I
grew up in the Netherlands, and have often shown foreign friends around Amsterdam. In 1998, I went for a weekend with some FT colleagues. One afternoon, they were strolling along a bike path, discussing the upcoming US congressional midterms and the excellence of Amsterdam’s marijuana cafés. A local cyclist, stuck behind them, angrily rang his bell. Blissfully unaware that they were on a bike path — or even that bike paths existed — my friends ignored him. Finally, he barged past, shouting at them. Because I have a bad personality, I kicked his back wheel. But, of course, he was right: ignorant tourists were messing up his daily life.
That man’s problems have since got worse. In 2013, Amsterdam received 8.4 million international visitors, about double the number of 1998. This isn’t only Amsterdam’s problem. Pretty cities around Europe are buckling under tourism. Some Barcelona inhabitants hang banners from their balconies, begging tourists to grant them a night’s sleep. And these frictions will keep getting worse. The World Tourism Organisation expects 1.8 billion international tourist arrivals by 2030, up from 940 million in 2010. Stephen Hodes, a South African architect who moved to Amsterdam in the hippie era, has just published a magazine that asks the great question: “How can the city stay in balance if ever more international tourists come?”