Great interview and impressing surroundings. But I was the most impressed by mrs Besselink. ' We don't have a lack of space in a city, just a lack of bold decision makers.' Eat that, decision makers!
Yes! Agreed 💯 And that does mean that "we the people" must speak up, grow community support, elect leaders who will commit to delivering said bold decisions, and hold them accountable if they get distracted and don't deliver. Thanks so much for watching and for contributing to the conversation. Cheers! John
As a side note from someone from the area, it impressed me a lot that the old railway station was demolished and a completely new one was built while most of the trainservice still continued...
This is a very good point. I, too, am impressed with this spirit of preserving mobility even during major construction projects. Thanks for watching and for contributing to the conversation. Cheers! John
I spent the summer JuneJuly 24 in Rotterdam. And i have to say this is my fav city (closely followed by Rome 😅) i am so impressed with the infrastructure and greenery all over. Especially the parks (Kraslinge is awesome 👌) as a cyclist in the UK this is pretty awesome. The UK are trying very hard in active travel but it doesnt seem to be a priority as much. Im back in Rotterdam in December to visit newly made friends and then again all next Summer with a view to move there. Rotterdam will be my new home in the not too distant future 👍
I lived in Rotterdam from 1996-2003, just before all the improvements. Nice to see the city centre again. Much better this way. I used to take the cycle path through the Maastunnel to get from the south of Rotterdam to the centre. Witth the scary escalators😅
Glad you enjoyed seeing the improvements. I've never checked out that tunnel and those escalators, but I came close to doing so during my visit in 2018. Thanks so much for tuning in and for the comment. Cheers! John
The Maastunnel was renovated a few years ago, but the scary escalators are still there. I got used to them already, but they were definitely scary at the beginning.
I've experienced Rotterdam by bike man and boy. It was always a good place to get around by bike, but the city has been adding small improvements continuously over the years. I do not live in Rotterdam anymore but I regularly visit, by bike, public transport or car. And all are viable modes of transportation.
Thanks so much for watching and sharing your experience. It has been a delight for me to observe these transformations over the past decade. Cheers! John
So many good take aways from this video tour and conversation. The need to have organized bicycle parking to prevent heater skelter parking resonated strongly with me. One of my biggest pet peeves is the dockless micro mobility devices that are constantly strewn on sidewalks and blocking ADA curb cuts or access to beg buttons. It is so unfair to those with mobility challenges. Of course, ADA curb cuts and beg buttons are obsolete anyway as The Netherlands has shown us. Thanks John and Jose'.
@@ActiveTownsthat makes sense. I’m not used to see them, but I’m way outside of the Randstad or any other big city where those types of bikes make sense.
Yeah, the data indicates that intersections are where most conflicts occur... getting them done right is essential, although I will say that having the approaches designed to support safer speeds helps the intersections perform as they should.
49:55 Listen to how silent that car is. A very effective illustration of the effect of the soft, overgrown verge between the two paved lanes. And at 50:31 you immediately hear the difference at the transition.
@@ActiveTowns It’s amazing how some of the relatively simple interventions involving adding green space, turn out to have so many benefits of which some perhaps weren’t even considered beforehand.
@@JulesStoop Yeah, precisely! I'm hoping these benefits are truly recognized and appreciated as this is a positive step in the right direction in many contexts.
I've lived in Rotterdam for 10 years now. I actually used to work in José's department (Stadsontwikkeling / City Development) on the same floor) and I've seen the city infrastructure improve dramatically. However, as always, the poorer south of the city is getting left behind as always. If you go deeper into the Feijenoord and Charlois areas, you will still see large roads with little to no decent bicycle infrastructure along major throughfares and right-turn slip lanes cutting off bike and pedestrian crossings. Also, drivers are enabled to behave agressively on most secondary streets due to there beubg no traffic calming measures. This leads to danferous situations for people walking and especially children.
Yeah, this is consistent with most larger cities trying to transform away from car dependency that I have observed and documented globally over the past couple of decades. Obviously, everyone deserves to benefit from safe and inviting environments where one can walk and cycle to meaningful destinations. Thank you so much for watching and for contributing to the conversation. Cheers! John
I'm visually impaired and the Fietsstraat along Coolsingel is so unsafe that I use the 2 metro stations, Stadhuis and Beurs, to cross Coolsingel if I'm on my own. Same with the huge crossing in front of Central Station.
Thanks for the insights. You might be interested in my recent interview with Anna Zivarts, author of the book When Driving is Not An Option, who has a visual impairment that prevents her from driving but primarily gets around by walking, biking and using public transit: ruclips.net/video/0avPret6z_k/видео.html
For viewers outside the Netherlands. Rotterdam is a city with about 670,000 inhabitants, comparable to Detroit*. It has the largest port outside Asia**, so that also means a lot of freight traffic. But as you can see, the emphasis is on the quality of life in the city and for the inhabitants. I think that few Dutch people see Rotterdam as a green city where you go to live for the peace and quiet, it (still) is really a 'work' city but good planning really makes a big difference as you can see. * Yes, much bigger than the largest port (Los Angeles) in the USA. ** Also yes, Detroit with the outskirts is much bigger, but that also applies to Rotterdam.
Thanks so much for watching and for this context. I’d only add that the “new” version of Rotterdam is now increasingly attracting residents back into the city center whereas there was a period of several decades after the war when very people lived there.
The centre of Nijmegen was also leveled during WW2. There they also wanted to make it a "modern" Usa style city with large true roads in the centre and along the river Waal. These plans were not well received by the population, but the plans were almost accepted by the city councel. But when the final decision was made, they cane 1 vote short for the "modern" plans. Then the main city planner of Nijmegen moved to Rotterdam were he was the planner of the developments in the late 40s, 50s and 60s. Nijmegen escaped another disaster just by 1 vote.....
@@colachofcbNot really. Eindhoven was not an old city, just a fast growing industrial village since the mid 19th century so complete different street and housing structure of the "before" . Then the destruction during the war was incomparable to Nijmegen and Rotterdam. Lots of damage but not the destruction of the whole centre. After WW2 it just got bigger and bigger and city planners were all car centric in those days. So it was not a complete redesign of the existing (or devastated) city.
@@colachofcbin principle Eindhoven is a vast collection of many small villages, which joined together under the Eindhoven umbrella in 1920. Around that time the Philips light bulb and later electronics company ‘came to town’. Many of the former villages are now neighbourhoods like Woensel, Acht, Strijp, Gestel, Tongelre, Stratum, Braalthem etc.
@@ce17ec Not true. Eindhoven is an old town. It was given city rights by the Duke of Brabant in the middle ages, but never grew bigger than a few streets. It was even fortified and surrounded by a moat and had a castle.
Given the amount of change I've observed over the past decade, I wouldn't be surprised if this or something comparable did happen. Thanks for watching. Cheers! John
@@ActiveTowns I don't think so. The old V&D parking garage was recently restored and slightly enlarged. A real revolution would have been: no cars on Coolsingel.
Yes, I fully agree. The high levels of littering in The Netherlands, basically everywhere, is indeed a weak spot and should be addressed much more firmly.
ruclips.net/video/qVgTkd2zn3s/видео.htmlsi=Rg258iuk51AtfyH5&t=975 yes that is a surfboard. Probably on his way to the Rig010, a surfpool right in downtown Rotterdam :)
Yes! So cool. I didn't realize there was a surfpool downtown, that would have been fun to hit up. I do miss my days of surfing in California and Hawai'i. Thanks so much for watching and for this informative comment. Cheers! John
After the bombardement of Rotterdam in 1940 some more buildings could have been saved and restored. But the decisionmakers in those days decided to tear them down as well.
Until the mid 70s this was done in so many Dutch towns. Some cities destructed much more of their historic buildings in these decades for modern housing and road planning then the war ever did. Only then the tables turned to the better.
Yeah, @proinsiasbaiceir6580, many saw it as an opportunity to start with a clean slate, "out with old, in with the new"... only to find out a few decades later that their modernist visions were a disaster for creating a vibrant city. I give Rotterdam city leaders much credit for realizing the mistakes of the past and making the decision to reverse course. Thanks so much for tuning in!
@@ce17ec Exactly. I'm originally from a Dutch town in the southeast. A local historian once told me: 'They always talk about the damage caused by WW2, but they never mention the many buildings torn down afterwards. In my town medieval houses were demollished in the '50! Due to bombardements most German cities were heavily damaged in WW2. Yet a German documentary told that more buildings were destroyed after WO2 than during that war!
Yeah, we see so many sad stories in some/many of our "older" cities here in North America, where obviously there were no bombardments, just beautiful historic buildings torn down in the spirit of modernism, making way for... wider STROADs and a bunch of surface parking lots and ultimately no remaining reason to go to the historic city centers anymore... fortunately, many of these cities are now attempting to reverse this damage, assuming there is anything left to resurrect
no, they are not going to get banned. The only thing is that people who tune them get more harshly punished. they will get confiscated, and a very high fine + the tuning equipment will get destroyed. if you do it again, you lose your moped license.
Suggestion: watch 1966 Stad zonder hart. Een film van Jan Schaper to be found on RUclips for images of a destroyed Rotterdam, that was rebuild t serve Big Money and the car. A city without a heart. My parents were born in the 1920 and lived the drama of the Nazi destruction of the city in World War 2. I visited my grandparents very often in the 1960's and later, the time in history the film is about. The harbor and the whole transportation industry is determining life in Rotterdam. It never was a democratic town, industrious yes, but the people, the labor force never had a real grip on the city development. It was and is blunt capitalism.
exactly the reason why they adopted the rational, functional van Traa plan and ditched romantic and archaic Witteveen. There are a few places where you can see his facades as intended: the old ABN AMRO building that now houses Donner.
and the bikelanes are clearly also blunt capitalism. The bicycle industrie makes money of it, and we ride on them. We spend less money on maintaining the roads. Yes money always plays a role. But all seiing bad. Goes to far. There is also allot of positivity in the world.
@belgianbikeability7295 In the documentary I am pointing to, the central message was a city center without people in the evenings and not necessarily working is a city without heart. The café's and restaurants were empty because the were aimed at the posh people with money. To make cities that are inhabited and getting their flavor by people of all classes and walks of life is in my opinion the only democratic way to go. Gentrification of the center of the city is decided by the level of social housing, affordable rents and prices of apartments. The capitalist rule is that the center is for the rich. The film shows that wasn´t the situation in Rotterdam before the nazis destroyed the city center. That is the importance of that documentary. That it shows that who are able to enjoy a city is a political decision. It is not only the choice of people living in the center or not, but also who en how they are living there.
Rotterdam doesn't have a good reputation in the Netherlands in terms of its architecture or bikeability, and I have to say that I still think it's pretty ugly and huge and car infested compared to the rest of the country, but I'm glad that it's getting better.
Yes! 💯 And this is precisely why I say Rotterdam is the perfect city for other large car-infested places to visit and study because they, as a city, are making huge strides to turn things around. Visiting cities like Utrecht, Amsterdam, or Delft is fun and exciting but not very informative or helpful when your city looks, feels, and operates like Rotterdam at its "worst" 10, 20, or 30 years ago. Thanks so much for tuning in and for this contribution to the conversation. Cheers! John
Disagree about the architecture. I was born in 1962 in Charlois don't live in Rotterdam anymore. But compared to what it used to be and how it is now. The modern architecture is spectacular especially compared to other Dutch cities. Cycling infrastructure though is still developing...
Thats not true for me. I like Rotterdam, even better than Amsterdam. The architecture of the modern buildings is definitely better than in Amsterdam in my opinion. Although Amsterdam is improving the architecture at the Zuidas. Because of the WW2 bombings there are not a lot of old buildings in Rotterdam, but the ones which survived the bombings are also of the same nice architecture as in Amsterdam. The vibes in Rotterdam are just better than in Amsterdam, and I’m not boasting about my hometown or so, I was born, raised and live close to Amsterdam.
@@charlyvanbuuren2947 The modern architecture of Rotterdam is uninspired, boring. One in a dozen. Buildings without any relation to the urban landscape..
Great interview and impressing surroundings. But I was the most impressed by mrs Besselink. ' We don't have a lack of space in a city, just a lack of bold decision makers.' Eat that, decision makers!
Yes! Agreed 💯 And that does mean that "we the people" must speak up, grow community support, elect leaders who will commit to delivering said bold decisions, and hold them accountable if they get distracted and don't deliver. Thanks so much for watching and for contributing to the conversation. Cheers! John
11:35 Looks at 10 foot wide bike lane and says “it’s going to be redesigned […] with proper pike lanes” ❤
Yep. Continuous improvement. Thanks for tuning in. Cheers! John
As a side note from someone from the area, it impressed me a lot that the old railway station was demolished and a completely new one was built while most of the trainservice still continued...
This is a very good point. I, too, am impressed with this spirit of preserving mobility even during major construction projects. Thanks for watching and for contributing to the conversation. Cheers! John
I spent the summer JuneJuly 24 in Rotterdam. And i have to say this is my fav city (closely followed by Rome 😅) i am so impressed with the infrastructure and greenery all over. Especially the parks (Kraslinge is awesome 👌) as a cyclist in the UK this is pretty awesome. The UK are trying very hard in active travel but it doesnt seem to be a priority as much. Im back in Rotterdam in December to visit newly made friends and then again all next Summer with a view to move there. Rotterdam will be my new home in the not too distant future 👍
Yay! So happy for you. Best of luck in making that move. Thanks so much for watching. Cheers! John
I lived in Rotterdam from 1996-2003, just before all the improvements. Nice to see the city centre again. Much better this way. I used to take the cycle path through the Maastunnel to get from the south of Rotterdam to the centre. Witth the scary escalators😅
Glad you enjoyed seeing the improvements. I've never checked out that tunnel and those escalators, but I came close to doing so during my visit in 2018. Thanks so much for tuning in and for the comment. Cheers! John
The Maastunnel was renovated a few years ago, but the scary escalators are still there. I got used to them already, but they were definitely scary at the beginning.
There is also an elevator, 30 meters to the side....
I live in Oud Charlois, and I hope they never replace those ancient escalators from the '30s.
I've experienced Rotterdam by bike man and boy. It was always a good place to get around by bike, but the city has been adding small improvements continuously over the years. I do not live in Rotterdam anymore but I regularly visit, by bike, public transport or car. And all are viable modes of transportation.
Thanks so much for watching and sharing your experience. It has been a delight for me to observe these transformations over the past decade. Cheers! John
So many good take aways from this video tour and conversation. The need to have organized bicycle parking to prevent heater skelter parking resonated strongly with me. One of my biggest pet peeves is the dockless micro mobility devices that are constantly strewn on sidewalks and blocking ADA curb cuts or access to beg buttons. It is so unfair to those with mobility challenges. Of course, ADA curb cuts and beg buttons are obsolete anyway as The Netherlands has shown us. Thanks John and Jose'.
Thanks, Gary! Glad you found this helpful 😀
Funny that she rode a vouwfiets :)
Btw, you two should have stopped at that pedestrian crossing at around 23:30
Copy that! Thanks so much for watching. Much appreciated.
btw We both had folding bikes and we rode the train in together from Utrecht.
@@ActiveTownsthat makes sense. I’m not used to see them, but I’m way outside of the Randstad or any other big city where those types of bikes make sense.
Male 65 year old here. I bike commute 6.5 kms (4 miles) each way daily (25'/30') on a flat trail in N California.
Love it! Keep on, keeping on and thank you so much for tuning in. Cheers! John
Indeed, intersections may actually be more important than (seperate) bike lanes. It’s there where you can encounter motor vehicles…
Yeah, the data indicates that intersections are where most conflicts occur... getting them done right is essential, although I will say that having the approaches designed to support safer speeds helps the intersections perform as they should.
Thanks for the tour.
You are quite welcome! Thanks for tuning in.😀
49:55 Listen to how silent that car is. A very effective illustration of the effect of the soft, overgrown verge between the two paved lanes. And at 50:31 you immediately hear the difference at the transition.
Indeed! And I did not adjust the volume down in that section in any way. Thanks for watching and for commenting. Cheers! John
@@ActiveTowns It’s amazing how some of the relatively simple interventions involving adding green space, turn out to have so many benefits of which some perhaps weren’t even considered beforehand.
@@JulesStoop Yeah, precisely! I'm hoping these benefits are truly recognized and appreciated as this is a positive step in the right direction in many contexts.
I've lived in Rotterdam for 10 years now. I actually used to work in José's department (Stadsontwikkeling / City Development) on the same floor) and I've seen the city infrastructure improve dramatically. However, as always, the poorer south of the city is getting left behind as always. If you go deeper into the Feijenoord and Charlois areas, you will still see large roads with little to no decent bicycle infrastructure along major throughfares and right-turn slip lanes cutting off bike and pedestrian crossings. Also, drivers are enabled to behave agressively on most secondary streets due to there beubg no traffic calming measures. This leads to danferous situations for people walking and especially children.
Yeah, this is consistent with most larger cities trying to transform away from car dependency that I have observed and documented globally over the past couple of decades. Obviously, everyone deserves to benefit from safe and inviting environments where one can walk and cycle to meaningful destinations. Thank you so much for watching and for contributing to the conversation. Cheers! John
I'm visually impaired and the Fietsstraat along Coolsingel is so unsafe that I use the 2 metro stations, Stadhuis and Beurs, to cross Coolsingel if I'm on my own. Same with the huge crossing in front of Central Station.
Thanks for the insights.
You might be interested in my recent interview with Anna Zivarts, author of the book When Driving is Not An Option, who has a visual impairment that prevents her from driving but primarily gets around by walking, biking and using public transit: ruclips.net/video/0avPret6z_k/видео.html
For viewers outside the Netherlands. Rotterdam is a city with about 670,000 inhabitants, comparable to Detroit*. It has the largest port outside Asia**, so that also means a lot of freight traffic. But as you can see, the emphasis is on the quality of life in the city and for the inhabitants.
I think that few Dutch people see Rotterdam as a green city where you go to live for the peace and quiet, it (still) is really a 'work' city but good planning really makes a big difference as you can see.
* Yes, much bigger than the largest port (Los Angeles) in the USA.
** Also yes, Detroit with the outskirts is much bigger, but that also applies to Rotterdam.
Thanks so much for watching and for this context. I’d only add that the “new” version of Rotterdam is now increasingly attracting residents back into the city center whereas there was a period of several decades after the war when very people lived there.
The centre of Nijmegen was also leveled during WW2. There they also wanted to make it a "modern" Usa style city with large true roads in the centre and along the river Waal. These plans were not well received by the population, but the plans were almost accepted by the city councel. But when the final decision was made, they cane 1 vote short for the "modern" plans. Then the main city planner of Nijmegen moved to Rotterdam were he was the planner of the developments in the late 40s, 50s and 60s. Nijmegen escaped another disaster just by 1 vote.....
I wonder if it was the same case with Eindohoven, which was bombed too, as it was in Nijmegen
@@colachofcbNot really. Eindhoven was not an old city, just a fast growing industrial village since the mid 19th century so complete different street and housing structure of the "before" . Then the destruction during the war was incomparable to Nijmegen and Rotterdam. Lots of damage but not the destruction of the whole centre. After WW2 it just got bigger and bigger and city planners were all car centric in those days. So it was not a complete redesign of the existing (or devastated) city.
@@ce17ec Thank you for the info, I had no ideo Eindhoven was a younger city with different layout before the war.
@@colachofcbin principle Eindhoven is a vast collection of many small villages, which joined together under the Eindhoven umbrella in 1920. Around that time the Philips light bulb and later electronics company ‘came to town’. Many of the former villages are now neighbourhoods like Woensel, Acht, Strijp, Gestel, Tongelre, Stratum, Braalthem etc.
@@ce17ec Not true. Eindhoven is an old town. It was given city rights by the Duke of Brabant in the middle ages, but never grew bigger than a few streets. It was even fortified and surrounded by a moat and had a castle.
Yay, mixed use is what is sorely lacking in the US.
Agreed! 💯
Als de gemeente de ballen heeft, maakt het van Q-Park de Bijenkorf een fietsenstalling. Kan je de pop-up parking ook afschaffen. Make it happen ;)
Given the amount of change I've observed over the past decade, I wouldn't be surprised if this or something comparable did happen. Thanks for watching. Cheers! John
@@ActiveTowns I don't think so. The old V&D parking garage was recently restored and slightly enlarged. A real revolution would have been: no cars on Coolsingel.
proud dutchie here
With good reason! Thanks for tuning in. 🙏
Great review of Rotterdam, shame about the zwerfafval (litter).
Yeah, that one section was very littered up and quite a strange sight. Thank you so much for watching. Cheers! John
Yes, I fully agree. The high levels of littering in The Netherlands, basically everywhere, is indeed a weak spot and should be addressed much more firmly.
Parklet! Nice terminology. Wat is it in Dutch?
Not sure... I've always just heard them referred to as parklets.
Fietsvlonder noemt de gemeente Rotterdam ze
Thanks!
@@ActiveTowns Vlonder - a very sophisticated word in Dutch. One of the translations is decking. I would associate vlonder with the material WOOD.
it is called "fietsvlonder " in dutch
Rotterdam is still missing greenery; trees, gras, and too much asphalt.
Yes, they have made a lot of progress, but they still have a long, long way to go yet. Thanks so much for tuning in and for the comment. Cheers! John
ruclips.net/video/qVgTkd2zn3s/видео.htmlsi=Rg258iuk51AtfyH5&t=975 yes that is a surfboard. Probably on his way to the Rig010, a surfpool right in downtown Rotterdam :)
Yes! So cool. I didn't realize there was a surfpool downtown, that would have been fun to hit up. I do miss my days of surfing in California and Hawai'i.
Thanks so much for watching and for this informative comment.
Cheers!
John
After the bombardement of Rotterdam in 1940 some more buildings could have been saved and restored. But the decisionmakers in those days decided to tear them down as well.
Until the mid 70s this was done in so many Dutch towns. Some cities destructed much more of their historic buildings in these decades for modern housing and road planning then the war ever did. Only then the tables turned to the better.
Yeah, @proinsiasbaiceir6580, many saw it as an opportunity to start with a clean slate, "out with old, in with the new"... only to find out a few decades later that their modernist visions were a disaster for creating a vibrant city. I give Rotterdam city leaders much credit for realizing the mistakes
of the past and making the decision to reverse course. Thanks so much for tuning in!
@@ce17ec Exactly. I'm originally from a Dutch town in the southeast. A local historian once told me: 'They always talk about the damage caused by WW2, but they never mention the many buildings torn down afterwards. In my town medieval houses were demollished in the '50! Due to bombardements most German cities were heavily damaged in WW2. Yet a German documentary told that more buildings were destroyed after WO2 than during that war!
Yeah, we see so many sad stories in some/many of our "older" cities here in North America, where obviously there were no bombardments, just beautiful historic buildings torn down in the spirit of modernism, making way for... wider STROADs and a bunch of surface parking lots and ultimately no remaining reason to go to the historic city centers anymore... fortunately, many of these cities are now attempting to reverse this damage, assuming there is anything left to resurrect
Funny to see a very similar route @CDawgVA took when he was there during Twitchcon. A bit more calm this...
Cool! Thanks so much for tuning in. Cheers! John
Monday morning . . .
21:55 those noise bombers need to be banned.
You won't get any argument from me. They are a nuisance on so many levels. Thanks so much for tuning in. Cheers! John
no, they are not going to get banned. The only thing is that people who tune them get more harshly punished. they will get confiscated, and a very high fine + the tuning equipment will get destroyed. if you do it again, you lose your moped license.
Suggestion: watch 1966 Stad zonder hart. Een film van Jan Schaper to be found on RUclips for images of a destroyed Rotterdam, that was rebuild t serve Big Money and the car. A city without a heart. My parents were born in the 1920 and lived the drama of the Nazi destruction of the city in World War 2. I visited my grandparents very often in the 1960's and later, the time in history the film is about. The harbor and the whole transportation industry is determining life in Rotterdam. It never was a democratic town, industrious yes, but the people, the labor force never had a real grip on the city development. It was and is blunt capitalism.
Thanks for the suggestion and for watching. Cheers! John
exactly the reason why they adopted the rational, functional van Traa plan and ditched romantic and archaic Witteveen. There are a few places where you can see his facades as intended: the old ABN AMRO building that now houses Donner.
and the bikelanes are clearly also blunt capitalism. The bicycle industrie makes money of it, and we ride on them. We spend less money on maintaining the roads. Yes money always plays a role. But all seiing bad. Goes to far. There is also allot of positivity in the world.
@belgianbikeability7295 In the documentary I am pointing to, the central message was a city center without people in the evenings and not necessarily working is a city without heart. The café's and restaurants were empty because the were aimed at the posh people with money. To make cities that are inhabited and getting their flavor by people of all classes and walks of life is in my opinion the only democratic way to go. Gentrification of the center of the city is decided by the level of social housing, affordable rents and prices of apartments. The capitalist rule is that the center is for the rich. The film shows that wasn´t the situation in Rotterdam before the nazis destroyed the city center. That is the importance of that documentary. That it shows that who are able to enjoy a city is a political decision. It is not only the choice of people living in the center or not, but also who en how they are living there.
Rotterdam doesn't have a good reputation in the Netherlands in terms of its architecture or bikeability, and I have to say that I still think it's pretty ugly and huge and car infested compared to the rest of the country, but I'm glad that it's getting better.
Yes! 💯 And this is precisely why I say Rotterdam is the perfect city for other large car-infested places to visit and study because they, as a city, are making huge strides to turn things around. Visiting cities like Utrecht, Amsterdam, or Delft is fun and exciting but not very informative or helpful when your city looks, feels, and operates like Rotterdam at its "worst" 10, 20, or 30 years ago. Thanks so much for tuning in and for this contribution to the conversation. Cheers! John
Disagree about the architecture. I was born in 1962 in Charlois don't live in Rotterdam anymore. But compared to what it used to be and how it is now. The modern architecture is spectacular especially compared to other Dutch cities.
Cycling infrastructure though is still developing...
Thats not true for me. I like Rotterdam, even better than Amsterdam. The architecture of the modern buildings is definitely better than in Amsterdam in my opinion. Although Amsterdam is improving the architecture at the Zuidas. Because of the WW2 bombings there are not a lot of old buildings in Rotterdam, but the ones which survived the bombings are also of the same nice architecture as in Amsterdam. The vibes in Rotterdam are just better than in Amsterdam, and I’m not boasting about my hometown or so, I was born, raised and live close to Amsterdam.
@@charlyvanbuuren2947 The modern architecture of Rotterdam is uninspired, boring. One in a dozen. Buildings without any relation to the urban landscape..
@@i.k.8868 you clearly don't have knowledge on this subject...