Houten’s approach to their transportation design is that the residents should be able to bike everywhere and if they cannot they can bike to the train. Each of the neighborhoods have their own network bike network for the necessities like schools and grocery shopping, any area that they would run short errands. However, they still have the availability to the easy access car routes that perimeter the city. It is about 2 kilometers to get across Houten so it is an easy commute to get anywhere in the city. They designed the city to almost completely take cars out of the equation, they wanted to the bike and train together so their people can reach everywhere they need without using a car.
I can imagine this approach in the U.S. but it would have to be in a very small town, and the town would have to be designed from the ground up. I can’t imagine anywhere in the U.S. would redesign their entire city in order to make it as completely bike centric as Houten. I think it could be a cool social experiment if some planners, architects, and engineers get together on private land and attempt something similar. It would be interesting to see who would move their and how they would assimilate to the new system.
I thought overall that Houten was a really nice suburb and it seemed like a beautiful place to raise kids and it’s not too far away from Utrect when they want a bigger city feel. Each neighborhood had their own personality and that was really cool to see how each area is connected. It was definitely something I had never seen before but I really enjoyed riding around and observing.
