It Can Be Done

My monthly Twitter round-ups always include a lot of tweets about sustainable cities and transportation, but they aren't the best place to show the before-and-after photos that I see go past, usually from European cities.

It's common for Americans to assume that places that have good transit or biking infrastructure have always been that way, but they haven't. Here's an example from an urban planner named Fouad:

Two girls stand in the same location in Utrecht between 1982 and 2020 (38 years). The difference is clear, not only in the street components which can be implemented and achieved by designers, but the real development is the urban mobility modes:

Which version of the city would you rather live in? Which one seems like it will have a chance of working in our climate crisis world?