After spending two weeks in the Netherlands, I realized that the biggest challenge in making our country more bike and pedestrian-friendly will be changing the mindset of the population. The presenter summed up the problem with a US subset perfectly. The said population consists of the "manly men." He said that the reason why the Dutch are bike-friendly is because they see their bikes and cars as tools. Thus, rusty bikes don't bother the Dutch. The earlier mentioned "manly men" argue that we have cars, therefore we don't need bikes. Many of these people exist in my area of SoCal. They wouldn't ride a bike if their lives depended on it. If we could convince these guys that a bike was their most important tool for short-range transportation, we could convince anyone and everyone in the US. Without this mental change, implementing Dutch features would be like making lemonade with salt instead of sugar. It would not taste good.
My final thought about bringing Dutch influence to the states is about population density. The US' population density is significantly lower than the Netherlands. In one of the presentations, we learned that the Netherlands' population density is about ten times greater than the US. The other thing that we learned was the policy in the Netherlands. They try to limit sprawl as much as possible. Also, they limit big box stores as much as they can. This keeps the towns small and dense. Bike mobility in small dense towns is better than in large sprawling communities. I think an improvement that we can make is to limit development. Before sprawling, we should increase the density of existing cities. By doing so, we can start to implement the Dutch design that works better in their dense cities.
Overall, I enjoyed my studies. I feel that I have been equipped with a new arsenal to use later on in my career. I hope to return to the Netherlands in the future.
My final thought about bringing Dutch influence to the states is about population density. The US' population density is significantly lower than the Netherlands. In one of the presentations, we learned that the Netherlands' population density is about ten times greater than the US. The other thing that we learned was the policy in the Netherlands. They try to limit sprawl as much as possible. Also, they limit big box stores as much as they can. This keeps the towns small and dense. Bike mobility in small dense towns is better than in large sprawling communities. I think an improvement that we can make is to limit development. Before sprawling, we should increase the density of existing cities. By doing so, we can start to implement the Dutch design that works better in their dense cities.
Overall, I enjoyed my studies. I feel that I have been equipped with a new arsenal to use later on in my career. I hope to return to the Netherlands in the future.
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