A lot of people get into advocacy for better cities and urbanism by watching what’s perhaps YouTube’s biggest urbanism channel, @NotJustBikes. But that leads many to think that with enough advocacy, their hometowns could one day also look like a city in the Netherlands. Not Just Bikes’ Jason Slaughter says it’s not that simple.
In this conversation, journalist Cara Stern and economist Mike Moffatt talk to Jason about what North American cities can learn from the Netherlands. They explore the principles of Dutch urban design, the importance of context in urban planning, and the need for holistic approaches that go beyond just implementing bike lanes.
Chapters:
00:00 Introduction
01:36 The Essence of Dutch urban design
02:32 Why cycling is a good indicator of a healthy urban landscape
05:20 a gradual approach to building a walkable city
09:10 Context Matters: Emulating Dutch Success
10:45 Holistic Urban Planning: beyond bike lanes
12:49 The importance of street design
14:09 North America needs better land use planning
17:14 The upside of the pandemic? Bike lanes
17:55 Political Will: The key to urban transformation
21:32 Cultural Shifts: Changing perceptions of cycling
Links:
Why Canadians Can’t Bike in the Winter (but Finnish people can):
Strong Towns:
https://www.strongtowns.org/
Guest: Jason Slaughter, Not Just Bikes https://www.youtube.com/c/notjustbikes
Hosts: Mike Moffatt https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt
Cara Stern https://twitter.com/carastern
Producer: Meredith Martin https://twitter.com/meredithmartin
This podcast is funded by the Neptis Foundation https://neptis.org/
Brought to you by the Smart Prosperity Institute https://institute.smartprosperity.ca/
35 Comments
These two put me to sleep.
Jason is right – I've lived/worked in NL in the '90s; then to Ottawa. Visit NL yearly post COVID, this year is the first year I actually biked; the previous years it was walk/public transit. When I moved back from NL a generation ago, I looked for a place where walking/transit/biking was easiest; it was in a not-so-desirable hood, now, 30 years later, it's VERY desirable. Things are changing, but it takes decades.
With people like Jason you always have the feeling that they are tipping over to the extremist side. With 75% ban on cars in the city.
He has the same tendencies as people he criticizes, such as most car owners in the USA who don't want bike lanes. Expenses of car lanes.
My opinion is that everyone has the right to have a car and can park in front of their own home (Do not ban cars from the city (center)). Just as everyone should have the right to walk and cycle safely from their home to wherever they want to go. By means of sidewalks, 30 km neighborhood zones, separate cycle paths, etc., etc. The government must facilitate it and residents must be able to choose of their own free will what they want to use. Whether it is a car, bicycle or public transport. But should not be forced or imposed.
No, I am not a car extremist, in fact I do 95% of my commute on foot or on my 30 years old bike (to work, gym, shopping, etc.).
If the dutch build a new district they first look at infrastructure and facilities like schools and (grocery)stores. They have to be within a reasonable (walking)distance for everyone but also to reach for bikes and cars
The lady looks to be in pain constantly its very uncomfortable to watch
In North America, the central thought is about individualism. In Europe, because of the higher density, it is the collective.
Can confirm the gen-x reference
The Netherlands has streets without a sidewalk. If a street has no through traffic, then it's fine to mix pedestrian and car traffic, because there'll be so few cars.
As you're watching this, Doug Ford's provincial government in Ontario, canada, (where Toronto) is trying to pass legislation to stop building new bike lanes, and ripping out ones installed is the past 5 years.
Truly insane.
Thank for posting but I spent a year in Holland one month. It has nice people and nice food, but because of the lack of private transportation that isn't bikes, there isn't the kind of social life you see in Midwest cities here in the US and Ontario. With the exception of places like The Haag and Utrecht with large expatriate community, they roll up the sidewalks at 6pm. North America is vast and spread out, but even so, we are more social than we realize from our high schools, colleges, theaters, bars, library, ball parks, etc. than Holland. What we are and what we are not, we need to think about and appreciate more than we do.
I've heard lots of complaints about the trains in Germany, a 15 minute delay time being one of the norms, and that type of norm deters people from totally relying on public transport.
Here in the Netherlands we've had many post-Pandemic cancellations of trains frustrating commuters … some even opting for cars to avoid the stress and hassle of not arriving to work on time. And post-Pandemic there are currently fewer trains running, which is also causing uncomfortable overcrowding.
No situation is perfect and we need to keep working on our transport problems all the time too.
But, simply said, if you build it they will come. And if public transport is made reliable – if bike paths are safe and comfortable to use – many more individuals will opt for this mode of getting around instead of having to deal with costly car and road tax expenses in our country.
Shared on Mastodon ClimateJustice by JdeB 🇳🇱
15:55 Markham?! The example I didn't expect! RE: the Cornell neighbourhood of Markham: the first phase of its "new urbanism" was built in the early 2000s. While it is more pedestrian and cycle friendly than The Rest of Markham's Sprawl, they failed to actually allow for sufficient non-residential uses. Need to get groceries? A coffee? Closest grocery store is 4km away on the other side of a freeway. The result is a dense neighbourhood…with nothing to walk to but the hospital. (And don't get me started on the bus terminal with no pedestrian connections to anything.) Poor land use strikes again!
I am Dutch. Dutch cities are very compact and old. They were designed for horses, boats, walkers and carts and later bicycles. People were poor. And its all flat. In 1860 we started with a railway net. A lot of canals too. And shops were alway small and many. The clever thing is indeed switching to cycling in road design. And to separate traffic users.
Really sad to listen to this positive chat about progress in Toronto only for the Ford Government to speak about overruling the will of the Toronto government and rip out bike lanes! CycleTO has a petition to support bike lanes that everyone in Ontario should support because the Government's actions will change rules for bike lanea across Ontario.
As an architect I design every building from the perspective of the user. That can be the owner of a home, but also their visitors. Every type of person you can expect in a building is what I think about when designing. The same way should be done with designing cities. What do different kind of people need. What feels practical, what feels safe, what makes people connect and look out for each other, what brings people peace and quiet spaces. You can use this in every scale possible when designing a city and you will for sure create well functioning places. Not just bikes showed me how a lot of things aren't as obvious as I thought they were living in The Netherlands. I have taken certain elements with me in how I perceive my work.
Please don't become like the Netherlands, we manage to be one of the most influential countries in the world with a tiny country.
Just imagine what we could become with all that space and oil… The whole world would speak Dutch and ride bikes!! 😁
Id just like to live where I work, or work where I live. But that wont happen.
Or, affordable public transport.
Somehow no Political party tries to push for affordable public transport. Eventhough its the cleanest and most sustainable way of transport.
In the field of cycling infrastructure, there were two initiatives in the mid-seventies in my hometown Tilburg and in The Hague where a continuous cycle path paved with red asphalt, as free of intersections as possible, was constructed. That was in fact the start of a cycle path system through an entire city in the following decades in the whole of the Netherlands. With every redesign of existing streets, specific infrastructure for cycling was taken into account from then on.
if Novara cares; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBxQ70dRQDk&ab_channel=IndependenceLive
This guy in the middle looks like John Oliver, or John Oliver looks like him?
It should be mentioned that you still need a car if you don't live in a big city or have family in villages. You can't get everyware by public transit and it can be rather impractical. It takes me more then 1½ hours to go to uni, while It is less then halve an hour by car. I just don't have my driverslisence yet and get free public transit included in student funding.
Hello Canadians! Thanks for liberating our little country 🇳🇱❤🇨🇦
I remember when i was a kid i thought growing up in America would be so much better than here in Europe, but as i got older i realised that actually, I'm more privileged in many ways.
In my neighbourhood alone I have 5 shops, gym, dentist, pharmacy, vets, swimming pool etc etc all within 10 mins walking distance. I'm in my mid 20s now and never needed to buy a car, everything is reachable by either walking, cycling, bus or train.
This is going to blow up because of proud dutchies.
Good point about how North America used to have more nice walkable areas – but they were bulldozed to accommodate for cars
Remember that we could never have had this infrastructure when we wouldnt be liberated by the Canadians! Americans can claim they´ve won the 2nd world war, but in NL we know that the Canadians were the ones that set us free.
I would recommend looking into how Edmonton is tackling this issue. They're probably one of the most progressive cities in Canada with good local solutions to the car problem, in spite of funding issues caused by the Alberta Government.
Some People Are To Lazy To Cycle. Even in the netherlands. I have hardcore dutch friends and they dont cycle.
Dang, Jason , You're right I have it backwards, bike just show that the city works.
My brother has a boat in Makkum that he goes to every summer, and his tales of Holland, Denmark and Sweden draw my own Dallas into sharp relief..
I sub to you and think you are on target and do it with style. You and City Nerd help me live in Fake LA.
Election may be what determines where we end up.
Never say never! Because when the self-centered and money-hungry Dutch have their eyes on Canada… Canada will get a new name in no time; 'New Rotterdam.'
We will export 10 million Dutch people with their 20 million bicycles to their new homeland!
Today's Canadians will of course be given a choice; learn to cycle and integrate like a Dutchman is used to or flee to the USA on foot.
I've always seen zoning as the main problem for Canada and USA. I'm so used to how things are built here in Sweden that's it's (or was, before learning more about it) completely foreign to me to just build for cars. The 15-minute city isn't a concept; it's just the basic way of building urban and suburban areas. Pretty much wherever you go here that's more dense than a sparse village has a "centrum", or a local "town" centre with most things you need on a daily and weekly basis.
Being able to walk everywhere is seen as obvious. There are always pedestrian paths leading from one area to a neighbouring one. Cycling just follows, as that uses the same paths. That's probably the main problem we have here in Stockholm with cycling. It's more of an afterthought compared to walking, public transit, and cars. But we still have that connectivity the American suburbs lack. No isolated suburbs or shopping malls.
Basically, the benefit we have here is that even when cars became popular, we never stopped walking, so we never stopped designing cities for that.
Oh, and the fake concerns people have about snow and hills and stuff, we have that. I'm reminded of another video, if not NJB it was probably City Beautiful, that had a graph for why people didn't cycle. Here, in the dark north, darkness was less of a concern than in more southern areas. If you live in an area with environmental challenges, you learn to deal with them. You don't make excuses for them.
The city of Ottawa has great recreational cycle pedestrian paths built by the Federal National Capital Commission, but these paths do not extend thru the center of the city. The City is including protected cycle lanes when roads are being restored, but these restored roads are often not connected to each other . It will likely take another 30 years before these cycle lanes will be connected
I hardly think about it because it's all so natural growing up here. But seperated bike lanes are HUGE for safety and there is always trees/bushes/grass in between the car and bike lanes which makes the experience more enjoyable then a concrete jungle.
Why didn't you pay any attention to the quite fundamental issue of 'zoning'? Because that's why people have to use their cars. Not Just Bikes explained this several times in different video's: if one can buy a loaf of bread and a gallon of milk in one's own neighborhood, there is no need to take a car. In my opinion, that's the most fundamental thing North America has to come to terms with. Zoning was invented for a car based infrastructure. I live in the Netherlands and I can go to groceries and the like on foot, doesn't matter where I live. Nearly every neighborhood in my town has one or more pubs. We have pubs just around the corner. We have shops anywhere a person sees it fit to make a profitable business. Implementing that in Northern American cities would diminish the need for using cars a lot. It's not just (about) bike(lane)s!