Active Towns Human-Scaled Accessibility w/ Meredith Glaser
In this episode, I reconnect with Meredith Glaser, a Ph.D. doctoral candidate within the University of Amsterdam's Urban Cycling Institute, for a discussion about living in The Netherlands as an ex-pat from California, accelerating reform to support human-scaled accessibility, and developing an understanding about the transfer of knowledge from study tours.
Meredith had originally planned to only study and work abroad for a year or so, well that has turned into a decade of living in Amsterdam, raising a family, and developing a passion for a better understanding of Dutch cycling and how other cities around the world can best learn from the experiences of The Netherlands. In this long-form interview with John Simmerman, Founder of the Active Towns Initiative and host of the Active Towns Podcast, Meredith discusses what it has been like to make such a huge change culturally and how active mobility becomes second nature because of the built form, policy structures, and societal norms.
Meredith also discusses in-depth two recent papers she has published along with some of her colleagues at the Urban Cycling Institute, Learning from abroad: An interdisciplinary exploration of knowledge transfer in the transport domain and Accelerating reform to govern streets in support of human-scaled accessibility
Additional and Helpful Links:
Spokes! Ridecast video with Meredith Glaser: Where did all the traffic lights go?
Amsterdam Bike Tour by Urban Planner Meredith Glaser video
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Credits:
All video and audio production by John Simmerman
Music:
Happy Uplifting Dance Track by Fredrik Storm, Happy News by Evgeny-Kiselevich, and Road to Success by Mikael Manvelyan via Storyblocks.com
Resources used during the production of this episode:
- My awesome recording platform is Ecamm
For more information about my Active Towns effort or to follow along, please visit my links below:
- Website
- Podcast landing pages
Background:
Hi Everyone, my name is John Simmerman.
I’m a health promotion professional with over 30 years of experience and my area of concentration has evolved into a specialization of how the built environment influences human behavior related to active living and especially active mobility.
In 2012 I launched the non-profit Advocates for Healthy Communities as an effort to help promote and create healthy, active places.
Since that time, I've been exploring, documenting, and profiling established, emerging, and aspiring Active Towns wherever they might be, in order to produce high-quality multimedia content to help inspire the creation of more safe and inviting, environments that promote a "Culture of Activity" for "All Ages & Abilities."
My Active Towns suite of channels feature my original video and audio content and reflections, including a selection of podcast episodes and short films profiling the positive and inspiring efforts happening around the world as I am able to experience and document them.
Thanks for tuning in; I hope you have found this content helpful.
Creative Commons License: Attributions, Non-Commercial, No Derivatives, 2020
Advocates for Healthy Communities, Inc. is a nonprofit 501c3 organization (EIN 45-3802508) dedicated to helping communities create a Culture of Activity. To donate, click here.
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