12 September 2024 - In the summer of 2023, the busy Weesperstraat in Amsterdam was closed to cars during a six-week trial. The purpose of this ‘knip’, or cut in the road network, was to reduce car traffic in the city. The trial suffered setbacks and met with opposition. While knips have become a politically sensitive topic, this doesn’t necessarily mean that future knips are off the table.

7 January 2024 - As per tradition, I’ve created another Google search volume chart suggesting that people not only make New Year’s resolutions to quit smoking, but also to delete Facebook. This time, I’ve also included a line for people searching how to delete Twitter (as yet, few people seem to search for ‘delete X’).

26 August 2023 - Amsterdam wants to reduce the number of cars, and create more space for pedestrians, cyclists, playing children and green areas. It seems likely that car ownership will decrease as a result of the measures it is taking, but perhaps not very fast.

3 January 2023 - A number of Dutch municipalities target specific neighbourhoods for surveillance, which may include house searches. An analysis shows that targeted municipalities tend to be among the poorest neighbourhoods in the municipality they were selected from, and among the neighbourhoods with the highest share of people with a non-western background.