| Comment | Maybe I'm misreading this, but I'm not sure what your point is... that what's been done in places like Amsterdam is completely unattainable, and therefore any improvement in that direction is pointless?
The entire reason Amsterdam is a highly walkable and cyclable place is because they decided to drastically redesign their urban environment in the 70s after waves of protest against pedestrian deaths.
There's a perception that these places have always been cycling havens when really the change happened a lot more recently than people think. Through active redesign of the urban environment to make cycling easier and safer. Of course, with that there was the beneficial side effect of making city streets and neighbourhoods more people friendly more generally, fostering better social interaction among other things.
To say people want Glasgow to become Amsterdam overnight is to claim something which isn't really the exact true, and kind of a sneaky way of painting any ambition for safer walking and cycling streets as pointless, when it's anything but.
We don't need to become exactly like Amsterdam, but incremental changes involving things that have been tried & tested there can make things better. |
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