Utrecht and London, Ontario feel worlds away today. As Jason Slaughter of Not Just Bikes shows, Utrecht is a highly pedestrian-, bike-, and transit-oriented city with a dense but human scale cityscape. London is highly car-oriented, scarred by suburbanization and fairly low density outside its small city core. Both cities used to be dense, streetcar cities and both latter adopted futures oriented around cars with Utrecht even filling in a canal in the city center for a major highway and displacing city blocks for a suburban shopping mall nearby. The cities were following similar suburbanization patterns, but Utrecht chose to go a completely different direction starting in the 1990s. Now, the two cities couldn’t be more different.
Stephen is a professional urban planner in Puget Sound with a passion for sustainable, livable, and diverse cities. He is especially interested in how policies, regulations, and programs can promote positive outcomes for communities. With stints in great cities like Bellingham and Cork, Stephen currently lives in Seattle. He primarily covers land use and transportation issues and has been with The Urbanist since 2014.