Looking back at the Velo-city cycling conference in Ljubljana

In a sharing session on ‘engaging citizens and building cycling communities’, Willem Smink talked about Amsterdam Bike City and The Bicycle Path of the Future. The approach? How do you involve people from outside the government in cycling policy? And how do you convert their ideas into tangible experiments that you can actually perform?

With both projects we have gained a lot of experience in different issues and in various Dutch regions. For ‘Het Fietspad van de Toekomst'(The Bicycle Path of the Future), experiments have been carried out – on behalf of the province of Utrecht – with an overtaking lane on a bicycle route and with placing trees in places where usually no trees can grow. These experimentes aim to generate tree energy in the future.

Amsterdam Bike City is an initiative of the Amsterdam Transport Region and the Municipality of Amsterdam. At the beginning of this year, we organized an innovation lab for which all interested parties could submit an idea for a safer bicycle path. For Amsterdam Bike City, we are therefore investigating – as you may know – whether we can test the winning idea ’30-20-10’. You can find out more about the winning idea itself via this link.

During the presentation in Ljubljana, we shared some lessons learned by organizing such contests, contests or ideas competitions:

While many spatial projects often meet ‘Not in my backyard’ resistance, a competition is a great way to stimulate proponents, positivity and enthusiasm.

This new way of involving people in projects and policy leads to many interest with good communication, which also means that we can reach more and more people.

Innovation and participation often lead to unexpected turns in the project or process, because the approach or substantive solution is new to many people. In short: expect the unexpected, because things always turn out differently than you think.

Are you curious, or do you want to know more? Send David or Willem a message via ABC.