Fifty Years Ago, a Planning Earthquake Changed the Netherlands. It’s Time for Another.

Fifty years ago, an urban planning earthquake shook the Netherlands. What began as fierce protests against demolition and modernization permanently reshaped our cities and streets—and turned them into international examples.

Amsterdam’s Nieuwmarkt district became the battleground of that transformation. Amid widespread social unrest, people took to the streets to demand affordable housing, the preservation of architectural heritage, and a more human scale. They resisted the upscaling of cities and traffic systems. On March 24 and April 8, 1975, fierce riots erupted in protest against the construction of the metro and the demolition of hundreds of homes. Since then, planners have referred to this as a “hinge point”—the moment when we fundamentally altered the course of our urban development. From separating functions like living, working, and shopping to mixing them again; from car cities to pedestrian zones. Now, fifty years later, we find ourselves at another crossroads. The scarce space in cities and towns is becoming overcrowded. Our streets are expected to do more: enable movement, offer places to stay, play, meet, and green the environment. This is nothing new—streets have always been multifunctional. But today, it seems harder than ever to accommodate this stacking of purposes.

Visions Filled with Ideals

There is no lack of ambition. Municipalities present visions filled with lofty goals—health, climate adaptation, livability. Mobility plans rightly state that space must be freed up by rethinking traffic. Walking and cycling first; the car must make way. Most streets today are still designed for moving and parked cars—an indulgence we can no longer afford. And yet, when it’s time to implement these visions, they often meet resistance—typically from a vocal minority. And we don’t know how to handle that resistance. Municipalities struggle to introduce the 30 km/h speed limit. Abolishing free parking has led to paralyzing referenda in cities like Haarlem and Amersfoort. In The Hague and Utrecht, such referenda were narrowly avoided. Aldermen proposing car-reduction measures face verbal—and at times physical—aggression. A temporary street closure trial can nearly end a political career. So why is it so difficult to make a course correction like we did in the 1970s? Two key developments explain this.

Technocracy and a Narrowing Public Debate

First: the technocratization of mobility policy.

Where once public values were debated openly, today technical experts use models and guidelines to dictate how our public space is designed. Political scientist Tom van der Meer writes in his book Value-Free Politics that technocracy assumes every problem has an optimal, apolitical solution. That works in a stable society. But in a society undergoing fundamental change, it backfires. A technical norm—such as the number of parking spaces per home—quickly becomes accepted as self-evident, even though it is essentially a political choice. When the rudder is tied down and the captain has left the bridge, the ship becomes rudderless the moment land comes into view. A minor disruption to the status quo—such as the introduction of paid parking—then touches on deeply ingrained entitlements, like the supposed right to a free parking space in front of your home.

Second: the narrowing of the public debate about the street.

Political scientists refer to this as the Overton window—the spectrum of ideas and positions deemed socially and politically acceptable. In the 1970s, organizations pushed that window wide open. The activist group Stop de Kindermoord (Stop the Child Murders) mobilized parents across the Netherlands against car traffic. Provos organized mass “die-ins.” The original Dutch Cyclists’ Union (EENWB) campaigned for car-free city centers. But over the decades, many of these movements were absorbed into the system. Stop de Kindermoord was forced to merge with Safe Traffic Netherlands and is now dependent on government subsidies. The EENWB became the Cyclists’ Union—also partially state-funded. The group Doctors for Safer Cycling now openly collaborates with BOVAG (the car dealers’ association) and former PVV transport minister Barry Madlener—who has consistently defended car-centric policies. The radical voices have faded. The Overton window has narrowed—and stiffened. Who still questions the foundational assumptions of our mobility system?

Locked In

Through this dual shift—technocracy and the erosion of civic resistance—we’ve backed ourselves into a corner. While cities like Paris, Barcelona, and Bogotá are radically experimenting with new street designs, we remain stuck in the “Sustainable Safety” model from 1997. This system categorizes streets based on five principles to make their function obvious to road users: you drive (and live) on a flow road, an area access road, or a residential access road. This rigid classification was supposed to improve safety. But it also means that traffic engineers dictate the norm, and alternative visions struggle to gain traction. This also explains why resistance is so intense: changing parking policies challenges not just a habit, but an ideology—one we almost never question. That’s why municipalities have spent years trying (and often failing) to implement the new 30 km/h standard passed in the Kröger-Stoffer motion of 2020

Fundamental Choices

Major societal challenges demand fundamental choices about our streets. But that requires first a public conversation about the values that underpin them—not only at national elections, but especially at the local level. Local political parties must be willing to take a stand in their election programs. Not vague mobility paragraphs, but clear ideological choices: What kind of society should the street reflect? Wageningen chose, in their Compass for the Urban Environment, to put children’s rights at the center of their mobility transition. In the municipalities of Zwolle and Renkum, the five principles of The Just Street have been formally adopted as policy direction. What holds us back in the transition of public space is fear of change. To move forward, we must relearn how to question the status quo—to see the street not as a fixed conduit for traffic, but as a space we can and must renegotiate.

This is only possible if civic organizations and political parties take bolder positions. Mobility policy shouldn’t just be about solutions. It should reveal the values behind those solutions—and give voters a vision of how we might live differently.

Original source: NRC https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2025/07/23/wie-durft-de-waardenloze-straat-politiek-te-maken-a4901060

Foto Roel Rozenburg

Translated through Chat GPT