Not Just Bikes
2 HN recommenders · recommended in 3 months, 2022–2024
3:26 · 408K views · Oct 21, 2019
A short Not Just Bikes video on the 1960s plans (Plan Jokinen) to cut highways through Amsterdam to accommodate cars. It shows how radically different the city would look had they succeeded.
HN commenters cite it as a concise illustration of how the Netherlands narrowly avoided car-centric planning and then built its bike culture.
4 comments from Hacker News
I do all those things in Amsterdam. I can get everywhere in Amsterdam much quicker by bike than driving or public transport. Cycling in the rain and snow [2] is no problem, you just need the right gear. What non-Amsterdammers don't realise is the city never used to be a cyclist's paradise. In the 1960s, Amsterdam's car-obsessed urban planners had grand visions to drive motorways through the inner city, razing the historical buildings, and constructing Manhattan-like skyscraper clusters. Here's a 3 minute video "Highways Almost Destroyed Amsterdam" [1] about those plans, the fightback in the 1970s, and the resulting bike culture that Amsterdam has today. Enjoy! [1] this video [2] [LINK]
Not Just Bikes made an interesting video on the thankfully-avoided plan to build a US-style highway system in Amsterdam: this video
Amsterdam and Paris used to be both be very car dependent. Here is a video about Amsterdam before they shunned cars. this video
Indeed it wasn’t always this way. And this mindset plagued more countries. The Netherlands narrowly avoided it: this video