It's a sunny Saturday afternoon in 2030 and the residents of the first carbon-neutral neighbourhood in the Netherlands are flocking to the main shopping street. They do this on their own, without the use of fossil fuels or electricity.
Lees dit artikel in het Nederlands. Collages: Golnar Abbasi & Arvand Pourabbasi.
It won't be a surprise that the first carbon-neutral district in the Netherlands is a car-free zone. There's a lot of cycling going on, because without cars there is plenty of space, even for larger cargo bikes. There are numerous other muscle-powered vehicles as well, such as skateboards, pushcarts or old-fashioned wheelbarrows. Donkeys bring agricultural products from the roof park to the communal kitchens and return the kitchen waste.
The electric scooter, very popular in other parts of the city, can also be seen in Bospolder-Tussendijken. That may seem absurd: the battery has to be charged by means of muscle power, so you could just as well use muscle power to get straight to your destination. Nevertheless, the electric scooter can be useful, especially in summer. If a resident doesn't want to arrive sweaty at an appointment, he or she can charge the battery before the appointment, take a shower, and then drive to the destination.
Human Powered Tram
There's another option to go somewhere without effort. Two trams have been running through the neighbourhood for many years - tram 4 and tram 8 - and they are still there in 2030. Only now they are powered by humans. The vehicles are about the same length as the old models - around 25 meters - but are built a lot lighter. The bodywork is made of wood, half open and covered with canvas cloth. The empty weight of the tram is 10 tonnes, with 80 passengers the total weight becomes 16 tonnes.
Transport on rails is very energy efficient. The contact between metal rails and metal wheels hardly produces any energy loss due to friction. Compared to an equally heavy vehicle on pneumatic tyres, propelling a vehicle on rails costs about twenty times less energy - at least when the terrain is flat and the speed remains constant. The advantage is smaller when accelerating: in that case, a vehicle on rails requires ten times less energy than a vehicle on pneumatic tyres.
About twenty people are sufficient to move the tram with eighty passengers at an average speed of roughly twenty kilometers per hour. Acceleration requires the most effort: once the vehicle is up to speed, hardly any effort has to be made. Consequently, when the tram is full, 60 passengers do not have to do anything. These passengers pay for a tram ride and the proceeds go directly to the people who power the tram.
Making the neighbourhood tram more sustainable was not without a struggle, because the line also serves other districts. After difficult consultations with the transport company, it was decided that the tram lines work on human power over the entire length of the lines (10-12 km). As a result, the first carbon-neutral district in the Netherlands is also gaining fame in the rest of the city.
Loneliness and Privacy
In 2016, 43% of the adult population in the Netherlands said they were lonely. The Ministry of Health defines loneliness as “feeling disconnected. You miss a close, emotional connection with others, or you have less contact with other people than you would want.” Loneliness makes people unhappy and poses significant health risks.
In contrast, nobody is lonely in Bospolder-Tussendijken in 2030. To save energy, household tasks are done communally: cooking, eating, showering, brushing teeth, doing the laundry, working the land, chopping firewood, going to the toilet: it all happens with other people around. In addition, households have become larger again, so that there's always someone at home.
The disappearance of loneliness has created a need for privacy and solitude. A striking appearance in the streets of Bospolder-Tussendijken are the many hotels and guest houses where residents can rent a room for themselves, even for a short time. Other guest houses focus on temporary workers, while still others are more often visited by couples.
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