam is #469 and Utrecht is #1053 (Dallas is #383, Tucson #1047). Amsterdam is the largest city in the Netherlands.
And that’s by population. Area-wise, I expect many US cities to be even larger.
I think the main difference is population density, though. At about 1/25th that of the Netherlands, if all else would be equal, distances between cities and villages will be 5 times as large.
That would make many cycling trips that are doable in the Netherlands (say from a 25,000 population village to the nearest 100,000 population area) impractical.
What will be harder to replicate in Sweden is what's starting to happen now in the Netherlands, which is that electric bicycles are also starting to be used from inter-city transportation more and more often, and infrastructure being designed around that.
Going to the inner city of Utrecht would be for bigger shopping, like clothes or anything. And have a drink or go out for dinner. Often you can go by bicycle from your neighbourhood or by bus. If you want to go by car you can park close by for a small amount of money (yes, small, people like complaining :) ) or park more on the edge of the city centre and go for a walk towards it. The city centre hardly has supermarkets, the real estate is too expensive and there is no free parking.
It seems Sweden didn't really copy Dutch planning. We do have some furniture boulevards on the edge of cities, also other bigger stores, like hardware stores and IKEA. But supermarkets are in the neighbourhoods where people live. And regular shops are in the city centers, clothing, electronics, warehouses, eye glasses, etc. Combined with bars, lunchrooms and restaurants and also historic buildings, inner centers are great to spend an afternoon or evening with good company.
As far as I can see there are lots of supermarkets in the city centre of Utrecht though: https://www.qwant.com/maps/places/?type=supermarket#map=14.3...
I wouldn't go there by car probably, but I do most of my groceries by bike or walking anyway.
Also, 40m by bicycle is fine too, since you get warm when cycling. Though technically I guess that counts as private vehicle.
Nothing wrong with that. Kinda like how NYC (or at least Manhattan) has been for a while. You’re either young or fabulously wealthy - everyone else leaves.
Glad you found a place where you can park 3 cars, it is very useful to have so many cars.
Some of the most livable cities in the world have good public transport and low rates of car ownership (a fact that seems more and more correlated to said livability) and are good places to raise families.
We may hope that one day we'll look back at this practice of having personal cars sitting around in cities as a backward phenomenon, something like open sewers.
Nothing, certainly not in Amsterdam. Kids from 4~5 years on learn to ride a bike, from around 8~9 years old they can ride a bike to school by themselves.
The thing about Dutch planning that is even nicer than their car constraining policies in the cities is that safe cycling is provided for way beyond city limits. A few years ago I took my family on holiday to the Netherlands and we travelled safely and comfortably by bike, both in the cities, the countryside and the villages in between.
It doesn't surprise me that not everyone is happy. Car drivers have been able to claim the lions share of scarce road space for themselves for so long, equality must feel like victimisation.
- trams are pedestrian killers and bike accident machines. and they move through city centers, where density is huge. as such trams would constantly hit people. i had my bicycle wheels stuck in tram lines countless times, every single time i got stuck i fell on the pavement. and the pavement was usually a brick road, which hurt me twice as much as tarmac.
- the dutch use big and heavy dutch bikes. this means that an accident with one of those bikes leads to a lot more hospitalisations than with a light race bike. and since those dutch bikes are so big and heavy, they're really really slow, but it's their weight that produces accidents. the upside is that those dutch bikes have some big wheels they don't get stuck in tram lines.
- there were too many bikes. had to be written. bike users in the netherlands seem entitled to own every part of the road. there were traffic jams full of bikes. there were fights between bike users. there were drunk people on bikes, lots of them.
- bike theft is constant and prevalent across the country. you can't really buy a nice bike and not have it stolen. seems weird since everyone bikes, but it is what it is. insurance is a must. had mine stolen from outside my home, from in front of a bar, from in front of a supermarket, from inside one of those secure bike lockers.
- a regular pastime of dutch people is to throw stuff into their canals. cars, bikes, they just throw them for kicks. insurance is a must, again.
- a friend owned a car. you can't really live in the dutch countryside without owning a car. but good luck trying to enter a city center with a car. also good luck parking anywhere inside a city. and even if you find a spot you will get a fine if one wheel crosses or sits on top the parking line. this makes it into a weird two-tier society. you want to go to the city center? then you'll need to park outside the train station.
- living in a suburb and travelling to the city center means using a taxi (extremely expensive without reason) or using a slow tram. if it's winter and freezing, trams usually stop working. and then you'll have to use a bike. because it's winter you will get sweaty and smelly. but again, it is what it is.
finally, there are many advantages to living in a dutch city. good train connections, lots of easy walks, a mentality towards integrating with nature, great minimalist architecture. but there are many downsides as well. besides the above points, there is extreme inequality, there are multiple types of citizenship (so only some are proper first grate dutch citizens), frugalness is a dutch trait, organised crime is rampant, everything is more expensive than any neighbouring country (people constantly move to Belgium for the lower taxes for example). after two years i moved out.
(2) those big heavy bikes are slow, and accidents are typically 'oh, sorry' and then both parties are on their way again.
(3) no, there aren't enough bikes yet. It sure looks like you judge your view of the Dutch and their bikes on one major inner city. NL is a lot larger than that and bikes are an essential ingredient of society here (and of our health!).
(4) bike theft too is a problem of the big cities mostly
However, I just don't understand your complaints about bicycles. Yes, bicycles can be heavy and when a lot of people use them there are many of them. But what, exactly, do you think is the alternative? Cars are heavier and even more awful en masse. Walking by foot just takes a long time and doesn't get you very far. Should people run everywhere?
Until the road outside my house is pedestrianised.
Then I move further out and everything I do pollutes more, heh.
There's a balance between 0 cars and all cars.