ALMERE: My Dutch Cycle Network Tour Through Some Beautiful Green Spaces in the Province of Flevoland
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 21 ต.ค. 2024
- In this ride-along series installment, I connect with longtime Active Towns fan Wouter Rademaker for an on-bike interview and cycle network tour of Almere's neighborhoods, communities, and parklands in the Province of Flevoland. Shot during a beautiful summer afternoon on July 1, 2024, this video features and highlights the following Activity Assets and Active Towns themes:
A welcoming pedestrian priority street and plaza at the central station
New and old separated and protected cycle paths (Fietspaden) throughout the ride
Shared space and streets, including several bicycle-priority streets (Fietsstraten)
The empowering nature of safe and inviting cycle network infrastructure for everyone, all ages & abilities
Active mobility access to nature, parks, and recreational facilities
The integration of a safe and inviting active mobility network within a more suburban context
Investment in critical safe cycle network facilities such as bridges, underpasses, and improved intersections
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Background:
Hi Everyone! My name is John Simmerman, and I’m a health promotion and public health professional with over 30 years of experience. Over the years, my area of concentration has evolved into a specialization in how the built environment influences human behavior related to active living and especially active mobility.
Since 2010, I've been exploring, documenting, and profiling established, emerging, and aspiring Active Towns wherever they might be while striving to produce high-quality multimedia content to help inspire the creation of more safe and inviting, environments that promote a "Culture of Activity" for "All Ages & Abilities."
The Active Towns Channel features my original video content and reflections, including a selection of podcast episodes and short films profiling the positive and inspiring efforts happening around the world as I am able to experience and document them.
Thanks once again for tuning in! I hope you find this content helpful and insightful.
Creative Commons License: Attributions, Non-Commercial, No Derivatives, 2024
![ILLSLICK - THE KING'S LANDING [Freestyle]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/feIJJnNkTfk/mqdefault.jpg)
I am living in Almere a long time,but i have seen a lot i didn't know!!Thanks!😊
Yay! That's great. Thanks so much for watching. Cheers! John
Cool video - I visted this town in 1995 and its grown a lot since - and the infrastructure looks so good.
Thanks so much for joining us for the Premiere. I really appreciate it. Cheers! John
Almere - very good choice for a ride, because it is everything that the standard Holland cities are not, given that it was founded only 50 years ago. The guide is also brilliant. Providing a pleasant route but letting John do the talking except for answering the occasional question by John.
Yeah, I hear from a lot of viewers that they would like me to visit other "off-the-beaten-path" places, so I was delighted when Wouter offered to show me some of his favorite rides in and around Almere.
btw I edited out about an hour of utterly silent riding 😂
@@ActiveTowns btw Wouter's reply to your question 'What is Praxis?' was magnificent: 'It's a DIY shop'. This is pretty advanced stuff!
Thanks
Almere is fascinating. From empty, silty, polder to a considerable (top 10 in the Netherlands, population wise) city in less than 50 years. And the bus station at 9:23 looked a bit weird. It seems few people treat it as the start or destination of their journey, but many use it to change lines. Somewhat like bus station Schiphol Noord (a place I happen to travel through very often).
It was my first visit, and I was delighted that I had Wouter to show me around. Thanks so much for tuning in. Cheers! John
Haha.. And you have found the quietest dutch man in the land. Only tells if you Ask..😂😂😂 nice trip
Hehe 🤣
Thanks so much for watching!
Bro, you went right past my house there!
Oh, man! So sorry I didn't wave 👋🏼
Thanks so much for tuning in.
I really appreciate it, and I hope you are enjoying the Channel.
Cheers!
John
OMG John went to to the town no Dutchman dares to go 😅
What's the saying "Bravely going where no man..." lol 😀
I was lucky to have a very gracious local tour guide.
I live in Almere and there's so many non- level crossings for all traffic modalities that I feel safer on my bike in Almere than anywhere else.
The "green beast" is clearly a watering can. The "little transporter for kids" is a garbage truck. You can see a sanitation worker with a waste bag walking up to it.
Almere is the perfect retort to any American who claims that European cities are only walkable and bikeable because they are all medieval towns with narrow streets and built before the advent of the automobile.
Hehe, oops! I misidentified the "green beast" but did see a different green kid transporter on the fietspad a couple minutes later. Thanks so much for tuning and commenting. Cheers! John
I really enjoyed the country side and tree lined paths. The bike paths didn't seem to be as busy as other cities.
Yay! Glad you enjoyed the ride. 😀
34:00 - I wonder what those bike racks were for. I didn't see a bus stop nearby, or any other destination. Yet they are clearly well used.
to the left of it there is clearly a bus stop #33:46
Cool! @thedutchhuman got you covered on this here 👇
@@thedutchhuman Thanks, I missed that.
65 years ago there was only swimming fish.
Make that 65 years..
@@lws7394 ok
@@lws7394 better?😂😂
@@dimmerridder7377 Almere is young , but not that young 😁
What's the saying about teaching a 🐟to ride a 🚲? lol 🤣
Not sure if it was mentioned but do you know what Almere means? It's "al meer" or "all lake" because it used to be just that: all IJssel Lake and before that Zuyder Zee (southern sea)...
No, it wasn't mentioned yet. Thanks so much for that!
The lake was called "Lacus Flevo" in Roman times and later in the middle ages it was called Almere.
It's by far the biggest city of Flevoland. The planning of the city is all about green and water integrated with living and recreation/ cycle paths. I live in the Regenboogbuurt just look it up the houses and the trees are matched so it becomes a aboretum on a scale that is unique in the world. Btw cycling paths and bus lanes all seperated from the car roads. Lelystad is green yes but not as green as Almere...
Lelystad actually is way more green, lol, and in the top list of green cities/towns. Almere.. not so much (though it definitely is one of the greenest larger cities I think even in the top 5, but again- those are the largest cities, Lelystad wasn't included in that research as it only accounts for the top 30 largest cities). In the list of all places, Lelystad, Emmen and another one I forgot, dominate the list.
Though it used to on top of Lelystad in that regard be in/around 1980 when, it used to be one of the greenest cities or towns of the Netherlands (especially Almere-haven which was one of the first built-up areas, which is honestly, the only true Flevoland-esque neighbourhood of Almere).
It's okay you like Almere, but the statistics are out there.
@@letheas6175 I was teasing you a bit. But i stand by my point that Almere as a city and city planning is more interesting than Lelystad. Lelystad was numbre seven on the list of greenest cities in 2022.
Thanks so much for tuning in and for contributing to the conversation. Cheers! John
@@charlyvanbuuren2947 You do you! Again, it's all fine if you like Almere, but I too, stand by my point. Also, Lelystad has more tourism than Almere (yep, fun fact, but true fact).
@@letheas6175 Tourism? Look at Amsterdam what tourism does to a city...
"the" Flevoland?
hehe 🤣 It's a turn of phrase as "In the Province of Flevoland" was too long
Thanks so much for watching!
I hope you are enjoying the Channel.
Cheers!
John
@@ActiveTowns Isn't that like shortening "the State of California" to "the California" 🤔
Good point. As a native Californian... we'd just say "California" and assume everyone knows it's a state.
@@ActiveTowns I've given some thought to the question why there is a definite article in "the Netherlands" and the only reason I can think of is because it's a plural.
That makes sense to me 🙌
Why almere? Statistically, its nowhere near a typical Flevoland city.. while Lelystad is among the most green cities of NL. And honestly, so much more beautiful. Especially the coast and the forests surrounding the city on all sides.
The reason why Almere is so depressing is because its just.. concrete, stone and houses the same for kilometers. Yes there are a few cool paths, but its nothing like other Flevoland places (Zeewolde for example is also much better)
The reason is simple... a fan of the channel reached out and offered to give me a tour of some of his favorite cycling routes. I much prefer connecting with locals when possible. Maybe the same will happen one day in Lelystad. And as you'll see in this episode, the ride was quite delightful and not depressing at all.
Because I had invited John. 🙂
In both Lelystad and Almere, it depends very much on which neighbourhood you go to whether you see beautiful or ugly architecture with much or little concrete. From what I have seen, it differs very little. What does clearly differ between Lelystad and Almere is the basic plan. Lelystad is one built-up area in the green, while Almere, loosely based on the idea of a Garden city, consists of a number of city centres in the green. And through those green spaces I led John quite a bit. I don't want to say Almere is Copenhagen but, as in the Copenhagen finger plan, green is never far away. The shortest path for bikes is often through green spaces. It's easy to end up in green by accident.
Zeewolde is a big village between forests and agriculture.
What I also wanted to show John is our inner-city highway, which is at the same time far and near.
An argument often used is that Dutch cities are old, so bike-friendly, and American cities are young, so car-dependent. Therefore, I wanted to show a young bicycle-friendly city. Active Towns has already paid plenty of attention to old bicycle-friendly Dutch towns.
Two-thirds of the route is from Scouting to our house and from our house to the swimming pool. On the route to Scouting, we give our children a head start on their bikes and there have been occasions when I only caught up with them just before the end point.
AI bot alert
@@anrmlumlwundlistr7620 Umm.. where? You? (With a name like that?)
Almere has a bad rep in the Netherlands of being ugly and soulless, because it doesn't have an old city centre but was instead built from scratch in the seventies. But since then it has benefited from decades of modern urban design and that reputation is probably no longer deserved.
I think it's mostly the current affairs of things, as to why they were ranked ugliest city. A lot of this comes down to image, which if you never visited it- you will not know and just assume things. Don't understand me wrong, I do agree with that ranking. But at least I know/formed my own opinion (I know pretty much every street except for the new Almere Poort area).
But back to my point, Almere has.. nothing of value to tourists. It is the largest city without any museums, (even Lelystad has 3, Dronten has one too I think). In the share of tourism, a few years ago Lelystad ranked a whopping 21% higher in terms of total tourists in Flevoland (also to be fair, Bataviastad gets many millions of visitors so it makes sense).
Now Almere tried to change things up, like so often before (the castle, the ''Icedome'' and a few other failed projects) with Floriade, which turned out such a disaster that Almere is basically on the verge of bankruptcy. To save money, they're now going to even turn off the fountains, lol. This is also why Almere is (in city planning/management crowds) often called one of the worst cities. But again- at least those people know what they're talking about unlike people just calling Almere ugly without ever having been there.
Oh another contender for city where currently- all projects seem to fail currently, is Zwolle. But that one won't ever be regarded as a failure because it already has a functional city from way ago Almere was even founded.
I'd suggest anyone to visit it for yourself to form your own opinion :)
@captainchaos3667 Since this was my first visit and I had really heard nothing positive or negative, it was all new for me. Thanks for watching and for contributing to the conversation. Much appreciated. Cheers! John
I agree all buildings from the 70 and 80 are ugly in every city neighbourhood in the Netherlands but it looks way better now and tilburg is way more ugly than Almere for sure.
@@dimrrider9133 What do you mean ? Typical of the 70s/80s was the socalled 'bloemkoolwijk' ('Cauliflowerhood') with the cul-de-sax 'Low Traffic' woonerf courts with a lot of seperate bike paths through green space. 80% of the residents is very satisfied with those neighbourhoods, for the green space, bike connectiveness, nearby retail, social contact with neighbours and childfriendliness. Most residents have no intend to move from these neighbourhoods. ..
The bloemkoolwijken that I know seem very nice for that to me ! Mosts bike trips are effectively a 'forest bath'
Architect types like Rem Koolhaas and Winny Maas hate these neighbourhoods and propogate grandiose urban high rise, but so far high rise projects in NL have massively failed on the aspect of social cohesion.
And social isolation and loneliness is one of the big problems in modern society ...
@@lws7394de zielloze bouwstijl de lelijke vinexwijken die toen uit de grond werden gestampt in heel Nederland en ja ik daar aan meegewerkt in mijn 30 jarige timmercarriere dus bijdeze, sorry 😅
Just the idea of buying an half million euro house that's 5 meters (abt 17ft) below sea level...
Well, now that you put it that way... 😵💫
Thanks for tuning in!
It's much appreciated
Cheers!
John
Houses in the same price range are being built elsewhere in earthquake and tornado zones.
In the event of a levee breach, the water level will rise so slowly that there will be ample time to eventually evacuate and plug the hole.