It’s time to take another look at Amsterdam

20.12.2023 - 23:43 / lonelyplanet.com / Art

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Amsterdam has been a global influencer since what began as an inauspicious herring-fishing settlement went on to inspire international seafaring, trade, engineering, art and culture.

Ahead of its 750th birthday in 2025, this visionary world treasure is again leading the way with spirited and innovative community and sustainability initiatives that are enriching the diverse and creative city today and into the future.

Climate challenges facing this low-lying city some 2m (6.6 ft) below sea level, coupled with escalating residents (expected to surpass 1 million in 2030) and visitors (up to25 million by 2025), have galvanized the Dutch capital to chart a new course.

Making the city more livable for locals and enjoyable for travelers is at the heart of Amsterdam’stourism goals. These include managing numbers through measures such as closing its cruise ship port, clamping down on unlicensed accommodation and capping city-center hotels. But it also includes quality of life goals, such as deterring boisterous revelers in the historic center through earlier closing times for bars and clubs.

Beyond the gabled streetscapes radiating from Amsterdam’s Unesco World Heritage-listed canal ring, new residential areas are absorbing the growing population. In the east, IJburg is built across an archipelago of artificial islands on the IJmeer lake, with its gateway, double-cantilevered Sluishuis building that generates more energy than it consumes, and swimming and water sports like wakeboarding and e-foiling at Amsterdam’sbeach.

Western ex-lumber ports Houthavens, where the landmark Pontsteiger building containing apartments, ahotel and public spaces, oriented to optimize passive solar energy, rises out of the river like a giant’s chair. Imaginative developments are springing up around Amsterdam Noord’s once-derelict shipyards, with more planned to straddle both banks of the IJ at “port city”,Haven-Stad.

Green infrastructure plays a vital role in Amsterdam’s ongoing expansion, as part of its mission to become emission-free by 2030 and a fully circular city, reducing, recycling and reusing materials, by 2050. In this cycling-oriented city where bikes outnumber residents, the extensive network of cycleways is supported by facilities like Centraal Station’s two gleaming 2023-opened underwater bike-parking garages for 11,000 bikes (50 percent of the city’s commuters arrive by bike).

A “green by default” ethos sees manmade materials such as bricks and paving stones replaced by greenery, with increased accessibility to existing and newly created parks (no more than a 10-minute walk) and nature reserves (a 15-minute bike ride).

Renewable energy powers canal traffic and public transport – Schiphol international airport