6/25/11
After lecture Shane and I went on a 13 mile run. It was fun to run along the canals and see the houseboats and modern architecture. I’m not sure what the cost of Amsterdam’s houseboats are, but in Denmark they are relatively low cost. It is great that people of a range of income levels have the opportunity to live on waterfront property. Shane said that there is much more funding available to support multi-family housing in Europe. In the States, only low-income multi-family housing is funded. We ended up on an outer ring of the city, 6 km from Schipol, running along a street with advisory bike lanes. Basically two way auto traffic is allowed on a street with one auto lane and two red bike lanes with dashed white stripes. If cars approach from opposite directions, they are allowed to drift into the bike lane in order to pass each other. In the States, this would be a traffic engineer’s nightmare, but it seemed to work. We didn’t see any cyclists on the road at the time we were running, but there were a few cars. It all seemed to work out alright. It is probably best for a low-traffic street. We got lost but were able to reorient ourselves with the wayfinding maps and return to the hotel on the tram.
One of the parts of the Anne Frank house that affected me the most was where the girls’ heights were marked on the wall. It brought the story to life and humanized Anne. The quote on the wall was a second hit when I was already starting to tear up. Anne wrote of how she longed to go outside, and dance, and ride her bicycle. We are so lucky to be free to move about wherever we want. The Nazis recognized the value of mobility and banned the Jews from riding on trams or in cars. What does that mean for our cities today? Anyone who cannot operate a car in a car-dependent society is oppressed – children, people with disabilities that prevent them from driving, elderly people who have lost the ability to drive, and people who cannot afford to own an automobile.
In the evening we got to see the final performance of Het National Ballet’s 2011 – 2012 season. This was my friend Megan Gray’s first season dancing with the ballet. We grew up together dancing in Texas. It was like picking back up with an old friend (which we’ll hopefully get to do tonight face to face!). I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to recognize her. She was still the same Megan, but she is even more charming and her dancing has matured beautifully. There was one especially complicated pattern where the dancers circled around each other in opposite directions, some walking forwards, some walking backwards. I think I lean more towards ordered, controlled traffic flow partially because of my ballet background. As a choreographer, it is my job to organize and direct the dancer’s movement to achieve a desired visual. It is the same reason I was drawn to dressage as a horseback rider. Although I did dressage as a solo event, it was about directing the horse’s movements gracefully around the field.
Nevertheless, removing traffic controls is worth consideration. It requires people to utilize common sense. It is a constant struggle to find the appropriate bounds to freedom. My father brought that idea up yesterday when we were talking about the Anne Frank house, but it also applies to freedom to move in a shared space. My father brought up the idea in response to my qualms over the questionnaire at the end of the tour. There was a video display on modern forms of racism. At the end of the video the narrator would pose a question, such as “Should this political party be outlawed?”. Then the group could respond yes or no and the results would be displayed on the screen. There were some that I couldn’t answer. Should you be able to outlaw a political party? Do you do it at the point that they verbalize a dislike for having a particular ethic group in the country, or do you wait until it’s too late and they have already begun to act on fear and hatred? Both in traffic and politics it is difficult to set boundaries on freedom.
In Amsterdam, there isn’t a specific direction that you are supposed to travel on bike facilities. If there is a bike lane or cycle track, you can travel either direction. I think I like that. It follows people’s natural behavior. As long as the space is wide enough to allow two-way travel, maybe if people are going to go against traffic anyway, it is better if cyclists and drivers anticipate that it will happen. Sometimes I want to go against traffic for a block or so without having to go through the trouble of crossing a busy street. On the other hand, perhaps I could just walk.
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