Stadjer

Utrecht is much more a cycling friendly city than Amsterdam, it's probably the biggest good cycling city in the world, but Amsterdam gets the international attention. That's fine for visitors noticing a certain national cycling culture, but city planners and cycling advocates could know better.

Ironically the center of Utrecht was once the showpiece of the new automobile era with a huge building project including an American style mall. The shopping centre is still there but finally most of the damage has been undone, only recently. Except for the old buildings of course, that damage is permanent.

US cities had lots of bicycles and trams too. The time frame does matter though. The physical rebuild is not most important for that, allthough the only Dutch city that needed a real rebuild was Rotterdam and it has been behind on cycling ever since, Hamburg otoh, one of the most flattened German cities, is one of the better cycling cities of Germany. The rebuild in the Netherlands was more a matter of the economy, and then it boomed in the early 60's together with the availabiltiy of affordable cars. The Dutch fell madly in love with the car, there was 'road shoulder tourism' people getting their camping chairs out to watch the highway all day, the first traffic jam was celebrated as a milestone in progress and drew a huge crowd. But because of that short timeframe the clash with cycling, walking and playing (Dutch kids are sent out into the street to play) was obvious, while in the USA the cycling and walking just slipped away hardly noticed I guess. That clash is how the Dutch got to a turning point that early.