In The City Of Bikes : By Pete Jordan

In The City Of Bikes : By Pete Jordan

The two chapters from the book 'In The City Of Bikes: The story of Amsterdam cyclist' is written by the author Pete Jordan and he tells us the story of Amsterdam as the city of bikes and reveals the unknown facts in the history of cycling from 1970s to the modern days .  He starts by describing the city's attraction to which youth from all over the world are getting attracted to it . Freedom , Tolerance , and relaxed atmosphere are the major attractions to which the youth generation is getting attracted to it . 

The first text ' Death To The Car :The 1970s' Pete begins his talks about the period for cycling in Amsterdam in 1971 and the emergence of its first protest movements sparked by conditions for cycling and increase on cars and subsequent pampering of motorized transport . The troublesome amsterdammer founded by 30 year old architect and graphic designer Bierman and 28 year old sociologist Bakker . The main policy of this was directly to taking directly to the streets of bikes to attract peoples attention to the growing numbers of cars .The new movement called De Kabouters (the gnomes) established the 'Car elimination sevice' . This movement was started by Roel van Duijn for ecological transformation of society . This battling with cars started taking more and more people involved in it . Jordan also tells the readers that this activist were sometimes battered by other motorist which in its turn spurred the retailatory acts of newly dubbed 'bike guerilla' came for the first time in the new radical newspaper in 1972 . 

The new pattern of carless lifestyle started its integration into the minds of the dutch people in a hope to assuage fears of total economic collapse the prime minister himself rode a bicycle at his official recidence in front of news and cameras . 

On November 4th , with the advert of 'no bike sunday' Amsterdam started a new chapter in the history . During the oil embargo , bikes sales shoot up . After that we also come to know from the text that many people started reconsidering the role of cars in their lives and amsterdam some also said that bike gave them new dimension to life . There were many bike demonstrations after 1974 where there was a crowd of almost 15000 cyclist which started many changes in amsterdam .