A couple of days ago I visited Berlin for a short business trip. The vibe of the city instantly enticed me. This was a love at first sight. That made me think on a topic about which I used to contemplate quite often. I kept asking myself, ‘Why Berlin atmosphere is so vibrant and diverting and why Amsterdam is so dull to me?’. One could argue that this is a Tourism vs Living case. But I remember feeling the same when I was a tourist in Amsterdam years ago. So, I’m sure that it’s not the case.

By a funny coincidence I found some answers during my flight back to Amsterdam. Ben Wilson’s Metropolis caught my eye while I was wandering in the duty free shops of the Berlin airport. I bought the book and started reading it right away. I gathered some raw notes which resonated with me. They are direct quotes from the book. Some are about Amsterdam and some plucked from other contexts. They provide background on why Amsterdam was the city of the future ages ago, but also why those very reasons have contributed to the bore I feel currently.

I’m putting the notes without editing them. There is no particular order and they are not linked to each other (the list may be updated in the future):

In an age when there are not only more big cities but also large swathes of the inhabited world which are becoming urban, the question of how we should live in cities is never more pressing.

Much needless tragedy has been caused by experts chasing the dream of the perfect, scientifically planned metropolis. Or, less drastically, planning often creates sanitised environments, drained of the energies that make city-living worthwhile.

Cities have never been perfect and can never be made so. Indeed, much of the pleasure and dynamism of cities comes from their spatial messiness. By that I mean the diversity of buildings, people and activities jumbled up and forced into interaction. Orderliness is essentially anti-urban. What makes a city compelling is its incremental development - the process by which it has been built, and rebuilt, from the ground up over the generations producing a densely woven, rich urban fabric.

The messiness lies at the heart of what it is to be urban.

The Dutch phrase schuitpraatje means ‘barge talk’. Canal barges were ubiquitous in the city; they were slow and carried all kinds of passengers - perfect therefore for lengthy discussions about politics, philosophy and religion.

Contemporary visitors puzzled why a small waterlogged city could become so rich and powerful so quickly. The answer had a lot to do with the city itself. The ethos of the city was moneymaking and the removal of obstacles to its fulfilment.

Amsterdam was not so much a collection of buildings and people as a circulatory system. It circulated abstract things - ideas, news, futures and money.

According to de la Vega: ‘If one were to lead a stranger through the streets of Amsterdam and ask him where he was, he would answer, “Among speculators”, for there is no corner where one does not talk shares’

Startlingly modern in the seventeenth century, the fan-shaped city mirrored the commercial mindset that had propelled Amsterdam to greatness. But it was designed not just around efficiency, but also according to ideas of liveability.

Amsterdammers preferred a liveable and planned city - one of regular, neat streets, elegant bridges, advanced street lighting and convenient canals.

When new houses were built their facades had to be ‘in conformity with the plan of the city architect’. Canal-fronting houses were particularly closely regulated by official planning, in order to maintain the outward appearance of Amsterdam.

The agreeable tranquility of Amsterdam, its industrious, soberly dressed citizens, and its conformity of architecture masked the frenetic energy of the place. If Amsterdam did not have monuments and boulevards, its true glory was in the homes of its citizens.

Amsterdam heralded a new kind of city, one based on consumerism and individualism, as much as financial capitalism.

The consumer society was arriving, and Amsterdam was the first to cater to it.