- All of "Amsterdam" is not Amsterdam-Centrum which is where Jason lives and is often shilled. Amsterdam-Centrum is very expensive.
Digging back a few pages for this, but it caught my eye and I really want to dive in a little further as to how significant this point actually is.
So this is Amsterdam, as we all probably know by now. Capital of the Netherlands, canals, etc etc etc. So how much of this city is actually the Centrum?
Just that red part in the centre. And it is not a big area, either:
The centrum is only
eight square kilometers and almost entirely flat
. No shit biking is easy there. Not to mention, Amsterdam itself has a land area of 219 square kilometers, meaning the centrum is only about
3 percent of the city's land area and about 10% of its population. For reference, here's the same statistics for Manhattan:
Manhattan alone is seven times bigger than the Centrum, with nearly twenty times more people in it, and a much more erratic climate! You start to understand why this bike-centric infrastructure doesn't work so well in denser and larger areas. But is it really JUST the Centrum that's like this? Maybe the rest of Amsterdam looks the same way. Let's look at some other neighborhoods to see how bicycle-centric they are.
Ack! What is this? Where's the bike lanes? Why aren't people out gallivanting in the streets? Don't they know they live in a dense urban walkable environment? Why are there cars parked everywhere??? Is that, God forbid, an SUV?!?!?!
Yes, even in the Netherlands, and even in Amsterdam, most people outside the city center have cars to get around. There are bikes and stuff too, obviously. Some neighborhoods even have dedicated bike paths. But, nevertheless, lots of people in the city own and regularly drive their cars, contrary to the way Jason describes the place. You can even see some of the issues with the way the city is planned:
This roadway is in a subdivision of townhomes outside the city center. The road here is only a single lane, with some parking on the side. But then you have this MASSIVE 30 foot wide space between the road and the businesses over there, with a ~6 foot wide bike lane in the middle. Nobody's walking in this part of town and the space doesn't have any clear purpose. It's just this huge swath of paved area with, like, three benches on it. This could easily be a 2 lane road with parking, or some sort of garden or, well, anything else. Or maybe they're just waiting for the "induced demand" of a 30 foot wide sidewalk to kick in...
Of course, to the urbanist, this is all actually fine and okay. If it was parking that went unused, the urbanist brigade would throw a hissy fit. But because it's a sidewalk it's suddenly kosher. Despite the fact that it's objectively the same thing: Unused paved ground. Wasted space is wasted space, man. Just because it's being wasted in a way that favors your worldview, doesn't suddenly make it okay. The only difference here is that you can't park a car on it if need be.
The main takeaway here is how insanely narrow Jason's urbanist perspective is. He isn't shilling for a specific country, and he isn't even shilling for a city. He is shilling for a
neighborhood that takes up less than 5% of Amsterdam's land area. To try and push this lifestyle as something applicable to all cities and towns in North America is downright ridiculous and I really think more people should be aware of this.
Unrelated bonus image, but look at this teeny little car I found! Holy smokes that thing is small. If I took it apart I could probably fit the whole thing in my trunk. I'm guessing it's some sort of low speed vehicle specifically built to be used in city centres. No way in hell something that tiny passes Euro or NHTSA crash standards.
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