StrongHaven Field Trip!
When I used to run schools, we would take at least one day each year to send our faculty to other urban schools that we’d heard good things about. Then everybody would come back and share their observations, with the idea that we could learn from the way that other schools did things. Of course, best practices are not always as portable as they might look on the surface. We always prefaced these visits with a reminder that we’d be observing a snapshot of an evolving ecosystem— sometimes the surface details that caught our eyes were the result of years of iteration. Best to look for the underlying principles guiding that learning in addition to noting concrete practices, which on their own may or may not yield the results we want.
It’s in this spirit that I’m trying to organize my StrongHaven-related observations regarding our recent family vacation in the Netherlands. As viewers of Not Just Bikes can attest, observations of land use and transportation in the Netherlands could provide endless fodder for beating up on North American practices and, in particular, U.S. transportation engineers.
There’s an easy case to be made for “they’re smart and we suck.” But to encourage more productive local dialogue and avoid immiserating us all further, I’ll try not to hang out on that soapbox. Instead, I’d like to focus on some of what I found compelling about the Dutch way of doing things, with an eye toward those things that I think most people in our little town of Fairhaven would also find desirable.
Haarlem Globetrotting
Our home base in the Netherlands was the charming city of Haarlem. The city takes up the same amount of space as Fairhaven (12 sq miles) and at 160K population has just about ten times as many residents. Compared to our neighboring city of New Bedford, it has half the land area and about 60% more residents. I share this both because this relative thickness underlies a lot of the highlights I share below. Likewise, I don’t want you to think I’m trotting out some quaint little tourist village to make the points below. This is a legit city.
One thing that I think most of my Fairhaven neighbors would appreciate is how quiet its streets are. We stayed at a B&B along a popular street for shopping, a few blocks away from the main market square, where a carnival happened to be in town. Despite all the activity in the neighborhood, it was striking how much quieter it was there than back home in our leafy suburb. This was a direct effect of the fact that few cars were driving through the neighborhood and that no cars were traveling at speeds much above 15 mph. In addition to reducing cortisone levels, this baseline quiet makes it possible to have other things that I think most of my Fairhaven neighbors would want.
OK, so a moped that went by a couple of streets away and made some noise but you get the idea! Quieter streets are more comfortable places for neighbors to interact. In the video above, a guy running errands on his bike stops to chat with a shop owner. The calm, comfortable feel of the street makes interactions like this possible. Most people I know in Fairhaven, particularly neighbors who are retired, are eager to chat with neighbors and friends more frequently and in this kind of serendipitous way. The loose connections that these types of interactions bring about not only combat isolation (particularly for elders), but they encourage a greater sense of trust and resilience throughout a community.
Of course, vibrant street life is also great for business! The early Spring weather in the Netherlands is just as variable as here in New England. But while the few restaurants that do have outdoor seating back home have barely put out tables, the outdoor tables at cafes and restaurants in Haarlem were packed throughout the day. Likewise, ample foot and bike traffic throughout town means that a variety of shops attract customers. To my Fairhaven friends, if you’re interested in having more cafes, shops, and restaurants that are more niche (that cute shop that has X), you also need to encourage the culture of walking and biking that those types of businesses thrive in.
Haarlem has a historical lesson for us on this point. Back in the 1990’s, the city government decided to eliminate most parking and car access to its central square, the Grote Markt. When the plan to do this was proposed, some small business owners in the square objected out of fear that a loss of parking in the area would hurt their business. Anyone familiar with efforts to reduce parking minimums is familiar with this objection! Suffice it to say, the proposal passed and the sky did not fall on small business owners. The Grote Markt became an even more sought-after destination, not only for locals and tourists but for weekenders from Amsterdam.
Be the Lack of Traffic You Wish to See
One refrain I hear a lot from people back home is that things like high-speed rail wouldn’t work in the U.S. because people here “like their cars.” Even if you buy into the idea that there’s some deep-seated cultural reason that more people drive in this country, you’d still probably agree that pretty much everyone HATES sitting in traffic, especially during their daily commute. American DOT’s have generally tried to solve this by investing billions in highways and other infrastructure for personal automobiles. Unfortunately these massive investments, by inducing demand and further locking everyone into car commutes, have only made traffic worse. From what I saw, driving in the Netherlands, at least in Haarlem where we were based, seemed quite pleasant. No traffic jams during rush hour and no one blowing their horn. Speeds on roads between towns were similar to what I see in the U.S. And, at least in Haarlem, people who did choose to drive into the city could park in an underground lot at the edge of the city center.
When it comes to the type of neighborhood they want to live in, my neighbors share many of the same values as the Dutch. Most of us want peaceful, inviting streets where friends and neighbors can stop and chat. We want to have access to businesses of all types— from mom-and-pop cafes to chain department stores. We want a town center that people naturally gravitate toward and spend time in. We want to live in a place where kids can experience the kind of independence that most of us who were born before the aughts enjoyed. And when we drive we want less congestion and less death! (the Netherlands has 70% fewer traffic fatalities per capita).
Going Dutch
This does not seem like an unreasonable vision for a town in the 21st-century United States. Spending time in a place like Haarlem reassures me that we too can have these nice things! Towns like ours no doubt lost the plot when we committed to the untenable postwar suburban experiment. But I refuse to believe we can’t build momentum and see significant progress toward a stronger Haven in my lifetime. We don’t suck. We just got sold a bill of goods a while back that took us off track. Creating a vibrant village is not something that we forgot how to do. We already know how to do it, even if we might be a little rusty. It’s, well, just like riding a bike!
Correct me if I'm wrong, but 60-70 years ago the Netherlands was caught up in a car-centric culture such as ours. Obviously that changed because of many factors, "thickness" being one of them. As for parking, you can't tell me that Haymarket Square in Boston is a failure because you can't drive through it.
No, Americans have been sold a bill of goods by the fossil fuel industry that independence works better than community and in order to "enjoy" that independence one must buy their products.
By the way, I own a car, a truck, and two bikes. Guess which two have the most miles on them this year?