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https://www.positive.news/society/utrecht-the-city-where-the-future-has-already-arrived/>
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What will cities look like a decade from now? Utrecht offers clues as it
takes green living to the next level
Ducklings swim in convoy behind their mum along Catharijnesingel canal in
Utrecht. It’s the only tailback you’ll see here these days, now the motorway
has gone.
I watch them and imagine the tabloid-fuelled frenzy that would ensue in Britain
if one of its cities turned a six-lane road into a canal for pleasure boating
and nature. Much uproar in Utrecht? “Not really,” Paul Manten, who led the
project, tells me, as we stroll along the canal’s flower-strewn banks. “A few
people who go everywhere by car didn’t like it.”
Many others saw it as righting a historic wrong. A canal flowed here from as
early as 1122, when it was dug as a defence line for the city. It was
controversially filled in with concrete in the 1960s, when the world went
gung-ho for cars. Cue a referendum in 2002, when residents voted to bring the
water back. Though Covid scuppered the long-awaited grand reopening in 2020, it
also sparked a renaissance in active travel in other cities – a vindication for
Utrecht, which, according to Manten, spent circa €1bn (£860m) restoring
Catharijnesingel.
“We were ahead of our time,” he says, as boats pass by, carrying gilet-wearing
passengers with glasses of wine in their hands. “Everywhere is trying to do
this now, make their cities greener.”
Nowhere, perhaps, is doing it with more grace than Utrecht, a city taking green
living to the next level. A short ride from Catharijnesingel, a verdant tower
block is taking shape behind the train station. Wonderwoods Vertical Forest is
a new office and residential complex that will, when complete, double as a
2.5-acre woodland. I look up at the trees swaying on the balconies above, the
flowers draped over balustrades.
“I feel privileged to work on this,” says project manager, Hedzer Pathuis, who
meets me onsite. It’s a Friday afternoon and workers are downing tools as the
nearby pub gets busy."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
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mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
