Movement

‘A revolutionary view of mobility … Gives us the tools to campaign for something different.’

– Lucy Siegle

‘Readable, thoughtful, and provocative, this book provides an entertaining overview of how the Netherlands became a mecca for cycling. The authors make a strong case for putting cycling at the heart of our transport systems, but also aren’t shy about identifying some flaws in the Dutch approach, and considering how other countries could learn from them.’

– Ben Coates, author of Why the Dutch Are Different

‘This book will — no question — make you think in new ways. Why have we surrendered our cities to cars? What might it be like to inhabit a space designed for people instead? It’s exciting and hopeful — this we can do!’

– Bill McKibben, author The Flag, the Cross, and the Station Wagon

‘Thalia Verkade is one of those people who continue digging where others would stop, before finally coming up with the most wonderful and surprising discoveries and insights.’

– Joris Luyendijk, author and journalist

‘These writers have the gift of looking again at things you thought you knew, like your own street, your bike, or your life. This book is an infectious plea for a calmer, richer life.’

– Arjen van Veelen, author

‘Alice in Trafficland.’

* De Groene Amsterdammer *

‘Why is the car still the boss in the street? In the book Movement, cycling professor Marco te Brömmelstroet and journalist Thalia Verkade show how the car is taking up more and more space. And that this is at the expense of cyclists, walkers, steppers, and skaters.’

– Robert Visscher * NEMO Kennislkink *

‘Verkade’s somewhat surprised look from the outside makes traffic professionals once again critically look at what is considered normal and the norm … In an interesting history lecture, she tells how the car, as a symbol of freedom and progress, managed to work its way from guest to boss on the street in a short time.’

– Edwin Kruiniger * NM Magazine *

‘Movement is an important book, full of interesting examples, curious, surprised, angry, sometimes indiscriminate. It deserves a broad social discussion about the way we design our cities and streets. A discussion that will hopefully also lead to other choices. It has to be different, but that can only happen if the people who want it different join forces.’

– Wim Bot * Fietrsbond *

‘This stimulating book shows how the street can once again become a place to socialise.’

– Maarten Ducrot, Dutch former cyclist and cycling commentator

‘The book offers many unprecedented insights into traffic and mobility, convincingly poses the question of how important mobility actually is and suggests an answer to that. Movement is a compelling thinker.’

* Jury citation from the Brussels Prize 2021 *

‘Movement gives hope but is also a terrifying account of the power of the status quo.’

– Andrew Simms * Resurgence and Ecologist *

‘Language, writes Verkade, is a filter, and in our cities we are obsessed with ‘traffic’. But why does the term not include people walking or cycling? Why do we automatically think that it applies to cars? … This book, rather than just describing the mess we’re in, also helpfully gives extensive advice on what is being done and what we can do, including being alert to deceptive and biased language, getting involved in community activism around access and mobility, lobbying governments and knowing that we have the power to choose.’

– Nick Mattiske * Insights *

Thalia Verkade (1979) lives in Rotterdam. She has been a staff writer and foreign correspondent for the Dutch national newspapers NRC Handelsblad and nrc.next. For the ad-free slow journalism platform De Correspondent she has written extensively about the topics she loves most: language, transport, and technocracy.

Marco te Brömmelstroet is the chair of Urban Mobility Futures at the Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research at the University of Amsterdam. His teaching centres on the relationship between land use developments and mobility behaviour. As founding academic director of the Urban Cycling Institute he strengthens the links between academia and how cycling relates to the urban and social environment. Cycling offers him a lens to radically reimagine the way in which society thinks about mobility, transport systems, and the street.

Fiona Graham is a British literary translator, editor, and reviewer who has lived in Kenya, Germany, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Nicaragua, and Belgium. Her recent translations include Elisabeth Åsbrink’s 1947: when now begins, an English PEN award-winner longlisted for the Warwick Women in Translation Prize and the JQ Wingate Prize, and Torill Kornfeldt’s The Unnatural Selection of Our Species.