Prior to World War II, the Hofplein area in the centre of Rotterdam was a lively, bustling gathering place where pedestrians were king, and cars were secondary.
Just as we have seen in many North American cities, a highway was built after the war that divided central Rotterdam from Hofplein, and pedestrians became an afterthought while speeding cars dominated the area.
In recent years, Rotterdam citizens wanted to take their city back from the onslaught of cars, so they asked the government to build a 350 meter wooden pedestrian bridge to re-connect central Rotterdam to Hofplein and provide a promenade where citizens could once again gather without being pushed to the side by fast-moving traffic.
Officials told citizens that it would take 30 years to finance such a bridge, so the citizens decided to take matters into their own hands and raise the money themselves to build the bridge immediately.
From the Toronto Star:
More than 1,300 planks later, each one stamped with the sponsor’s name, the first 18 metres of the wooden Luchtsingel bridges two downtown halves of the Dutch city.
By summer, architect Kristian Koreman told the Star, another crowdfunded 100 metres will stretch the bridge further into the old city core, adding a circular hub with a culinary park underneath.
The project’s slogan: “The more you donate, the longer the bridge.”
“Looking at it I still sometimes don’t believe it’s happening,” Koreman said.
“It’s a new reality. We have retreating governments and an ongoing economic crisis. But people are no longer simply going to wait for things to happen.
“There is a soft revolution going on.”
In Toronto, a magnificent bridge was proposed to connect neighbourhoods to its historic Fort York, but was killed by City Council’s lack of appetite for investing in any infrastructure that doesn’t cater to motor vehicles.
Perhaps crowdfunding is one way Toronto could bypass the government and build a world-class pedestrian bridge. After all, if every citizen in Toronto contributed to the cost, it would cost less than $10 per citizen to build the bridge.
James D. Schwartz is the Editor of The Urban Country and is based in Toronto, Canada. You can contact James at james.schwartz@theurbancountry.com or follow him on Twitter.
Rotterdam bridge photos courtesy of “I Make Rotterdam”. Toronto Fort York proposed bridge photo courtesy of urbantoronto.ca.
More Articles Like This:
- USA Today: LeBron James Is Weird (Dec 2012)
- Baltimore Orioles Pitcher Commutes By Bike (Oct 2011)
- Rediscovering The Bicycle 17 Years Later (Sept 2011)
- The World Has Changed. So Can You (April 2011)
- Barriers to Cycling: Debunking the Myths (Nov 2009)
- You’re Welcome Mr. Motorist (Jan 2011)
James, it’s nice to see an article dedicated to ‘my’ city for a change. If Holland is mentioned, it’s usually with Amsterdam in tow. A nice city, bit very different from the other ‘big’ three (Rotterdam, The Hage and Utrecht), not to mention a number of smaller, but still interesting cities with their own kind of bike infrastructure. As you know, it’s all on a smaller scale here, which makes it easy to make trips from one town to the next without exerting yourself too much, giving you a nice change of the different kinds of scenery we have on offer.
What if the city had built the bridge and left motorists to hold a bake sale to maintain the motorway?