Tag: The Netherlands

Redeveloping a former Philips factory in Eindhoven, NL

October 31, 2024 / / 0 Comments

Strijp-S is a new neighborhood in Eindhoven, just a few minutes bicycle ride from the main station and the pedestrian shopping street. It was formerly the home of a Philips factory – you know, the Dutch electronics company that makes hospital equipment, light bulbs, and shavers.

The factory as seen in 1979. I believe most of the buildings are still there and the Vertical Forest was built one a former surface parking lot or in place of the single-story buildings. Credit: Hans Aarts, Wikipedia

The building in the top photo is called “Trudo Vertical Forest”, a social housing development. Each one of the 125 apartments has a tree on the balcony and approximately 40 shrubs and plants next to the tree. I knew none of this when I visited in May 2023 with Mark W (@BicycleDutch).

Redevelopment of Philips factory site in Eindhoven

Enjoy additional photos from Eindhoven, well-known amongst urbanists for the Hovenring bicycle bridge over a highway junction, on my Flickr.

What is your goal for your city?

September 18, 2010 / / 0 Comments

I have two favorite photo categories from Amsterdamize’s photostream*: the first is people riding side saddle as passengers on someone else’s bike and “borrowing” someone else’s energy. It’s borrowing because they’ll eventually return the favor, to the original lender, or to a friend of their own.

The second, and the one that is more important, is photos of older people riding bikes.

These photos, and the older folks’ running errands on their bikes, help make cycling look like the most normal and sensible thing that anyone could be doing right now. And that’s what my goal is for my city.

*Amsterdamize is Marc van Woudenberg, an Amsterdammer (you know, from The Netherlands?).

Fietsen in Nederland (bicycling in the Netherlands)

September 27, 2009 / / 0 Comments

If you and I have chatted about bicycling in the past six months, I’ve probably mentioned the Dutch in our conversation.

Why?

I want a Dutch bicycle. Explaining this one will take another blog post – compiling all my reasons takes a long time. But in addition to cool bikes, here’re a couple other things they do:

  • They (the Dutch) make bicycling better (safer and easier). More people ride their bikes than drive cars for a majority of trips. They have the lowest cycling injury and fatality rate.
  • They build bicycling infrastructure beyond what I can imagine. Bike highways connect small towns and big cities. 4,000 space parking garages.

I started reading a blog called “A view from the cycle path” written by Briton David Hembrow living in The Netherlands. He writes about bicycling history in the country, posts ridership statistics, discusses his commute, and sends readers to more information about it all.

I also read Marc van Woudenberg’s blog, Amsterdamize. I found it either via Flickr, or via web search, when I looked for other WorkCycles Fr8 owners and users. I want the Fr8 bike (pictured below). I can get one from the local WorkCycles (build their own bikes and sell other manufacturers’) dealer, Dutch Bike Chicago.

Remind me to post my paper and presentation about the past, present and future of bicycle planning in The Netherlands I will submit for my Sustainable Development Techniques class at UIC.