All participants should have completed their Bachelor's degree (minimum), although exceptions can be made for final year bachelor students on a case-by-case basis. All successful applicants will be asked to complete the online course Unravelling the Cycling City. The workload of this online course is about 24 hours. You can sign up to the Coursera platform for a 7 day free trial and subsequently the platform costs $45 per month. Participants are asked to upload a copy of their certificate one week prior to the start of Planning the Cycling City Programme.

This course follows a flipped classroom approach in which Amsterdam is both a story board and a lab. Experience and experiential learning are key components of the course. Students are encouraged to independently explore and examine the city through the lens of the learning material; to get inspiration, to struggle with concepts or to “translate lessons" to their local context.

The course includes intimate discussions with the absolute leaders in fields ranging from sociology to transport engineering, and including influential academics and practitioners. To develop a rich understanding of a cycling city students engage in fieldwork, excursions, small group discussions and course projects. Seminal and recent contributions to the relevant literature are discussed throughout the course.

The programme will cover topics as diverse as urban cycling (historical and current trends), power relations in policy, strategic planning at different scales, land use, streams and wayfinding, bicycle culture and effects, data collection and measurement, and marketing as a policy instrument.

Participants in this summer programme will also receive a bicycle included in their academic fees. These are true "Dutch bikes" and are simple and effective for commuting throughout Amsterdam, and for the adventurous, beyond on the Netherlands' enormous integrated network of bicyle paths, highways, and infrastructure. 

Prof. Dr. Meredith Glaser is the CEO of the non-profit Urban Cycling Institute and Professor of Sustainable Mobility, holding the Chair of Cycling at Ghent University Department of Geography. She is also a lecturer in urban planning at the University of Amsterdam. Her research focuses on policy innovation, knowledge transfer, and capacity building for accelerated implementation of sustainable transport goals, using the case of cycling. She is also one of the world’s most experienced educators for students and professionals seeking to learn Dutch transport planning policies and practices. She is originally from California and holds Masters degrees in urban planning and public health from UC Berkeley, and received her PhD in urban planning from University of Amsterdam, promoted by Prof. Dr. Marco te Brömmelstroet. 

Prof. Dr. Marco te Brömmelstroet is Professor of Urban Mobility Futures at the University of Amsterdam and co-founded the Urban Cycling Institute in 2016 within the Center for Urban Studies at the UvA. His teaching in Urban Planning Bachelor and Master’s programs centers around the (problematic) integration of land use and mobility and (de)constructing alternative narratives for urban mobility futures. He has authored numerous academic research articles and co-authored the book Movement.

Want to get to know more about studying in Amsterdam? Follow us on social media and join our summer community. Get a feel for our summer school vibe and our academic and social community, and learn about studying with us through the eyes of past summer school students. 

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Looking for an alumni perspective? Read this interview with Patrick Morgan, who attended Planning the Cycling in 2019. 

You can also hear more about the history and culture of cycling in the Netherlands from our Academic Directors George and Marco on our podcast Mokum.