Building the Cycling City

Engaging stories of cycling successes in the Netherlands show how lessons for better biking cities can be (and already are)
adapted elsewhere.

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In car-clogged urban areas across the world, the humble bicycle is enjoying a second life as a legitimate form of
transportation. City officials are rediscovering it as a multi-pronged (or -spoked) solution to acute, 21st-century problems,
including affordability, obesity, congestion, climate change, inequity, and social isolation. As the world’s foremost cycling
nation, the Netherlands is the only country where the number of bikes exceeds the number of people, primarily because
the Dutch have built a cycling culture accessible to everyone, regardless of age, ability, or economic means.



Chris and Melissa Bruntlett share the incredible success of the Netherlands through engaging interviews with local
experts and stories of their own delightful experiences riding in five Dutch cities. Building the Cycling City examines the
triumphs and challenges of the Dutch while also presenting stories of North American cities already implementing
lessons from across the Atlantic. Discover how Dutch cities inspired Atlanta to look at its transit-bike connection in a new
way and showed Seattle how to teach its residents to realize the freedom of biking, along with other encouraging
examples.



Tellingly, the Dutch have two words for people who ride bikes: wielrenner (“wheel runner”) and fietser (“cyclist”), the
latter making up the vast majority of people pedaling on their streets, and representing a far more accessible, casual, and
inclusive style of urban cycling—walking with wheels. Outside of their borders, a significant cultural shift is needed to
seamlessly integrate the bicycle into everyday life and create a whole world of fietsers. The Dutch blueprint focuses on
how people in a particular place want to move.