Comments on: European cities!

By: Anne-Jan Zieleman

Anne-Jan Zieleman — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 12:22:59 +0000

A (rather late) reaction on this article:

On: Amsterdam – the San Francisco of Europe! -> I think it does more right to the history of Amsterdam as city of tolerance and freedom to call San Fransisco the Amsterdam of the USA. Besides that; Amsterdam offers so much more than the obvious (Drugs/Sex/Party) quoted here.

By: Ralf Lippold

Ralf Lippold — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 10:10:49 +0000

Hi Jukka,

It seems time to focus across the globe on cities that are innovative and where people live new ways of co-creating the future.

There are some great places in Finland (Yväskylä with Timiiaketemia, and Espoo with similar activities).

You can reach me via Twitter (http://www.twitter.com/ralflippold and I would love to build a stronger community in Europe on the “Who’s Your City”.

Best regards

Ralf

By: Annette

Annette — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 19:16:29 +0000

Since 2006 there are a few things changed indeed. Since july 2008 you cannot smoke in bars/restauramts anymore (Like NewYork). More coutnry’s in Europe support that law, but the people disagree and smoke sometimes anyway, or bars ignore the law. Also the redLightDistrict in Amsterdam is going to change into artgalleries. The opinion about that is very diverse. Personaly i feel in between; i want to keep the redlightdistrict because i like the liberated point of view in the innercity and the feeling the bounderies are made by behaviour in society instead of a law. Also i think it’s more save to have a legal prostitute-scene than an illegal. On the other hand i dislike some behaviour of tourists visiting the district. I can imagine the freedom they experience, but sometimes they shout, drink and throw everything on the street. That’s a part i don’t like so mucht.
Originally i’m from a village in the north of the netherlands, now i’m already living 10 years in Amsterdam. It’s funny the Netherlands is a small coutnry, but the differences are quick to notice outside the cities. Since september 2008 i’m studying culture and citiessociology ( a pre-master year). We read two atricles from the book. Very interessting to focus on Europe also indeed!. Greetings.

By: Jukka Kontula

Jukka Kontula — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 16:09:22 +0000

Funny, I just wrote an Amazon review criticizing the lack of European focus on the book. It would be interesting to try to find out the same kind of regions from Europe and Asia than were found in the US.

By: Libby

Libby — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 22:22:56 +0000

I love Amsterdam – went there on my honeymoon over three years ago. But I’ve read so much about the concerted effort to change the culture lately. Is there a noticeable shift already, for better or worse?