Dare to Share Space

Prologue  - Dare to Share Space

Amsterdam is a peoples’ magnet. Our tiny metropole sizzles with economic and cultural activity. Every year more restaurants, shops and small businesses are initiated. More and more families with young children settle in our city. Over the next twenty years another 110.000 people will establish themselves in Amsterdam. The city center is spreading out and will eventually take up the entire area within the cityring A10. Amsterdam is growing!

Cities are the future. However, the increasing traffic in cities competes with the limited public space. Space preferably used for leisure and pleasure by the cities’ inhabitants and visitors. There is less want for cars on the streets. Already sixty percent of Amsterdam’s inhabitants make daily use of their bicycle. In addition, the number of scooters in the city is exploding. Together with the upcoming tremendous national budget cuts on public transport, this poses a major challenge which calls for cleaver solutions. A substantial intervention is necessary to keep Amsterdam both accessible and attractive. An intervention to manage the increased use of transport modes, improve the available public space and share this space with its various users.
 
Dare to Share Space - Modern Mobility in a Monumental Metropole offers solutions of GroenLinks (GreenLeft) Amsterdam to sustainably improve the quality of life in the city. We do so by separating traffic streams. By making more room for public transport, bicycles and pedestrians without limiting the accessibility for cars. By arranging streets and squares with enough leeway to play and saunter, and sufficient room for terraces and greenery. A capital city on a human scale, where the pedestrian, cyclist, bus, tram, and car each have a fair share of the limited space.
 
Dare to Share Space presents the bold choices needed for an attractive, accessible and economically vital Amsterdam.
 
The exposition Dare to Share Space, at ARCAM from 8 to 20 November 2011, is an initiative of GroenLinks Amsterdam. A proposal by GroenLinks in the Amsterdam city council and our factions in the city boroughs of Centrum, East, West and South titled Modern Mobility in a Monumental Metropole is presented 11 November 2011.