It does mention that:

> The famously flat Dutch terrain, combined with densely-populated areas, mean that most journeys are of short duration and not too difficult to complete.

The problem in the US is, in no small part, due to zoning. I've been making my way through this:

http://amzn.to/2tkSbsH - "Zoned in the USA"

And the detailed look at how other countries do things is interesting - they're certainly no "libertopia", but far more typologies of housing are allowed, as well as commercial uses in primarily residential areas.

It's worth a look for those who are deeply interested in the topic.

I actually have quite a collection of articles about this stuff, as it's been one of my main interests lately:

https://bendyimby.com/2017/06/12/yimby-reading/

I like this lecture by Andres Duany: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL01072BB79369B705

The most relevant part: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1X5uVR5NxY&list=PL01072BB79...

I love the way he describes the pedestrian in the artist's impression as "theoretically possible".

Looks cool, but I don't really do videos... not enough time.

I live in Brazil and commute by bicycle daily, 10.5 km each way (6.5 miles, mostly cycleways).

Not without problems however: the air polution in Sao Paulo recommends against physical activities, the cycleways are of very questionable quality and the Pinheiros river stinks as hell.

I can spot some capybaras (they are like giant guinea pigs) in the morning, have to dodge their excrement in the cycleway (they shit like a horse, no kidding).

Kudos, you are a brave man.

From what I know from Florianopolis, moving on less than four wheels (including walking) is just plain dangerous unless you have a physically separated lane. I know several people who got injured and I see many white bikes attached to posts on the road as a sign of "someone on a bike lost his life here".

Of course, the physically separate lane still has many wholes and occasionally a 30cm high "cliff" at its two ends but it shouldn't get you killed.

Florianopolis is made for cars and it feels like all attempts at allowing for bikes are half-assed at best.

Well, I used to cummute by motorcycle before and yes, everything in Brazil is brutal, traffic is not an exception.

Two motorcycle riders die in in Sao Paulo EVERY SINGLE DAY on average - this statictic is not counting the ones that die a week later in the hospitals. There are more than 1 million motorcycles registered in the city (1 for every 10 citizens) but still a lot of meaningless deaths.

Previous mayor Haddad made a lot of bicycle lanes all over the city but they are of very poor quality, some are plain dangerous or are in areas where they are not used (poor planning).

That said, I would trade Sao Paulo by Florianopolis any day of the week - in Sao Paulo I'm 50 miles from the sea, in Florianopolis you can surf before the work.

I'm hoping for a possible future in which there is massive rezoning in the U.S. so that mixed neighborhoods (residential, business, etc) within reason, like bodegas and offices and apartments and row houses together, not cement plants next to kindergartens, are universal. I just bloody hate driving and the less I have to do it the happier I am. Would rather be outside getting exercise.

The Japanese have the perfect answer. They don't zone by use. They zone by nuisance level.

You can build whatever you want in the cement-plant-district. But you have to deal with having that kind of nuisance nearby. You can also build whatever you want in the no-nuisance district. But you can't impose any kind of nuisnace.

Do you have a source for that? According to this article[1] which is summarizing an official Japanese zoning document [2] they have 12 well-defined zones.

They're overall more relaxed about mixed-use zoning, but they do have exclusively industrial zones, and exclusively residential (with small shops & schools) zones.

1. http://urbankchoze.blogspot.nl/2014/04/japanese-zoning.html

2. http://www.mlit.go.jp/common/000234477.pdf

How do they deal with the tension of having bars/clubs in residential areas? Or do these areas just not exist in Japan?

We happily walk to the bar from our houses and then walk back after having a few drinks.

One of the advantages of having bars in residential areas is that you don't concentrate them in one area. Unless you live in a big metropolis, the bars are not large, are not noisy and don't cause many problems. To be fair, I don't know how dance clubs are zoned. I have never seen one outside of a reasonably sized city. But, you can definitely hear people croning away in the karaoke clubs at night.

Probably the same way SF deals with it: by not dealing with it because it's not an issue. I lived in an apartment building on the same block as at least one club and multiple bars, all open till at least 2am and it was never a problem. Some of the sound will leak into the street, especially with bigger clubs, but it's not loud enough to be a problem inside apartments because air is a terrible conductor of sound. Also, a city is already noisy and that's to be expected 24/7.

I live in a "small" Japanese city (pop 300,000). I've only seen clubs in the central entertainment district. There are lots of small neighborhood pubs interspersed among houses though, but they don't cause any nuisance.

If you want silence at home, move to the country. The notion that urban spaces should be free of human voices at any hour is ludicrous. No loud music after midnight is reasonable, but other than that if you can't sleep install better insulation. No one is forcing you to live in the city.

> The famously flat Dutch terrain, combined with densely-populated areas, mean that most journeys are of short duration and not too difficult to complete.

> Few Dutch people don lycra to get out on their bike, preferring to ride to work, the shops or the pub in whatever clothes they think appropriate for their final destination.

> Of course, the cycle paths lend themselves to sauntering along in summer dresses in a way a death-defying, white-knuckle ride in rush-hour traffic does not. It is also partly because of this that people don't need showers at work to be able to commute by bike - it's a no-sweat experience.

So, reading with some context clues, the answer is "not long enough to work up a sweat."

People usually bike quite leisurely in the Netherlands. You can easily bike 10-15km in reasonable time without sweating, especially if you're used to riding a bike.

One difference between the NL, and most US cities, is climate. There's a large portion of the US that gets much hotter, and much colder than Amsterdam. My town gets 10 degrees F hotter, and 30 degrees F colder.

I ride in regular clothes during the summer, but it takes some planning, notably starting early in the morning and riding slowly.

I lived some time in Amsterdam. I was not fit and almost couldnt ride a bike. I was sweating like hell first two months. After half a year you will learn to ride pretty fast without sweating.

You wouldnt believe how fast some if the dutch natives are - in suits and without hands of course. They can even turn without holding a bike.

"Fietsen" stands for "riding a bike", leisurely. Fitness racing is called "wielrennen", running on wheels, totally different thing.

Dunno, I used to ride the bycicle to the school in the city which is 25km away from where I lived. So 50km (31 miles) a day at least. In the village where I grew up that was pretty common.

In my experience, every school kid who lived ~10km or more away bought a moped (scooter) the instant they turned 16, when they were allowed to drive one.

Interesting. In my experience this wasn't common, but I was part of geekier VWO. Scooters were slightly more common at HAVO and very popular with VMBO. And while there might be a connection with education level, scooters were also stereotypically owned by Turkish/Moroccan kids.

I always felt a bit sad that it wasn't more normal for 'my crowd' to have scooters. I would've loved a scooter.

Some bought mopeds/scooters, most did not. There was a couple of teenagers living another 5km further away and still riding a bycicle.

Now when those turned 18.. that's a different story, it did not take them very long before the driver license was there.

When I look at my nieces/nephews now, then it is mostly still the same story. Except that indeed the number of mopeds is higher, but still under 50%.

I didn't. And I know many who don't. Though it's true that many do. Still, there's a couple of years of school before they turn 16.

The difference then is probably widespread access to cars. With suburbs being so spread out, most people would rather drive rather than bike more than 5 miles per trip, despite the big environmental and personal health consequences.

Not necessarily. Lots of people have a car and live more than 5 kilometers from the city center or their work. But a decent amount of people take their bikes when it is under 15 kilometers.

Grocery shopping is often less than 5 kilometers, but me and my neighbours often use the car for that (eventhough often it could be done by bike).

I think the biggest reason is purely cultural. It is normal (almost expected) that kids and teenagers go to school, sport and clubs by bike. You grow up riding a bike and it is your first real "liberation" from depending on your parents for everything.

It kinda represents freedom to go where you want to go before coming of age and being allowed to drive a car. (The minimum age to get your driving license used to be 18, though recently you can get a "starters license" at 17 as long as you drive under adult supervision).

And later on you realise that often taking the car, whilst great, isn't that more practical (and certainly not as economical) as taking the bike now and again.

I think the main difference is due to a number of reasons, an important one of them being cultural. Every kid can ride a bicycle and has a bicycle.

Another reason is our infrastructure, it is pretty safe with all those bicycle lanes, so parents do not worry too much.

Also if you live in the city then for shorter distances (under ~3km) it is just the fastest way to get anywhere and no parking problems.

Add things like that the Netherlands does not have a hot and moist climate, so normally not sweaty. Pretty low crime rates especially in regards to violence. Car drivers being used to have lots of bicycles around.

There's just a lot of factors down here that make riding a bicycle more attractive as in most other countries that I have seen.

> everything's so damned spread out that bicycling is very impractical.

The solution: e-bike.

Where i live in the Netherlands many people use them (not just elderly.) Just this week i saw a 15 year old kid drive back home from school on an e-bike. If you have to drive a long distance, an e-bike eases makes it much easier/faster...

E-Bikes are a good idea, but they're pretty expensive. Like, you could buy a car for the cost of one.

Cars have exceptionally high ownership costs: parking, licensing, maintenance, fuel, insurance.

Even an expensive bicycle pencils out very quickly relatively.

Perhaps, but both still have pretty high, prohibitive to some, up front costs.

The responses which occur:

1. Current eBikes are generally small-scale prototypes. Prices should fall with volume.

2. They're generally comparably priced to a small motorbike, for which they're a near substitute.

3. Financing of large consumer purchases turns out to be a fairly frequently-occurring (and solved) proplem.

I don't think this will be a showstopper.

4. Actually, checking Amazon, eBike prices seem to be on par or lower than what I'd pay for a decent standard bike: ~$750 US or so. Kits as low as $250 for wheel conversion.

https://www.amazon.com/s/?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywo...

Length does play a role but I would definitely trade the 15% grade and 300ft climb at the end of my 4mi trip in the Oakland hills for an extra 3-4 mile of flat/gentle rolling terrain.

what would be the kind of distance you're talking about? When growing up in the Netherlands it was common for kids from my town to cycle 20 km every day going to school.

That's an hour each way at a fairly decent clip on a bike[1]. In my book that's a long commute.

[1] At roughly the speed I can bike in moderate to cool temps without getting excessively sweaty.

20km is ~6 miles each way. Unless there are significant obstacles (hills, many stoplights, etc), an hour to go 6 miles seems excessive.

If it's 20km round trip that's not too bad. 20km each way is a bit much.

I read it as 20km each way, 40km total. I agree that a 10km each way trip is far more reasonable. In fact that's only slightly longer than my 5 mile bike commute, and I bet they have fewer 90F (32c) and 80% humidity days than we do here.

I read it that way, but then, that would mean there is no school within 20 km, so an empty space where schools around are separated by 40 km. I think there are very few possible spaces like that in Netherlands, or in most Western Europe. Or then we are talking about high-schools, which are more sparse.

So I guess 2x10 km is the most likely answer. And that's already a lot.

I ment 10km each way, 20km each way would feel excessive to me as well. For those cases (in dutch rural areas) there would almost always be some kind of bus service to take kids.

I think it should be shorter than an hour -- 10km is 6.25mi. I can easily walk at a 4 mph clip for a long time without getting sweaty or tired. 10km on a flat bike path should not take more than 25-30 min. Maybe add 5 min for traffic lights if there are many.

This is definitely a major factor, although even in less dense areas, biking can be useful if there's protected bike lanes/paths.

What do you consider a long trip? In my case I cycle 6.8km each way everyday, which is probably slightly above the average.

Anything longer than 30 minutes each way is probably beyond what many people would like to spend commuting. So, that's about 4-7 miles (depending on variety of conditions). Which, I gotta say, is not very far for most Americans. Most of us commute around 15 miles each way.

> Most of us commute around 15 miles each way.

The really crappy part is how much of that 15 miles is caused by car infrastructure. Imagine how much closer one might be to work if the distance were compressed, removing about 80% of all street and highway width, the entirety of all road buffer zones (highways often have several times as much of this as they have actual road), front yards (= mostly to keep house back from busy road and allow space for cars on driveway), parking lots (often several times as large as the place they're meant to serve), and so on. I'd be surprised if such compression didn't shave about half the distance off.

Just take a couple more steps, and stack things into big buildings. You'll save even more space, and get things even closer together. It would certainly be more efficient (although, also more similar to a lot of places I've chosen to avoid living in...)

I commute about 4.5km by bike(each way) twice a day, in London. It's much quicker than public transport. 12-17minutes by bike, with traffic + stop lights. I'd be looking at 30~ minutes by public transport. Even a taxi/car is likely 20 or more. Cities designed before cars are (imo) - so much nicer.

A 4 mile trip is definitely not very long. In Chicago, a fairly dense city (for the US), that would hardly get you across the central core where many many people cannot afford to live.

I have what I consider a fairly easy bicycle commute which is double that.

I regularly bike 65 km roundtrip 130 in a day, it is a good workout but nothing extreme. Flat ground really helps.