Oh so the bridges on euro banknotes are not representative of real life, someone built them all on their own just to prove this. Wow what a weird headline that was.
Are footbridges easy to build in Europe? I've done some preliminary research into how a rural town in the USA would install similar small pedestrian bridges. The costs are astronomical and the environmental review seems nigh impossible to satisfy. (The only alternative, of course, is to drive a car as the existing roads/bridges are too unsafe for pedestrians + bikes.)
Footbridges like these, only for cycling and pedestrians, over several meters of non-moving water: Yes. Think less than a week of installation (mainly concrete for the foundation) often the rest is wood, some screws and € 100k max all-in. Replacement is a two day activity for two.
Cost can go up quickly though with requirements. Moving bridges are way more expensive, bridges across active waterways obviously so, cars are another dimension. There is a scandal in my town where a nice retro artsy car-bridge is closed more often than openend and the steel is breaking after 5-10 years. Think millions per year.
I fear that pedestrian bridges are pretty far out of the normal where your from? In my (small) Dutch city I think there are about 500? So they’ll replace at least a few per week (going from 20 year lifespan and the age of most of the bridges). They look like exactly those in the pictures (except the ornaments of course ;).
His city council was working on approving a new housing development that required bridges so they incorporated the designs into their plans prior to construction.
My home town had bridge failing(no full collapse) and replacement was delivered fast(~1.5 years to remove old one and install new one). A real bridge with 4 lanes(one way) over a river. And then pedestrian bridge over some railway tracks cost like four times and was designed badly from I heard and ended up costing more...
This looks like a pretty new neighborhood. Those get build as mass projects. The entire neighborhood is tendered to a single contractor (usually a consortium of multiple companies).
It gets a common design, with everything made to fit together. They can look pretty monotonous. Some people call them living-factories ("woonfabrieken"). The advantage is that they are high-quality homes and all kinds of services are designed in: there's a space for super markets and a few other shops, a handful of restaurants, doctors and dentists, primary schools and daycares. Everything you need for living with a young family.
Infrastructure, like bridges, are also designed in. The overall plan has had an environmental review. Probably multiple, and also other kinds of reviews. It can take years before such a plan gets approval, but in the end the municipal council usually agrees.
There were probably already some basic bridges designed at those spots. If the municipal council liked the idea, it wouldn't have taken much to get the design changed to this.
Two things struck me. Firstly it still amazes me I can (virtually) stroll around a town I have never visited and get a real feel for it's space and living (oh that's what Dutch recycling bind look like!)
Secondly and more depressing I think we have to rebuild our urban environments to de-prioritise the car. To hit carbon targets we need less cars, less car journeys etc (it's madness to build EVs 1:1replacemrnt with really high carbon initial inbuilt cost). And yet nice new developments in the nice advanced dutch world are still the same slaves to cars, roads and parking.
I don't know how we fix this - urban planning is going to make or break millions or billions of lives.
Sure, but not every country has the same amount of cars per capita, and especially not the same amount of miles traveled by car vs other means.
If anything, the Netherlands could be an example for most of Europe and the USA on how to lower the amount of car trips. While most people have a car, it’s seeing less use than in most countries I’m familiar with: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...
> Two things struck me. Firstly it still amazes me I can (virtually) stroll around a town I have never visited and get a real feel for it's space and living (oh that's what Dutch recycling bind look like!)
You should try Apple’s street view competitor (in Plans). They developed an amazing effect when you move around, with parallax, 3D and all. Very impressive.
Before reading the details I thought: “it must be some kinds of façade they applied” because no ways they will try to (re-)construct the bridges using original techniques.
It’ll be awesome if someone actually build those bridges using original techniques of the times. By small bridges like that, I think it’s actually possible.
The euro bank note design is neat. I like the idea of putting bridges on them and it was clever to use made-up bridges instead of real ones, which would have ties to specific countries.
I appreciate why the bridges are (or were, as the case might be) fictional, but it also saddens me because of the implication that appreciating and respecting the people who came before you and exist around you is somehow offensive and wrong.
I'm American, so it's definitely not my place to discuss this anymore than in passing commentary, but comparing this to things like our US 50 State commemorative quarters makes me wish the world in general was in a better place.
You've gotten it a bit twisted. The implication isn't that appreciating the past is offensive
The idea was to not exclude any one country, nor to make any one country above the others. There were only 7 banknotes when the euro started but 11 countries. If you put actual landmarks on them you'd have inevitably linked the notes to the country of the landmark, you would've made some countries inevitably feel excluded and politically you'd have created the sense that some countries are literally worth more than others
These architectural styles can be found all over the eurozone members (especially the original ones) and making them bridges makes a nice symbol of bridging and bringing countries closer together
> 50 State commemorative quarters
There's no need for that because each country independently mints the 8 coins (0.01, 0.02, 0.05, 0.10, 0.20, 0.50, 1, 2) and have their own designs on the "tail"
It's about symbols and we've learned that over the long haul real things make poor symbols. This is why I believe we should avoid building statues of people and build only statues of ideas. Big statue of some guy in your town? Owned everywhere you can see when he was alive, he built the mill where everybody worked, he founded the school ... and he was a slaver and notorious racist. Not so great. Big statue of Liberty in your city? No problem, the idea of Liberty is all she brings to the conversation (OK in New York's case also a poem "The New Colossus", but the poem was added, the statue doesn't inherently come with a poem).
Offensive and wrong? No, but choosing so few people from so many participating nations (and make no mistake, the EU is a lot looser conglomeration, even today, than the US) would be impossible without at least some hurt feelings. So fictional bridges is what you get, for peace and symbolism.
The Euro coins, on the other hand, have a country specific side. So with eight denominations and (about) 24 issuing countries there are 192 valid different coins. And then each country can issue two commemorative €2 coins per year.
Stam got a letter of approval for his project from the European Central Bank and he even cinched the support of the Spijkenisse city council. They financed his project with 1.3 million dollars which was around a quarter more expensive than what a more simple set of bridges would have cost.
It's implied in this article (in Dutch) that the municipality of Spijkenisse funded it. At no more cost than building 'normal' bridges, as they had planned originally
Huh. On the 5 Euro bill, it takes three pillars of the middle layer to go from peak to peak along the bottom layer. Then, it takes four pillars of the top layer to go from peak to peak along the middle layer.
That bridge is really the worst implemented one. The middle layer on the imitation bridge also is filled in between the arches which IMO ruins the entire aqueduct look
Readit News
Original title -
"Euros Bills Were Intentionally Drawn Not To Represent Real Bridges, So This Guy Built Them One By One On This River"
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Cost can go up quickly though with requirements. Moving bridges are way more expensive, bridges across active waterways obviously so, cars are another dimension. There is a scandal in my town where a nice retro artsy car-bridge is closed more often than openend and the steel is breaking after 5-10 years. Think millions per year.
I fear that pedestrian bridges are pretty far out of the normal where your from? In my (small) Dutch city I think there are about 500? So they’ll replace at least a few per week (going from 20 year lifespan and the age of most of the bridges). They look like exactly those in the pictures (except the ornaments of course ;).
His city council was working on approving a new housing development that required bridges so they incorporated the designs into their plans prior to construction.
They were built to match the banknote designs.
My home town had bridge failing(no full collapse) and replacement was delivered fast(~1.5 years to remove old one and install new one). A real bridge with 4 lanes(one way) over a river. And then pedestrian bridge over some railway tracks cost like four times and was designed badly from I heard and ended up costing more...
It gets a common design, with everything made to fit together. They can look pretty monotonous. Some people call them living-factories ("woonfabrieken"). The advantage is that they are high-quality homes and all kinds of services are designed in: there's a space for super markets and a few other shops, a handful of restaurants, doctors and dentists, primary schools and daycares. Everything you need for living with a young family.
Infrastructure, like bridges, are also designed in. The overall plan has had an environmental review. Probably multiple, and also other kinds of reviews. It can take years before such a plan gets approval, but in the end the municipal council usually agrees.
There were probably already some basic bridges designed at those spots. If the municipal council liked the idea, it wouldn't have taken much to get the design changed to this.
https://www.google.com/maps/@51.852235,4.3379891,3a,75y,13.1...
Others can be found by following canal backwards. Check out the suspension cables on
https://www.google.com/maps/@51.8510747,4.3358721,3a,75y,335...
Secondly and more depressing I think we have to rebuild our urban environments to de-prioritise the car. To hit carbon targets we need less cars, less car journeys etc (it's madness to build EVs 1:1replacemrnt with really high carbon initial inbuilt cost). And yet nice new developments in the nice advanced dutch world are still the same slaves to cars, roads and parking.
I don't know how we fix this - urban planning is going to make or break millions or billions of lives.
If anything, the Netherlands could be an example for most of Europe and the USA on how to lower the amount of car trips. While most people have a car, it’s seeing less use than in most countries I’m familiar with: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...
You should try Apple’s street view competitor (in Plans). They developed an amazing effect when you move around, with parallax, 3D and all. Very impressive.
This is a great phrasing, thank you
It’ll be awesome if someone actually build those bridges using original techniques of the times. By small bridges like that, I think it’s actually possible.
I'm American, so it's definitely not my place to discuss this anymore than in passing commentary, but comparing this to things like our US 50 State commemorative quarters makes me wish the world in general was in a better place.
The idea was to not exclude any one country, nor to make any one country above the others. There were only 7 banknotes when the euro started but 11 countries. If you put actual landmarks on them you'd have inevitably linked the notes to the country of the landmark, you would've made some countries inevitably feel excluded and politically you'd have created the sense that some countries are literally worth more than others
These architectural styles can be found all over the eurozone members (especially the original ones) and making them bridges makes a nice symbol of bridging and bringing countries closer together
> 50 State commemorative quarters
There's no need for that because each country independently mints the 8 coins (0.01, 0.02, 0.05, 0.10, 0.20, 0.50, 1, 2) and have their own designs on the "tail"
has some other interesting stuff, looks like he's pretty well known so securing funding must not have been a problem - wonder who funded it though.
Stam got a letter of approval for his project from the European Central Bank and he even cinched the support of the Spijkenisse city council. They financed his project with 1.3 million dollars which was around a quarter more expensive than what a more simple set of bridges would have cost.
https://architectenweb.nl/nieuws/artikel.aspx?ID=26568
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But the imitation bridge makes both ratios three.