Bruntlett Chris - Building the cycling city: the Dutch blueprint for urban vitality

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Copyright 2018 Melissa Bruntlett and Chris Bruntlett

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Keywords: Amsterdam, Atlanta, Austin, bakfiets, bicycle, bicycle lane, bicycle parking, bicycle superhighway, Boston, cargo bicycle, Eindhoven, Groningen, Green Lane Project, New York City, Philadelphia, Portland, Rotterdam, safety bicycle, San Francisco, Seattle, transit, urban design, urban planning, Utrecht, Vancouver, Vision Zero

TO CORALIE AND ETIENNE

the best adventurers
any parents could ask for.

You are our constant inspiration,
and the reason we keep riding
along on this crazy journey!

In the summer of 2010, our family of four made a decision that would transform our lives for the better, although not in ways that we ever could have anticipated. After moving just blocks from Commercial-Broadway Station on Vancouvers east side and soon finding our car collecting dust in the parking garage, we decided to ditch it and make all of our trips by foot, bicycle, public transit, and rental car (in the rare instances when we needed to take a road trip).

The decision was solely practical, and not ideological. Living in a compact, walkable neighborhood afforded us the luxury of having everything within a 20-minute walk or 10-minute train ride, which we quickly discovered could be replaced with short bike ride. Best of all, this resulted in an extra $800 in our pockets each month, an incentive enabled by the variety of mobility options offered by our city. This includes car-share, access to which ultimately convinced us to take the leap and give up car ownership for good.

Within months, we began documenting this newfound freedom, mobility, and simplicity via words, photography, and film. Perhaps unsurprisingly, having to spend less time commuting by car, circling to find that coveted parking space, or contributing to the congestion in our city effectively afforded us more time to share our stories. Those active forms of transport inspired us and fueled our creativity, and they continue to do so today.

Over the past eight years, this work has taken us to places we never could have imagined, as we garnered a global audience on social media and ended up speaking about the (many) triumphs and (few) challenges of our car-lite lifestyle in cities as far away from home as Montreal, Quebec; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and even Auckland, New Zealand. It also provided the basis of Modacityour fledgling multi-service creative agency that now works with a variety of public and private partners around the world.

In December 2015, after several years of writing about North Americas emerging bike cultures, we walked into the office of our editors at Daily Hive with an ambitious proposal: a five-week, five-city tour of the Netherlands during the summer of 2016, to gather their inspiring cycling stories and share them through words, photography, and film. To our immense surprise, they immediately said yes, and with the help of some additional corporate sponsors and a modest crowdsourcing campaign, we set off with our two children on the trip of a lifetime.

Those five weeks were nothing short of life changing as we pedaled along Rotterdams stunning Erasmus Bridge and the Maastunnel, Eindhovens awesome Hovenring and Van Gogh Path, Amsterdams bustling Vondelpark and Rijksmuseum, Utrechts vibrant Vredenburg and Biltstraat, and Groningens impressive smart routes and car-free city center. We also had the immense privilege of sitting down with many local experts, such as the Urban Cycling Institutes Meredith Glaser, Dutch cycling ambassador Mark Wagenbuur, Cycling Cities: The European Experience co-authors Ruth Oldenziel and Frank Veraart, and the University of Amsterdams own Fietsprofessor Marco te Brmmelstroet.

Upon our return to Vancouver, we wrote a series of feature-length articles about each city we visited, an exercise that was equal parts rewarding and frustrating. The latter came from having to reduce so many jam-packed days of amazing experiences, several hundred years of socioeconomic history, and the many fascinating characters we met along the way into just 1,500 words. A tremendous amount of the material we had initially hoped to cover was left on the cutting room floor. So, after completing the final story in September 2016, we resolved to assemble a book pitch, which formed the basis for the volume youre now reading.

Of the overwhelming outside interest that drove the crazy journey to this particular point, we can only offer the following explanation: our followers were, and continue to be, intrigued to see a livable, life-sized city through the eyes of one (or four) of its users. This has turned our familys unremarkable day-to-day existence into something truly noteworthy, where the simple act of moving around our city is a memorable, shareable, and joyous experience.