We’ve lived in the Netherlands for 5 years now and we’ve been to a lot of small towns and cities in that time. The thing that surprised us the most is that there’s good urbanism pretty much everywhere.
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Thumbnail of the Sneek Watergate (Netherlands) from Getty Images
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Chapters
00:00 Intro
01:22 Haarlem
01:59 Leiden
02:29 Harlingen
02:52 Lent (Nijmegen)
04:22 Ermelo
05:49 Veenendaal
06:30 Terschelling
06:59 Ommen
08:16 Diepenheim
08:35 Jutrijp
09:09 Zwolle
09:44 Assen
10:23 Kloosterveen (Assen)
11:18 Vathorst (Amersfoort)
11:55 Woerden
12:36 Sneek
13:42 Alkmaar
14:22 Zeist
14:42 Summary & Conclusion
17:47 Patreon Shout-out
39 Comments
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Im begging you make a video about Ljubjana. They have so many bikes and an ok infrastructure. Why is that important you might ask. Its the former eastern block…theyre broke. And thats the argument of many countries, and yet they handle it perfectly over there
Jumped a little there, one of the videos shows my usual grocery store!
Growing up I had the freedom to walk or bicycle anywhere in our town. And I did. Hundreds of miles each summer. Walking anywhere had limited value since everything was spread out for cars. However it was fun and safe enough. Over the past decade I had started using an ebike in our (different) town to ride around town. The difference in traffic levels is incredible. In the 80s I could ride a fair distance without even seeing a car. Now the traffic – even on remote country lanes – is constant and dangerous. Cars handle so much better than what we had in the 70s and 80s that people just zoom around curves and up and down hills like they are on a race track. It is dangerous at times and has shaped the route I use to get to and from town. A high powered ebike is an important to minimize how long I am grinding up a steep hill which may have limited sight lines and no shoulder. ~15 mph is safe enough on flat ground but its important not to be climbing a steep hill at 1-2 mph for several minutes. All over the web I see articles about limiting ebike speeds and motor power. Don't do that with a broad brush. My hilly home is not flat like Manhattan.
So cool you feature Ommen in one of your videos! It's my hometown, small but a great place to live. So interesting that you (and other non -Dutchies and non-europeans) are so amazed by things that feel so logical and familiar to me. Wish all places would be more bike friendly!
It’s refreshing to hear praise about our infrastructure, because normally I only hear Dutch people complain 😂
Your videos make me so angry and filled with a jealous rage as someone from the middle part of the US. I see all around me just how great these places I know could be if they were only built in just the smallest ways to be more like places where you now get to call home. I'm afraid I'll never get to know somewhere like that, it would be decades of change to start them in the right direction, but the people here don't want that. They don't know what they're missing. I just wish I could get them to see the potential I see. I can only dream that some day I'll have the opportunity to move somewhere even just slightly better.
sadly my wife can't deal with colder weather. Otherwise I'd take advantage of the Dutch-American friendship treaty and move my boutique game studio there.
It would be interesting to see you do a full video where you check out fan submissions of the "Worst" places in the Netherlands.
I think Norwich, UK, would make an interesting video if you're looking for suggestions. There's an interesting mix of walkable in the centre, with a fantastic area called the Norwich lanes, plus the council is pedestrianising a lot of roads, with the public transport and biking options not really matching up to the same vision. Good link to London via train, with further links planned with a project called East West Rail which will link Cambridge and Oxford without having to go through London.
I've been to Europe twice now. Last year I went on my Honeymoon in Marseille and Paris. This year we went for my cousin's wedding in Valence/Alixan, France, leading into a week-long trip for my wife's 30th birthday in Malta. While definitely not as bike-friendly as the Netherlands clearly is from your videos, all the areas of France we visited, as well as Malta (it's a country but we went all over–it's small) were so much more walkable than anywhere I'd ever been in the US, including SF and NYC. It's night and day, and you get such a good feel for the place that you just can't when you're stuck in a car. When we stayed in Malta, we were in Floriana, one city over from Valletta, the capital. We could walk right out the door, walk to Valletta, and walk literally across the entire city, all in about 40 minutes. Its was nuts. In Paris and Marseille, the metro and the bus were our friends, but we still got everywhere we needed to go without touching a car. The one place we had an issue was Alixan, which sits somewhere between suburban and rural. There was no regular bus service there and everything was really far apart. It was definitely the most car-centric place I'd seen in Europe. But, it wasn't any worse than the cities I've seen here in the US.
Do you travel on bikes at night?
all of the small towns in the province of Canada where I live that happen to have train stations, have Freight Train stations only… The North American culture is too brainwashed to utilize these tracks for passengers (and they are owned by gigantic logistics corporations)… I could only imagine how this side of the world could be changed simply by investing in some good passenger trains to these places, and encouraging people to get the hell out of their car once in a while and explore a little.
This video made me feel a complex combination of emtions that I think are best described as a deep sadness/longing for what life should be like. I don't know how to describe it.
Come to Middelburg (Zeeland), you'll love it. I'll be happy to show you around!
I seriously envy this… I won't move outside of the US for a wide variety of reasons, but I wish I actually liked being in our cities and towns; there are random places with charm and conveniences, but they are few and far between and insanely expensive.
Small town in America: post apocalypse, most likely has zombies*
Small town in the Netherlands: The Shire*
Hello I’m a huge fan of your work, I’m currently working on a visual proyect for my tesis on sustainable mobility focus on cycling for my district, San Pedro Garza García in Mexico. I’m curious about how you film your videos?, I’m currently using a go pro attached to my head, then I would also like to ask you about how you edit your videos, and finally ask you if you would like to collaborate and see what a Mexican city has as bicycle infrastructure. Here cars have become a very big problem since all the infrastructure is design as highways.
Not for nothing but notice how many of those ground surfaces are covered by segmented pavement instead of asphalt. Great rain absorption
My cousin recently started work in a city in the USA (not gonna say). There's a supermarket within a walkable distance, but it is IMPOSSIBLE to walk there as there is NO SIDEWALKS from her place to the market. She is also unfortunately bound to her car – it's an hour-long commute through car-dependent hell
I just wish I could encourage her to find work in a more livable city. Maybe in the Netherlands. I already decided that I'm never moving to a car-centric place no matter how much money I'll earn there.
I live in an area of 1 million people. We just ripped up our train tracks. 😢
lovely you start with Delft
RIP Limburg. 😢
lent used to be independent but is now actually part of nijmegen.
Woerden is surprisingly nice, isn't it?
What I love about my country as well is that if you're feeling sporty, you can do a biking trip in between small(-ish) towns and the polders in between are also nice to cycle through.
If you're ever going back to Woerden, I would recommend taking a biking trip to Oudewater (it's really lovely), Driebruggen and Reeuwijk (especially the waters next to it!). Or if anyone is ever visiting the Netherlands, really. Don't stick to Amsterdam.
I remember camping near Reeuwijk once and we came across a bridge over the water, allowing both cyclists and the boats to pass. But the people on the boat had to stop, come out of the boat and open the bridge by hand to stop the cyclists. That's some Dutch infrastructure for you there. xD My boyfriend and I stopped there for a while to enjoy the sun and man the bridge to give the boat people an easier time. XD
You should do Alkmaar in full, not just that outskirt of Daalmeer. The city centre is more like Haarlem:)
I would love to live in any of those cities but I don't have any skills that could be considered for a job in the Netherlands.
I wanna live there!
The strange political reality is that the angry populist parties are crushing the sensible center. So many angry, frustrated, cursing boomers! A lot of wealth in an owned house, well paying jobb, a luxurious car AND other travel options, but still not satisfied, angry, or maybe afraid?
I live in Assen and totally agree, we could do with a tram system.
Especially because Assen wasnt build like a classic Dutch city; City centre, usually around an old fort and then build outwords from that. Instead we have the city centre, then some random small patch of industry and then a suburb, so it can take a while to cicle from one suburb to the other.
O and thanks for highlighting Assen, we get left out a lot haha
the kids in my street sometimes park one of their bicycles in the middle of the street as a sign when playing, just to let cars know who owns the street here.
when the mailmen or a neighbor needs to get through one of them runs back to let them pass while the others looks after their youngest siblings.
Very sad state of conditions here in America. I live in Philly, by American standards the most walkable place in the country. Unfortunately that doesn’t mean anything, we have pedestrians deaths, car crashes, and unreliable transit. Here in America asking people to stop building around cars is political suicide.
Is there a guide on how an average young Murican can move to a country like Netherlands? Cause car infrastructure is really oppressive & overwhelming here. i bet you it's definitely cheaper than living in FL too 😂😂😂
I'd love to see you do a piece about Almere and Lelystad aka as our ugliest cities!
Oh. My. God.
Mr. Jealous,
Phoenix, Arizona
Please stay, your loved by a lot of Dutch people, absolutly welcome here
As some one who lives in Veenendaal I don't want to leave, it's an amazing place! Access everywhere no matter what you drive and the roads are lovely! proud to live in this town for 8+ years 🙂
What fills me with joy when watching this video is the absence of bicycle helmets.
I grew up in a very bicycle-heavy town in Germany and never even owned one, and neither seem any of the people in the Netherlands.
When I commented on a bicycle article on the CBC (Canadian news), just asking if anyone ever heard of anyone that actually was spared injury thanks to a helmet, I just got downvote-bombed, nobody actually answered my question and one response was, verbatim, "I have no words".
I can count the number of times I fell of my bike (it's 4), and going by the injuries I received I would advocate for knee and elbow pads.
Just like expensive infrastructure, safety gear does not need to be mandatory, if you provide safe space for cyclists where most people travel at very low speeds.
I have never seen a good-looking bicycle helmet, and sometimes feel like mandatory helmet laws in north america are a result of the car lobby in the attempt to make cycling even more uncomfortable by forcing these ugly mushroom-bulbs onto our heads; besides the inherent mortal danger of sharing a road with armored semi-tanks, of course.
It's amazing that you are getting excited about things that I always thought were completely normal. Thank you!