Other Dutch cities may have higher cycling rates and Copenhagen always puts its hand up, but Amsterdam remains the world's iconic cycling city. The common trope used by opponents of cycling in the UK, for example, is almost always something like: "But Oxford is not Amsterdam". The focus in Bike City Amsterdam, however, is as much on the city as on the cycling, on the interaction of the city's geography, planning and politics with its cycling culture, people, and infrastructure.

Feddes and de Lange begin with the threat posed, in the 1950s and 1960s, by the rise of the car, and with visions for the city which left cycling out. There was realisation of the benefits of cycling, however, and, as plans to fill in the canals were rejected, of the impossibility of providing for uncontrolled numbers of cars. And this was consolidated by the counter-culture and the Provo movement, the oil crisis, the Stop the Child Murder campaign, and then in 1975 a key 22-21 City Council vote against putting a four-lane road above the Nieuwmarkt metro line.

While this marked a key turning point, it was just the start. It took another fifty years for Amsterdam to get to where it is now, and this less dramatic story is where Bike City Amsterdam really shines. There was ongoing activism, a steady accumulation of knowledge, and development of an urban policy which centred cycling, with the city working alongside the Fietserbond (the Cyclists Union, founded in 1975), starting with memoranda on "Bottlenecks" and "Cycling in Amsterdam" (in 1977 and 1978). Change was slow, but it was steady and in the right direction.

Central to this was car parking reduction, traffic calming, reallocation of space, and the development of a coherent cycling network. There were also bicycle parties and festivals, an integration of cycling into everyday life, and even a kind of social dominance. A whole chapter is devoted to the twenty-year struggle over the cycle track running through the Rijksmuseum building.

Amsterdam now faces the challenges of success: widening cycle tracks, evicting mopeds and microcars from cycle lanes, coping with tourism, changing behaviour by people cycling, ensuring there is cycling connectivity to new developments, and relying less on volunteer activism. And the final chapter looks to the future, asking what a fully realised bicycle city might look like. Feddes delves a bit into the comparison with Copenhagen, but suggests a focus on sustainability, inclusivity, growth, and smoothness:

"Amsterdam has already organized the physical bicycle city, comprising the road layout, the network and the parking facilities, and quite successfully so. Has the time now come to build further on this foundation, and to complete the transformation into a social bicycle city, a cultural bicycle city, an exciting and sustainable bicycle city, a fully-developed bicycle city — and to understand what that means?"

Tourists or cycling enthusiasts might be better off starting with Pete Jordan's City of Bikes, but for anyone interested in broader urbanism and the links between cycling and municipal politics and planning and cultural history, Bike City Amsterdam is a treasure-trove of material not available anywhere else. It is also beautifully illustrated, with a great selection of street photography, maps, diagrams, posters and cartoons.

One topic not covered is the relationship between Amsterdam and the broader Netherlands: to what extent did Amsterdam drive national standards and social and political change and, vice versa, how much effect did national policies have on Amsterdam?

November 2025

External links:

- information from the authors

Related reviews:

- Fred Feddes - A Millennium of Amsterdam: Spatial History of a Marvellous City
- books about the Low Countries
- books about transport