By Guri Smenes and Allison Floyd

If you find yourself strolling in Utrecht’s city center, you might see a Regional Ambulance Voorzienig Utrecht medic making his rounds on a bicycle.

Starting this summer, every Saturday RAVU has made the bikes available to transport medical equipment such as medicine, IVs and defibrillators to Utrecht’s most crowded streets.

The idea behind the bikes was that they could make their way to the sites of injuries faster than traditional ambulances, which are slowed by traffic congestion.

“The bikes have been successful in London, Toronto, and Germany,” said program coordinator and RAVU nurse Ruben Verlangen, who trades off on shifts with three other medics.

In the case of minor injuries the medics can administer treatment while leaving ambulances free for larger-scale emergencies and in the event of more serious situations, like heart attacks, they can begin to treat the patient before the ambulance arrives, explained Verlangen.

The ambulance bikes operate on Saturdays because that’s when the streets of Utrecht are most crowded. The program is run on a volunteer basis and the only requirement to operate an ambulance bike is physical fitness.

As to the public response, “It’s difficult to say, but so far, there have been a lot of positive reactions from the public,” Verlangen said.

Chatting with shop owners and locals out on an uncharacteristically dry Saturday morning, it appeared that most were not yet familiar with the ambulance bikes and had mixed responses to the idea.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea, actually. In a city like Utrecht, you’d need six or seven bases to operate from. Otherwise, it’d take too long,” said Marcel Geerlings of the Simon Lévelt shop along Oudegracht. “They’re not as quick, of course, and anywhere you can go with a bicycle, you can go with a motorcycle.”

Mattijs Oud, visiting Utrecht from Delft, was unfamiliar with the ambulance bikes but thought they would be a good idea in Delft as well.

“Over here, it’s pretty dense,” he said.

Charlie van Zuilekom, also unfamiliar with the bikes, seconded this opinion.

“I think for the people shopping here it’s a good idea,” she said. “Here in the Netherlands, we’re used to bikes. It may be different for other countries.”

After six months RAVU will evaluate the program. If they decide to keep it they will look into sending out bikes on additional days and evenings.

Although there are presently no plans underway to expand the program, Verlangen said that Amsterdam and Rotterdam would be good candidates for ambulance bikes.

The Ruhr area of Germany is very innovative in its use of old coal plants. Rather than tearing them down when they fell out of use, the plants were left standing and the surrounding spaces were eventually given new purpose. The one we toured was part of a larger park, and I thought it was interesting to walk around and see all of the old piping and structure. However, though it is pretty and interesting, it isn’t the kind of place I would return to more than once or twice.
Adding ice-skating rinks, climbing walls and concert spaces is a good way to bring people to the area, but it still seems so isolated that I think there needs to be more than just these few things to draw people in. Additions like restaurants and small shopping areas would make it possible to spend a whole day in the area, rather than just going for one specific purpose and returning home. The fact that our group could not find a cafe in this area is very telling. I think adding more establishments like that would make people more likely to visit if they knew the drive to this area would be worth the time they spent there.
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The trip to Rotterdam provided me my first chance to compare Utrecht to another Dutch city. While the train stations and bus stops looked the same, I noticed a stark difference between the two areas once we started walking around. I was most interested in Rotterdam South because of the large challenge facing the area in terms of an economic and image turnaround. The biggest challenge seems to be the economic homogeny of its neighborhoods.

According to the “Rotterdam South Pact,” Rotterdam South has a large population of young people when compared to the other areas that are aging. This is seen as an asset to Rotterdam South, though the area has many other drawbacks. Residents of Rotterdam are not attracted to Rotterdam South because the available housing is all low-value without medium- or high-value housing mixed in to attract different income levels. This situation is hard to break out of, as the more poor people who live in an area, the lower the value drops, which only brings poorer people to the area. As we saw during the tour, almost all of the residents in this area were foreigners with very few Dutch inhabitants. The same thing goes for the shops and restaurants in the area. Personally, from my experience trying to find something to eat for lunch, I saw that all of the restaurants were ethnically themed. However, several corporations and departments in Rotterdam feel there is hope for this area and are banding together to bring South Rotterdam to its full potential as an economic and cultural destination in the Netherlands. This is what led to the Rotterdam South Pact.

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To a tourist, one of the most striking things about Utrect is the canal system winding through the center of town. You could spend an entire day walking through the heart of the city along the canal, visiting shops and restaurants, enjoying the scenery and watching families of ducks splashing in the brown water. The more time I spent near the canal, however, the more I started to question its safety. I wondered how often people or children accidentally fall into the canal by accident.

“I’ve never seen anyone fall in,” said a waiter at Den Drawck, a restaurant along the canal. “Stometimes people find bikes or shopping carts thrown in there, and sometimes chairs will get blown in if there’s a strong wind. But I’ve never seen a person get thrown in.”

Accidents do happen, however, and in August of 2006, a stairway near the canal collapsed during a musical festival. Eighteen people were hurt and one died from injuries sustained in the accident. Since this incident, there has been increased focus on canal safety, including a recent stress test of the fence around the canal. Frank van der Vaart, spokesperson for the municipality of Utrecht, explained why the city is doing these tests.

“After the accident we wanted to do testing, but we didn’t have a good method for it,” he said. “We put extra fences in front of the railings to make sure it would never happen again.”

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Rotterdam could be seen as a city that embodies the friction of opposing polarities: pre-World War Two architecture mixes with aggressively modern postwar structures; poor neighborhoods and ethnic shops mingle with sleek restaurants and expensive retail stores.

Rotterdam could also be seen as representative of the adage that appearances can be deceiving. The traditionally working class city is currently the focus of a large scale gentrification effort, particularly the immigrant-dense Rotterdam South, which is reportedly impoverished and crime-ridden. Upon visiting the neighborhood, however, the reality of the place appeared to my untrained eye to be more in line with the glossy press kit representation that the city center assembled for us than with that of a neighborhood plagued by poverty and crime.

Granted, we visited the neighborhood in broad daylight. Also granted, problems like insufficient education and poor job prospects aren’t necessarily immediately observable. It would be interesting to speak with the neighborhood residents and hear their perspectives on life in Rotterdam South.

The gentrification effort includes a proposed sports stadium that will also serve as a concert and performance venue, the creation of housing that will be attractive to a higher income bracket, and establishing and catering to a college student community. These projects raise several questions. At the press conference and subsequent walking tour that our class attended, planners emphasized improving the quality of life for the current residents and maintaining low- and middle-income housing in addition to the high-income housing that they hope to create a market for.

How will this play out over time? Will gentrification preserve housing options for low-income residents or will it displace them? How will the new jobs created by the stadium project compare with the loss of jobs that would result if they tear down the warehouses and industrial buildings in the area where they want to build the stadium? If and when the neighborhood becomes more attractive to a different socio-economic bracket, will it retain its vibrant multicultural character, or will this be lost in the shuffle?

It will be interesting to watch the answers to these questions emerge. Rotterdam is in a state of flux: a city steeped in past and perhaps headed toward a divergent future.

 The rising costs of commodities have led the European Commission to lift restrictions on 26 types of fruit and vegetables that have formerly been tossed aside because of their lack of visual appeal.

The 20 year ban on “ugly produce” will be enacted July 1, 2009. Read more »

It is time to resume frozen partnership talks with Russia. That’s what EU foreign ministers on Monday in Brussels agreed on, despite Lithuania’s opposition.

Lithuania thinks that the talks should remain frozen until Russia has fully complied with the terms of the peace deal it agreed on after its short war with Georgia last August. Although Russia has pulled its troops out of the centre of Georgia, it still has several in South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

A Russian foreign ministry official in Moscow has expressed his regret about the lack of unanimity in the European Union. Read more »

Although drugs consumption in Europe is generally stable, its levels are still alarmingly high. Besides, the record opium production in Afghanistan may lead to a surge in the availability of heroin across the continent, the EU’s drugs monitoring agency warns in its annual report.

“Overall, for most forms of consumption, we are not seeing major increases, and, in some areas, trends appear to be downwards,” said Wolfgang Goetz, head of the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) on Thursday, November 6. The agency’s annual report reveals a steady or declining use among Europeans of amphetamine and ecstasy as well as signs that consumption of cannabis - by far the most popular illicit drug in Europe - is falling among young people. It estimates that four million Europeans now use it daily, or almost daily. The survey suggests that this decline may be a by-product of the introduction of widespread bans on smoking tobacco in public places.

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The fourth European Youth Week 2008 was celebrated with over 500 activities and events all over Europe. 200 young people gathered with stakeholders and policy makers to discuss the future direction of EU youth policy after presenting their projects at the “European Youth Celebrations” to the European Commissioner for Education, Training, Culture and Youth, Ján Figel. Read more »

The European Union has chosen Marseille, France and Kosice, Slovakia as the 2013 European Capitals of CULTure.

Each year the EU chooses a few cities to represent and promote European CULTure. These cities are supposed to showcase the richness of Europe’s diversity and help create a stronger European identity. In turn, the honor improves the city’s image and generates tourism and economic growth in the associated member state. The EU provides subsidies for the extra costs taken on by the city.

According to my dictionary, CULTure is defined as “the cultivation of bacteria, tissue cells, etc. in an artificial medium containing nutrients.”

As in: the cells proliferate readily in culture.

CULTure is a very big deal to the EU. The EU tries to encourage the “flowering of the CULTures of the Member States” and treasures the “rich fruits” each of these CULTures produces. The Capital of CULTure program aims to acknowledge the uniqueness of these fruits while simultaneously encouraging states to realize they stem from a common European shrub, if you will. Read more »