The story of the Dutch town of Houten has already been written, but its history isn’t over. So, a group of residents in the town have joined forces to update and translate ‘The Green Embraced’.
The team is working on editing the book and is seeking both main sponsors and crowdfunding supporters to make it a reality.
Houten was a small village until the 1970s when it was built up around a new town centre and train station with green spines running from it which are both green spaces and the primary transport corridors — walking and cycling routes.
There are no direct car routes. Motorists must go out to its modest ring road to visit the town centre or cross from one neighbourhood to another. Some of these elements have since famously been retrofitted to already built areas and used as a template for new suburbs in other cities in the Netherlands and internationally.
“We are a small team working to translate and update the history of a Dutch town that’s been living the high-life for more than 50 years,” Kylie van Dam, a Houten resident and representative of the group posted on their gofundme.com page.
“Het Groen Omarmd (The Green Embraced) is about Houten, the world-renowned cycling paradise of fifty thousand inhabitants who, no matter age or ability, ride their bikes and say ‘hi’ to each other every single day,” she said.
She wrote: “Across the globe, attention is turning to urban planning and traffic in society, politics, science and media. Cities are drowning in cars, with terrible consequences for quality of life, health, road safety and the environment and people are waking up to the reality of what this means. Consequently, we’re seeing a rising interest in the making of cities more people, environment and climate-friendly.”
Van Dam added: “And we’re absolutely positive that Het Groen Omarmd has a role to play in that transition!”
Urban planner Robert Derks originally published his book of how Houten came to be in 2013. The group says it is convinced that the “book must be made available in English.”
People who want to help are asked to visit their GoFundMe page. Potential sponsors are asked to contact the publishers, Blauwdruk, with the possibility of negotiating sponsorship in exchange for acknowledgement in the book or, for example, a financial commitment to purchase pre-publication.