ed on the concept of an inner city where a cross-section of the population could live, work, and shop.
It is important to pause for a minute and reflect on the differences between this model of city planning and the dominant American approach. While the Americans built and widened freeways, tore down old buildings, constructed new luxury housing, malls, offices, and retail outlets, as well as removing the local (usually minority) poor people, in Amsterdam they emphasized the reduction of automobile traffic, the narrowing of streets, investment in public transportation, bike paths, and pedestrian walkways, and the construction of affordable housing, or in the case of the squatters, the legalization of formerly ad hoc housing in deserted buildings.
The key difference seems to be the political activism of the progressive forces in Amsterdam. In Ameri
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