PUMA (Day 25 Netherlands)

Planning for Urban Mobility and Accessibility,
aka PUMA

Dr. Meredith Glaser, Director of the Urban Cycling Institute housed at the University of Amsterdam, developed the PUMA game as a learning tool. I really enjoyed the structure of the game. It followed a basic scavenger hunt concept with the addition of varying points to make some items/activities more valuable for people who enjoy competition as a motivation. The geographic framework of PUMA uses the urban typologies of old city urban, pre-WWII suburban, and post-WWII suburban (These can be thought of city areas built before trains, old suburbs built after trains/streetcars, and new suburbs built during and after a large push to favor car travel.) The activities varied from watching (observing) to chatting with people (interviewing) to mimicking a local's daily route (experiencing). 

Central city
(the poles enable moving big household things)
Pre-WWII suburb (community waste boxes are infested too!)
Post-WWII suburb (hello international mid-century modern)
We had about 24 hours from the afternoon in the park to the debrief with Meredith at the university. Mimicking a local's daily routine was out due to the time constraint. Chatting up a local teenager was out because none of us felt comfortable as random adults asking kids about where they go and what they do. (I'd drop that if I copied this game myself.) The version of PUMA we played gave more points to Post-WWII areas to encourage us to explore outside of the historic canals of the old city and beyond the old suburb area of our hostel. Plus, one of my teammates (Abby) had an interest in suburbs, so biking out to the 'burbs was in. I feel comfortable asking retail checkout folks for recommendations for things like coffee or lunch, so chatting with a local *and* going to a grocery store in each urban typology was in. The third member of my group (Nina) is an engineer and volunteered to observe and record what transportation modes people took after leaving the grocery store. We tackled a grocery store observation in each typology, then headed back to report.
Much like in the US, people in Amsterdam go to the amenities and services they need by the easiest and most enjoyable way. In Amsterdam, however, even the mid-century suburb had clusters of stores that could be walked between. It was possible to bike to grocery stores in every single area. Most people did so in both suburbs. In the densest area, most people walked. It was amazing how convenient it was to get around and take care of a basic need of acquiring food. 

The PUMA game paired with Marjolein's bike tour the day before taught me that we could have such a nice life in the US. Infrastructure and policy change could enable us over time. We could do it. We can do it. It's entirely doable. 

Next up: Bikes, boats, and bumbling around

Random pic: this cool cat that sauntered over for scratches 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Out n About (Day 26 Netherlands)

Image
I woke up with a plan, a very good plan, to take every form of non-automobile transport easily available in Amsterdam. Bike to Rijkmuseum Bike to the bookstore district  Take the ferry from behind Central Station  Bike around Noord Amsterdam  Ride Metro back with my bike before rush hour  Drop my bike at the hostel Take a bus out Take a tram back What I actually did: Slept in too late for the art museum Biked to the bookstores Ferried to Noord Amsterdam  Biked up through Noord to a Metro station ...and realized I missed the last train before rush hour that would allow bikes on board. So, I biked around Noord Amsterdam neighborhoods for the rest of the day, ended up at a light industrial waterfront area that had been redeveloped into design offices, restaurants, and what I think of as "the usual" attempts to spruce up an old port or industrial area to attract high income people to work and visit in an ar...
Read more

European Cyclist Federation (Day 22 Netherlands)

Image
We met with the board chair of the European Cyclists' Federation, Henk Swarttouw, to learn more about how bicycling advancements work at the EU level. While the Dutch approach to cycling as a normal part of transportation, rather than viewing it as an "alternative" transportation, exists in their own forms and histories in other countries of the EU (such as parts of Denmark and Germany), expanding infrastructure to increase the utility and ease of cycling varies widely across the union. When a country or region within a country wants advice on network design, they sometimes turn to the European Cyclists' Federation for guidance.  The European Cyclists' Federation also works as advocates at various levels. At the EU level, the ECF works to improve cycling across all of the union. For example, they try for policy to ensure that biking and rail connect networks and work together. They also work on tax policy that would categorize bikes as basic needs. Whe...
Read more

A Fietserbond (Bike Union) bike tour of Amsterdam (Day 24 Netherlands)

Image
The day kicked off with a bike tour led by Marjolein de Lange of Fietserbond, the cyclists' union. (Yes, the bicyclists union is real there, not just a cheeky Twitty account.) I took away three main concepts. 1) "A bike policy is not something you do once."  Efforts to increase the safety, ease, and appeal of cycling in Amsterdam tracked back to a 1978 network map vision. Though much of that original proposal now exists, policy shifts started in earnest after building larger political will in the 1980's. Infrastructure policy continued and continues to shift with time as the understanding of possibilities grow, findings of analysing pre- and post-intervention inform future planning, and travel behaviors adjusted to the shifting infrastructure. For example, the fear of being hit while biking and ending up maimed or killed by a car driver led to the intervention of separate bike tracks. The popularity of the network of bike tracks (along with parallel interv...
Read more