[SecurityMinded]

This is a liberal utopia in US terms. The author is blissfully ignoring the fact that, The Netherlands is a postage stamp size country, smaller then most US states individually. There are only 9 states which are smaller than the whole country of the Netherlands. Even in the big, highly congested cities like NYC, LA, SF, the city sprawl is very big, making bike transportation very unfeasible. Should we uproot our cities and build them to welcome an utopia? I don't think so. I lived in Europe for the first 32 years of my life, all in big cities of several millions of people population. Even there, despite the traffic congestion, biking to work or shopping was not an option. Netherlands, especially the large cities in this country, like Amsterdam, are exceptions or happenstances. Taking them as a blueprint is unrealistic for the most part in the rest of the world.

[shagmin]

Nothing is set in stone and the choice is not all one or the other. The US being so large means different regions can experiment with different things (I wish there was more of this). Plus, cities are somewhat like living, organic things. NYC made Times Square pedestrian-only and that's widely been viewed as a success (and there's more biking than ever in NYC in general last time I visited).

I live in a fast growing area where the city is actively building greenways and has started to encourage a lot more dense, vertical development strategically around certain areas. Construction is happening one way or another, why have yet another urban area sprawling in every direction?

[wienke]

So the point of the article is that if you decide something now it will effect how the world looks in 50 years. The picture with the 2000 vision shows how others thought at that time. If the Dutch would have chosen that path, it now would look like that. City architecture are the way they are because we made decisions on how we wanted it to be.

[pxmpxm]

Expect to get downvoted by every left leaning US-suburbia-upbringing city transplant on HN. I've always assumed this is entirely about rejecting their idyllic childhood and parents' lifestyle, since victimhood is the currency of their social circles. An exclusively American phenomenon in any case.

Sincerely, fellow European with a nearly identical life experience to yours.