We stayed in Amsterdam again today, sort of. We went 20 minutes away, but it felt like a different world.
Almere
We had a late start, not leaving the hotel until 7:10! First stop of the day was Almere. I believe it would be offensive to call it this, but it’s basically a suburb of Amsterdam. But it is a pretty special city – it was literally a part of the sea, and was built in 1975 as Amsterdam was running out of space. So, like, they just created a city.
Their goal now that they’re a real city is to be the MOST SUSTAINABLE CITY OF THE FUTURE. I appreciate the ambition of Europeans.
It is now the 8th largest city in the Netherlands.
Oosterwold
I don’t even know. So this is an area of Almere where they want to let everyone sort of design what they want, where they want, as long as it fits within their sustainability guidelines, and prioritizes open space. It’s like weird lawless master plan. They literally said you can live in a tent or build a castle; it’s about prioritizing individual style with cohesive community. It hurt my head.
They have a strange relationship with land property. You own yours – but your community also deserves access to it, so you have to maintain a pathway on each property for people to walk through, so no area is closed off.
Hondsrugpark
Then we headed to an area called Hondstrugpark, for a presentation by the Amsterdam Economic Board.
The area is a new urban district. It has high rise buildings, lots of homes (rental and ownership), office space, retail, and 7 football (soccer) fields.
For lunch, we had vegan food. I wouldn’t have known if they hadn’t told me. My “tuna” salad was quite good.
The Economic Board is a group of 26 regional leaders, all voluntary, that is focused on reducing health disparities – their belief is that mentally and physically healthy communities are actually more productive communities, and have a positive economic impact.
One pilot program they did was to supply electric bikes to some employers that are a bit of a distance from a metro line, which employers could then loan to employees for them to try out.
They’ve also focused on immigrant communities and helping them to learn to cycle, since it can be quite overwhelming here, especially if you didn’t ride a bike growing up.
They let us tour some of their newer projects. They talked a lot about what makes an area some place that people want to live – which included what they call “social infrastructure” and includes things like schools, grocery stores, coffee shops, etc. As a part of the conversation, they talked about the phenomenon in the United States where we intentionally make public spaces inhospitable – we make benches uncomfortable so that homeless people don’t sleep on them, but that also makes them less comfortable for people just enjoying a park. We make stairs harder for skateboarders to use, but that also makes them unfriendly for small children who are learning to walk/climb. Their philosophy is that they do not build to keep anyone out – instead, they build enough of everything for where people need to be.
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