Ruben Hanssen: Dutch City Building; Beauty & Culture; Everyday Experience; Tradition v Modernity

Austin

Ruben, thanks so much for coming on the podcast with me.

Ruben Hanssen

Yeah, thanks so much for having the opportunity to being on.

Austin

Yeah, I would like to actually start with a quote that, uh, you said on September 7th, 2021, you said, uh, it took me some time to start realizing that I am currently in the best disposition to start a new chapter in life. I'm working at an engineering firm, but I'm going to create the time, the time to work full time on the issue of improving our built environment. And I think that's pretty cool. Cause I was just like looking at your website again, cause it had been a while and I found that and I was like, wow, it's been two and a half years since you did that. You know, that's a pretty extreme jump like, Hey, I'm an engineer to suddenly I'm a podcaster and filmmaker. So can you talk about that transition and not just, Oh, the facts of it, but like the emotional and mental state of going through that transition and then. Two and a half years later, look at where you are. What is that like? And you know, you talk about that some more.

Ruben Hanssen

Yeah, of course. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Two and a half years. It's kind of crazy how fast time went. Yeah. So I was really, I think it was still in the end of the COVID days, things were starting to get a little bit more normal again, but still there were measures. But I was bored out of my

Ruben Hanssen

really resonated with what I found very important. But the funny thing is that I only later found out fully. Like when you're in something and it doesn't really feel right, you feel like something is not fully okay. But only when you really change something about it, you later realize how strongly that is true. Unless you have this big kind of moment of insight where you really discover. you're doing it. So yeah, let me think. At first it was very exciting because I had the opportunity to do this for a while. I could pay myself out for a little bit to take a little bit of time off and do something different. And I think I was kind of naive as well at first. trying it out, see what I could make from it. And I didn't really even have a really good plan. I think that's not really the best advice for anyone to do this. But it was, but somehow I felt like this is going to work out some way. I had like a very, very good faith in that this, that it would turn out into something. And I kind of just started making the podcast. And of course, also my idea about what the aesthetic city would become wasn't really... formed yet. It was kind of still vague. I also had this idea in mind to kind of... Yeah, I just wanted to first find out what was happening. And then that kind of quest and search for to see what was happening became... Yeah, I just kind of translated all my findings into posts, into podcasts. And I mean, the podcasts were just kind of the finding out process, but... just interviewing experts basically. And that became the aesthetic city. And I think the YouTube channel, that was kind of the first also the first, yeah, efforts to see like, could I also well make this into my job somehow and actually earn a living with it. And that was also an extremely big risk I took. I mean, how many people can actually earn?

Ruben Hanssen

money at some realistic time frame with YouTube. So that was also something that just kind of magically paid off. So I feel it is a bit of an outlier in some ways, but I also feel like if there's a will, there's a way. But sometimes I can't really explain why it succeeded. That sounds logical at all. Yeah.

Austin

Man, that's super cool because you can actually hear in your voice as you're trying to explain it, it's a little hard because like you said, you didn't have a fully formed plan. But

Ruben Hanssen

Yeah.

Austin

I relate to that because, you know, I was an accountant and then that same experience, what you're talking about, just that feeling inside something's wrong, but you don't know what, you don't know what I didn't know what I wanted. That's why I went off to the Peace Corps because I was like, maybe the, the UN or I don't know, foreign service or something. You just have to, to go. And I really liked that part of your story. Um, and the more people I talked to, the more I realized, I don't think anyone, when they, when they go to step out into a new path, like no one has it figured out, it's all just kind of like.

Ruben Hanssen

Yeah. Yeah.

Austin

Let's step out and see what happens and recalibrate. Um, so very cool to just see how quickly that's happened for you and, and some of the success you've, you've had. So very, very cool.

Ruben Hanssen

Yeah. And it's funny that you were one of my first podcast guests, actually. I mean, not really late after beginning, but I already came on to your project pretty early and it was just exactly in line with the things that I saw in a world that were really hopeful. So, and I think that's also why, for example, the videos took off so well, because that's what people really need the most, which is kind of a bit of hope.

Austin

Yeah.

Austin

Yeah, I think that's a good way to put it. You know, you studied urban planning in Amsterdam and urbanism in Delft, which by the way, just kind of coincidence here, but one of my favorite paintings is Vermeer's The Little Streets, which is.

Ruben Hanssen

Oh yeah.

Austin

that Ella house and Delfty know which painting I'm talking about. It says old stepped gable, see little cracks in the brick and it's so simple and plain and I just love, I've read this, I'm not that smart. I just read this in North Atlantic cities by Charles Duff and he talks about.

Ruben Hanssen

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Austin

Yeah. How the Dutch really celebrate, um, the ordinary, the everyday beauties. It's not necessarily just the big things. It's finding beauty in the simple, ordinary everyday things. And I just love that. And I feel like that picture embodies that. And actually our first structural masonry house in Oklahoma cities is modeled after the house. If you look at our house and Wheeler district and that one, the stepped gable, like that's actually the inspiration for it.

Ruben Hanssen

Thank you.

Ruben Hanssen

Mm-hmm.

Austin

Um, but anyway, sorry, that was a bit of an aside, but, um, so talking about your ants experience in urban planning and, and urbanism and Delft, you know, the Dutch cities are kind of known just to be some of the most beautiful and pleasant cities in the world. But you know, in your, in, in your work and even in your, your first blog post, you kind of lay out, Hey, here's what's wrong with construction and development today.

Ruben Hanssen

Yeah.

Austin

And it sounds like you're describing America when you, the United States, when you're talking, and so I'm curious, are you talking about the Netherlands and really what is the difference between what were cities like, you know, being built like, what are the historic cities like, and then what is happening today in, you know, over where you are.

Ruben Hanssen

Yeah, so I think there's problems everywhere, of course, and I think the problems in the United States are far bigger than in Europe, for example, because, I mean, it's kind of different sets of problems. So I think in the United States, there's more of a kind of a, yeah, the entire urban model isn't working. It's built on Yeah, urban sprawl, automobile suburbs. And it's, yeah, like what Strong Towns is saying, it's not, it's not a financially sustainable model and it can't endure on the longterm. So, and it's really expensive to fix that because you need to re-densify, but it's also a cultural problem because you, yeah, Americans want, well, I want my yard. I want my, my own home. I want a car in front of the door. It's kind of. Yeah, ingrained with the American way of life. So, but yeah, it's fiscally, it's not, it's not sustainable. So it's something that, yeah, we'll probably sooner. Yeah. At some point it will not be able to be sustained unless we get unlimited free energy or something, um, and, and I don't know, like ways to really cheaply fix all the, all the facilities it needs, but in, in the United, uh, so that's the United States and I think those problems are huge. there might be solutions. And I think new urbanism is of course one of them. And then you have in the Netherlands, we have amazing public transport, for example, and cycling infrastructure, but we're a very compact country with a mild climate. So everything works in our favor on that end. So we kind of have the right ingredients for urban design. But then what the problem is in the Netherlands is that we have lost kind of the urgency and the sense of beauty and the urgency to build beautiful things and to build things that are actually future proof. That's something that's actually international. We're building buildings that will be torn down in 50 years. Apartment blocks that are so ugly that they will turn into slums in a couple of decades.

Ruben Hanssen

neighborhoods that have no other functions but just living there and are just extremely stark and people don't want to go there. We don't build places where we want to go and those places will not survive because that's one of the things which I now really strongly believe in. It's really essential to build places people want to go to. because that will make them sustainable in the long term because they will, yeah, only places where people want to be will support commerce and will support communities that want to live there and not like slide down over time into places that nobody wants to live. So, and that's something that happens everywhere. And that's also what happens in the Netherlands. And then you have, of course, maybe another theme is just building things that... completely detonate in the existing historical urban fabric. So completely disrespecting, for example, the urban fabric of Amsterdam and the typologies and the architecture of Amsterdam or of Utrecht or Groningen or whatever, which is also something that happens in other European countries. We see this everywhere where they just disrespect what stands in Venice or in Paris or just name a city. So... And a lot of people are done with that. So, yeah, although we might have solved kind of the urban puzzle, perhaps, and even there, I mean, it's not always perfect. Uh, we have those challenges still. And I think in the United States, perhaps it's even an opportunity to, to build, uh, kind of completely new places, which do everything right, but fixing what is already there is the hardest because that's extremely expensive as well. And yeah. challenging also legally and on all other fronts.

Ruben Hanssen

So yeah.

Austin

Yeah, it's such a good insight of we have to build places that people want to go and be. I've started referring. to places that are not like that, like that you're trying to describe apartment complexes that just are completely lifeless. I'm just starting to refer to those things as sleeping facilities, you know, neighborhoods, quote unquote neighborhoods, they're not neighborhoods, you know, they're sleeping facilities, right? And it's not that the people that live there are, you know, they might even like their neighborhood. It's not like you're trying to be mean about anything. It's just that most people don't have a choice.

Ruben Hanssen

Yeah. Human storage.

Austin

building, you know, a very tiny group of people, tiny, tiny builds something for the 99% for everyone. You know, it's like, there was this article he was talking about, if you were to blast just music across your whole city.

Ruben Hanssen

Yeah.

Austin

You would really want that music to be beautiful and easy to listen to and kind of like largely agreed upon of like, yeah, this is the music that we're about wanting to listen to, you know, you don't actually want just novelty and shock and something so brilliant that only a few percentage of people appreciate. So, you know, I think that's a really insightful thing. And, you know, I want to talk a little bit more about in the Netherlands and in Amsterdam, cause you're in Amsterdam, right?

Ruben Hanssen

Yeah.

Ruben Hanssen

Yeah.

Ruben Hanssen

Yeah.

Ruben Hanssen

Yeah, yeah.

Austin

Okay. So, you know, what is, you know, you, you compared and contrasted a little bit the United States to the Netherlands, but I wouldn't, I wonder if you could talk to me a little bit about the day to day life in the Netherlands about, you know, for example, how do people get around? How do, what is life like for kids and elderly people in specific? Because we get a lot of questions about that. The moment you say something besides endless suburban sprawl. They're like, but what about the elderly people, you know, and you're kind of like, well, actually, I think it's a lot better for elderly people and integrated. And then also physical and mental health and just kind of the attitude of people around, yeah, just talk a little bit about that.

Ruben Hanssen

Yeah.

Ruben Hanssen

Yeah, of course. Yeah. Well, that's really, really nice one. So I'm gonna, I'm just gonna focus on kind of my own experience because I'm very much someone who is used to take the bike and public transport. I don't even have a car. I live in Amsterdam. I live pretty near like a little, yeah, you could call it kind of a public transport hotspot. So you have a little train station. which is kind of a station that's situated on the ring of railways that circles around the city of Amsterdam. And there's also a tram stop, there's bus stops, and if I cycle for a little bit I can also come to a metro stop actually, or just take one stop by train. So it's extremely well connected if you're in the right places. That's of course kind of rare, not everybody has like all those modalities in the same place. But if you live in Amsterdam, there's a big chance you'll have either a metro, a tram or train station quite nearby, or at least within a short cycle trip nearby. So you can get on a train, for example, pretty rapidly. And then it's pretty easy to get to another city where the last... mile problem has also been kind of solved, unless you need to carry heavy stuff, with public transport bikes, which is basically just a huge garage filled with bikes, which you can kind of rent with a little NFC public transport card. You just take a bike, you check out or check in, you use the bike, they automatically deduct the money for that bike off your account after a couple of days. And then you come back and you, well, you're tap your card again and you deliver the bike. And so, so that's a wonderful system. And it's like one of the biggest breakthroughs, I believe in public transport in that. But of course you have people who live a bit further out, who live in like more like suburb municipalities where they need a car to go to the job. So we still have traffic jams. We still have a lot of car traffic. We love, we have a lot of people working, of course, with, with their vans and

Ruben Hanssen

But even those will sometimes just get the bike to go to a shop or to something nearby because everything is pretty closer and in most places you'll be able to do quite a bit by bike and there is even in those places where some people will live who do everything by car you will have people who will do most by bike and with electric bikes that gets even better because well you're your action radius is much bigger. You can get much farther with it without getting tired. So in, for example, the, let's say rural areas, school children will often have an electric bike so they can go for miles to their schools by bike. And actually for children, yeah.

Austin

How, I was gonna ask how old is that star? Cause I saw something once about like kids getting trained, like they're start getting trained in like the public school system at like four years old. Is that true or how does, wow, can you?

Ruben Hanssen

Yeah, yeah, that's true. I think like I was like, three, four years, five years, when I was put on like a little kind of a mini kind of a bicycle, not a tricycle. I think before that, of course, on like a tricycle, then they put you on like a little, what is it, bike with training wheels. At some point, they take the training wheels off, and then you're kind of expected to just go to school by bike. And it's like

Austin

and then how old are kids going to school by bike?

Ruben Hanssen

Uh, well, I think now the youngest, I think like, um, before their teens, um, I think like often nowadays things are changing a bit because, uh, everybody's getting more, you know, afraid you have more helicopter moms. That's a trend that's also happening here, but I think still like in, in a countryside, I think children, uh, from, I think starting with like six, seven or eight years.

Austin

the youngest you would see.

Austin

Hmm.

Austin

Okay.

Ruben Hanssen

I can say. But the point is, it's really safe. Like we don't have a lot of traffic accidents here because we have a completely separated, or in most places, a completely separated cycling infrastructure. So cycling roads, which are separated from the normal roads and all the car drivers, they know that there will be cyclists. So they expect cyclists, they respect them and they will take distance. So it's completely different culture on the roads as well.

Austin

And, you know, it's amazing because you talk about what life can be like in the proximity of things, but you know, Amsterdam is not, and most Dutch cities, they're, they're not skyscraper cities. We're not talking Manhattan. We're not even talking 15, 20 story buildings, right? Most of these stores are kind of around five. Is that, am I right about that?

Ruben Hanssen

Yeah. Well, except for Rotterdam, which tries to be some sort of a New York, but that's really, yeah, it's a different one. Well, nowadays, of course, there's more and more apartment buildings getting taller and taller. And they, like developers, try to squeeze every last penny out of their land. So we're seeing it much more often that we get like 60, 70 meters. So it's like, yeah, 20, 30 floor buildings.

Austin

Yeah.

Austin

Mmm.

Ruben Hanssen

up to 20, yeah, sometimes taller, sometimes they really start building towers. But the general urban fabric in the inner cities of the Netherlands are four or five stories. In Amsterdam, it's a bit taller than Utrecht, for example, because it was a bigger city and it just grew more. And I think it's really dependent on how well financially the city was doing in the kind of the 17th century. So it's really funny. You kind of see... how big the city was and how important it was and how well it grew. Leiden, for example, is also kind of like four stories, sometimes five, sometimes three. So, but then if you go outside of the center, we kind of, we stopped building those really dense places, I guess, after the 30s. And then everything became like garden cities and everything became kind of compact suburbs. So terraced housing, three stories or two, three stories in green areas, but yeah, so a bit more compact but it was not lively. It didn't have all the functions like before. So that's, so yeah, kind of, you can kind of see Dutch cities is kind of, you can really see the year rings as in a tree. So you have the old historical core and then you see the, yeah, the 19th century extensions around it. then you get the like the garden city suburbs, and then you get the post-war circles around that.

Austin

Um, that's interesting. Yeah. I, a lot of people tend to think tall, you know, and I'm very much in the four or five story or under, you know, of, of really the nicest human fabric. Cause that is kind of the height. I don't know if this is where it comes from. That is kind of the height of a tree, you know, four or five stories. Um, and so we're, we're kind of used to that scale as humans. Once you start getting 10 stories, it really creates this silo effect of light coming down and it's just so much bigger than you that it actually feels pretty inhuman.

Ruben Hanssen

Yeah.

Ruben Hanssen

Yeah.

Ruben Hanssen

Yeah.

Austin

I don't mean nothing should be 10 stories. I just mean as general fabric. I really liked the four to five story and frankly for America too, with just, um, especially just most of the country, unless you're in a Chicago or Manhattan, but this more gentle density, you know, these, these Dutch cities that do have a more gentle density, I think they're like 17 units an acre, 20 units an acre, something like that versus Paris is more than double that. I think, um, in Vienna, cause they're more like apartment building base versus your row, row home based. Um,

Ruben Hanssen

Mm-hmm.

Ruben Hanssen

Yeah.

Ruben Hanssen

Yeah. Yes.

Ruben Hanssen

Mm-hmm.

Ruben Hanssen

Yeah.

Austin

Did you, did you read the North Atlantic cities that book? I can't remember. You might not have, because it's, it was cool to me because it was talking about the Dutch builders. Um,

Ruben Hanssen

It's on my list to read. I think I might have it on my bookshelf, but it's definitely on my reading list. And I think it might have been... You might have given this as a tip before, actually. Yeah.

Austin

Cool.

Austin

I think I might have, that's funny. It was probably because I'm talking to him, he'll be like, oh, but it was so interesting because he talked about how the Netherlands really developed quite, their architecture is different because of their culture first, as in it developed and looks different than, you know, Paris, Vienna and other parts of mainland central Europe. And he points out a few things that it... because it was a very like strong Republic and weak monarchy, you know, back in the golden age in the 17th, 16th, 17th, 18th century, when it's really kind of being built on these cities and, um, lots of religious tolerance comparatively. So you don't have as many of giant cathedrals. You don't have the same arist, aristocratic class, uh, like the wealthiest, like I can't remember the terms, but the wealth was just so much more distributed even then, then just this.

Ruben Hanssen

Mm-hmm.

Austin

the hyper concentrated, you know, aristocracies of the rest of Europe who were then building palaces and then middle income people would basically build palaces and then break them up into apartment buildings. So it's really like palaces, apartment buildings within palaces that fit next to real palaces. And then the Dutch being just, they were building homes, row homes where people, individuals actually lived. And then the last piece that I thought was fascinating was he said the Dutch were really the first to have real residential neighborhoods.

Ruben Hanssen

Yeah.

Austin

because there was so much societal trust that there were shared warehouses. So rather than everyone having their shops down on the first story below their house, they actually kind of had centralized warehouses somewhere where, you know, there was actually trust between people storing things there. And then it allowed the neighborhoods to be like, this is just a row home, just a house and that different feel that creates then, um, you know, living on top of shops all the time. I just thought that was fascinating. Do you find any of that, uh, Do you recognize any of that?

Ruben Hanssen

Yeah, I haven't heard... Well, I can directly imagine. I should definitely read this because it's super interesting. Just, I... Yeah, it's a very interesting thing because also in England they also have more terraced housing, but they also have more mansion blocks. Like, we really kind of lack these mansion blocks for some reason. And I think it's really, I do agree, it's a very cultural thing. Here in the Netherlands, it's kind of, it's like we really expect for us, like the, let's say the Dutch dream is to have like your own little terrace house with its own back garden. It's not necessarily having like your own freestanding home or having your having an apartment, because nowadays it's a luxury, but that's also not really something that exists. in the Dutch mind as like the dream or the ideal kind of. So we like our terraced homes. It's really a strong cultural concept. And that's also what they built post-war in massive numbers. I think that really, because we built so many terraced homes after the war and there's just, yeah, just massive, massive. increases in the amount of housing in those days, that I think that really cemented that culture even stronger. We already had it, but I think post, because imagine if the urban planners from after the war had decided, well, the Dutch workers should live in apartments, they might have changed that, I think. But I guess they knew what the Dutch also liked and what they themselves liked. So they just planned these. Yeah. huge numbers of terrorist houses and the funny thing is we have we have found kind of different recipes to place to build those terrorist houses like all these different eras in posts post-war urban planning you see new ways of building our neighborhoods so from very strict rational in like the 60s

Ruben Hanssen

to in the 70s where we started creating these very organic, cauliflower shaped neighborhoods with little, with a wound air vent actually, to the wound air vent concept was introduced. And then we became more formal again in the 80s and the 90s. So yeah, it's always, it's kind of funny how that develops.

Austin

That's really interesting. I mean, it's, it's interesting too, from like, I think about, and I don't know that much, I'm not a historian, but I mean, the kind of cult, some of the cultural heritage too, is a very industrious society, like a seafaring society and commerce and, you know, not, um, uh, you know, King Louis the 16th is trying to kind of conquer the world. You've got all these Kings vying for power and world domination and the Dutch are over there being like, we're building this great, beautiful, wonderful society that's, you know, through, and I mean, I don't mean it's that idealized. There was, you've got the new East Indies or different companies and things that have bad reputations. I just mean, it really is quite different. And I'm pointing it out because from them, an American concept, a lot of times, we think we're the most like,

Ruben Hanssen

Yeah.

Ruben Hanssen

Yeah, yeah.

Austin

Our heritage is the most industrious and there's a lot of influence from the Dutch, I believe on America, uh, even, um, so, so that's why I was just pointing that out, that you talk a lot about the, uh, fight for beauty. Um, and obviously that's something I talk about a lot too.

Ruben Hanssen

Yeah. Yeah.

Ruben Hanssen

Yeah.

Austin

Can you talk about your perspective on beauty and why it's actually important? Why is it meaningful? Why isn't it just something like nice to have? And then why are we even having to have a debate about it today in your perspective?

Ruben Hanssen

Hehehehe Very good question. Beauty is still a tough subject. You have various ways to look at it. I live here in the Netherlands. extremely sober, kind of Calvinist people as well, who think like, well, all beauty is kind of luxury. So that kind of reinforces that whole discussion, like, why should we even talk about beauty in the first place? And we have gotten this idea, it's, we can't pay for it. It's kind of, yeah, it's always kind of a bonus, a luxury. But, well, my vision on beauty for that reason has also become kind of pragmatic to kind of show really, yeah, by showing the numbers and the science that it's kind of a real thing and it's something that we really need to take serious. Otherwise, for example, developers won't make as much money as they could. Cities won't become as successful and thriving. So I see beauty. First of all, there's this scientific view of beauty, which is that we know that we are attracted to certain kind of forms. We know that we prefer symmetry. We know we prefer curved forms. We know that we like some sort of detail and structure in things. We know this because there's a lot of studies done to this. We know even that some areas in our brain light up.

Ruben Hanssen

an aesthetic experience like something either music or something we see. This is researcher Semi-Roseki who has done this research. So that is so that's the one end. But then you also, of course, also have the whole philosophical idea of beauty, which becomes much more much harder. But it's still valid. So, for example, what? What's our British friend again?

Ruben Hanssen

Our British... Yeah, wait, he created the film. Wait, I'll look for him.

Austin

I know who you're talking about, I just forgot his name.

Austin

not be.

Ruben Hanssen

Beauty Matters. Scrutin, of course, Roger Scrutin. Yeah. So what he wrote about it is also of course very important and valid, I believe. But you can't convince developers with some poetic language Roger Scrutin wrote.

Austin

Scrutin, yeah, Roger Scrutin. Yeah.

Ruben Hanssen

So that's why we need to also show it through a third way, which is patterns in larger society. Looking at, yeah, kind of showing what architecture is most popular. So maybe the opinion of one person is subjective, that might be true, but the opinions of a thousand people, those become a pattern and you can say something about it. And everybody who... disagrees with that, just disagrees with solid numbers and with real things. And we know that certain types of architecture are more loved than others. We know that people prefer traditional architecture, for example, and that comes out of every poll, every study we do. And then the question becomes, what makes people like that architecture? better than, for example, very stark minimalist architecture. And then we return at the scientific insights we have, where we see that, hey, the curved forms, the natural forms, the patterns, the detail. So everything kind of the whole, kind of all the different, yeah, all the different evidence fits together really well in this image of what's is probably more beautiful. And then the point is, yeah, the most important thing is that we use that knowledge and that we start following that science and that we start being curious in all those studies. And then also, that's the next step, that's I think where we lack, or yeah, which we don't have today, is having the courage to undertake the project of making something beautiful. Because a lot of people are completely demoralized and don't believe that we either earn beauty or that we are able to create beauty or that we deserve beauty. So yeah, that's a big, big problem nowadays. And we need to, and the point is to build something beautiful is really aspirational. It's really...

Ruben Hanssen

And for some people, aspirations have become dangerous, have become... They have kind of embraced that we are going to go down as a civilization. And building beauty and like, yeah, striving for beauty rubs them the wrong way because it doesn't fit with our worldview that everything is going down, everything will become less and less and less. And I think that's kind of a more... a meta take on everything, but I really think that's what's happening.

Austin

I think that is such a interesting and accurate, you know, from what I, what I see as well. And you're right too, that I think, gosh, it has become so nihilistic. Like that's what I always talk about kind of the new climate movement, you know, where it's just like, it's basically hating humans. Like we just hate humanity. Like

Ruben Hanssen

Yeah.

Austin

We, and, um, and I don't like that. That's why I always put like, it has to be about people first. And then climate falls under that. Cause of course, flourishing people need a flourishing world. You know, I am pretty strong on my environmentalist stuff. Um, but actually I'm a lot more concerned about mental and physical health and PFAS is and all sorts of chemicals and the VOCs and how, you know, our obesity rates and diabetes and all that in the United States over like that's going to get us actually faster than, than climate change, which don't get me wrong, that is a problem.

Ruben Hanssen

Yeah.

Ruben Hanssen

Yes.

Ruben Hanssen

Yeah.

Ruben Hanssen

Yeah.

Ruben Hanssen

Exactly.

Austin

Um, but anyway, you know, I actually want to pick up on this because it is. There, there is this idea that, you know, one, yeah, the world is going to hell in a handbag. And then two, that beauty is somehow like oppressive because it's not inclusive because not everyone can have it to the same degree or something like that. And I would agree that beauty does take some extra means to be able to pursue because if you're strictly

Ruben Hanssen

Yeah.

Austin

Survival mode, you know, food and shelter. You don't have space for beauty, but I can also say that even in very, very poor societies in my own personal firsthand experience, for example, in Uganda, we would, whether we were in the town we were in, or we go to even more rural villages where it was literally mud huts and nothing else. And guess what? People wear Katenge fabric and wear this really beautiful, colorful fabric, right on special things. You know, I mean,

Ruben Hanssen

Yeah.

Ruben Hanssen

Yeah.

Austin

They curate their homes, even though they're mud, they sweep, they do, you know, everyone there's something in our souls and humans. It's not just about the beauty of enjoying it after the fact, it's producing it and not just as an individual, but as collectively as a society that's so meaningful and that's something that I wonder about. Um, some people crap on the new generation or the young generation, gen Z's or something and I do have a question in here. I'm going to, I'm going to get there.

Ruben Hanssen

Yeah.

Ruben Hanssen

Hmm? Yeah.

Austin

Um, but you know, I actually see this and I don't, I have not interacted with a ton of younger people. I'm 35. I've not interacted with a ton of 20 year olds lately. Um, but the, what I see is we've got a lot of broken institutions that were kind of built after world war two in particular, and those institutions. Change the world order and, and in a lot of ways for the better, and we solved a lot of problems, but we also. created a lot of problems and a lot of externalities that we could not see at the time. And of course we did. It's not about blaming the people back then for coming up with solutions. All you can do is do what's ahead of you, solve that problem. There's going to be more problems. But the problem I see today is older people are trying to like hold on to those institutions because they're like, look at how good the world is. You should have seen how it was when we were growing up. It could be so much worse. And they're right. It could be so much worse because the modern world is a miracle. But then you've also got young people being like... The world's not working for us. Like it works for you. You know, we're never going to own a single family detached house on half an acre, um, you know, and, and so I think younger people are kind of saying that's great that the world is better than it ever has been, but we're not going to have the same opportunities as you. So we need to actually come up with new institutions to solve these new problems that were created by these old institutions. And it's not about like tearing the world down. I mean, at least that's the positive aspect of it. So my question is.

Ruben Hanssen

Yeah.

Ruben Hanssen

Yeah.

Ruben Hanssen

Mm-hmm.

Austin

in the Netherlands and in your experience and people, and not just the Netherlands, people you talk to as you travel and film, do you see a real difference between kind of an older perspective and a younger perspective? And where do you think the value is of each of those perspectives in the conversation?

Ruben Hanssen

That's a very good question. I'm thinking about that. I think in the Netherlands, I feel there is... I've got the feeling there is less of a strong kind of gap between how the younger generation and the older generations... work and feel. I do feel that, because I do believe that there is a little bit, there's less inequality in the Netherlands as well. And I think our institutions are kind of still functional. They're doing not a good job, but they're surviving kind of, and they're still functioning. That's in here in... in the Netherlands, for example. Looking at architecture though, there and actually also in nutrition, for example, where you have kind of a new view on things, where there's new evidence which needs to be taken into account, for example, with nutrition about seed oils and all other sorts of things that ruin your health, which are ignored by Yeah, by most mainstream doctors and institutions. Same with architecture where, well, the big, the status quo is not changing. And yeah, all the universities are still teaching. Yeah. An architecture paradigm, which is extremely unpopular and I think is already outdated. I think for other things, yeah, other institutions, I'm not sure if that work is as, yeah, as severe. I do see however that exists, like the society as it was with a lot of religious institutes. And yeah, you know.

Ruben Hanssen

What is the organizations that surrounded this kind of religious oriented, what is it? These religiously oriented organizations, but they are in decline because the churches are getting emptier and emptier. And the, yeah, you know, all the organizations that... related to that. For example, my parents sing in a choir and yeah, they have their concerts in a church sometime, but I really see when looking at the audience that they are getting grayer and grayer and older and older. And at some point, I really think there won't be an audience left at some point anymore. And also my parent generation is also going to be gone at some point and they're not, you know. getting new people to sing in their choir. So at some point it will be gone. Like the church will close, the choir will be gone, and there will maybe there will be new choirs singing new types of music, but that whole thing is dying out. And I see that happening with some other organizations as well. But yeah, I think most of the young versus old nowadays is... It's still a bit on the internet and still a bit in other fields. But this is also not really where I know most about to be honest. But this is the feeling that I get from what I see.

Austin

Hmm. Yeah. Very interesting. That's a good next question. I'm actually curious to hear your perspective on the Dutch farmers and what's going on there with protests and things. And the reason I'm not trying to like, I'm actually not veering off course. I'm actually curious if there's any kind of connections here between kind of the mindset that's driving that and the mindset that's driving the built environment too. I imagine there could be some connections there.

Ruben Hanssen

Mmm.

Ruben Hanssen

Mmm.

Ruben Hanssen

I think the farmers, that's also very much tied to the European Union and their regulations for, let's say, nitrogen. Because in the Netherlands at least, in other countries, it's also about food prices, subsidies. So from what I understand is that there's a lot of anger The European Union sets, on the one hand, they are changing the subsidies and they're raising fuel prices. I'm not even sure if that's really true, but that's what I heard. And they're doing all these things, they're changing these things in the market, which farmers rely on for their livelihood. And I think there are also some perverse subsidies, for example, that they are subsidizing certain foods to make sure that they're always being produced, but there's way too much of it. But yeah, I guess that gets exported. It always finds some way in the market. But now the European Union seems to be changing a lot of things, and people have the feeling that they want to take the life of these farmers away, that they're kind of threatening these farmers that they think we can do without those farmers. And in the Netherlands, it's actually the case because they want less farmers because there's too much nitrogen, which actually endangers some types of plants and some types of nature which don't thrive when there's a lot of nitrogen, because nitrogen makes plants grow. And some plants only... grow well and also the species living around those plants, when the soil is very poor. So it's kind of a struggle against a soil that gets too rich. So yeah, when you have thousands of pig farms, yeah.

Austin

We'll give you some of our soil. We'll mix some of our depleted soil in there and you'll be good.

Ruben Hanssen

Exactly, yeah. I mean, we have a lot of pig farms. So what we do, we import immense amounts of soy and whatnot to feed those pigs. And all the nitrogen that started in those farms, perhaps in Brazil, or I know where maybe in the United States, comes to our pigs, they eat it. Well, they poop it out. And then we have the nitrogen. But we should be shipping that nitrogen kind of back to where it came from, to the farms where all the soil was growing to close the loop. But that doesn't happen. So, or we should, I don't know, maybe, I don't know, do something out. There should be done something with the nitrogen, I guess. But the point is they say like, okay, no, that's not the answer. We're just gonna close a lot of farms. And yeah, that's what makes me angry.

Austin

And this is the EU or the Dutch government saying we're going to close a bunch of farms. It's the Dutch government, right?

Ruben Hanssen

It's still as government, but they do it because there's European rules. But the funny thing is that just over the border in Germany, there's no problem with nitrogen even though there's similar values. It's really weird.

Austin

Uh...

Austin

Uh-huh. Cause I remember reading something about basically the government was just saying like, yeah, we're buying your land farmer. We're going to give you an offer and basically you can't deny it. Like, and I just thought, of course, from coming from an American mindset, it was like, wow, you know, like don't take our land, you know, that's a pretty big, uh, and you can see why there's tractors in the streets. Like how, what's kind of the societal opinion of that? Is there kind of an agreed upon like, Hey, that is insane. Like is the culture, the kind of Dutch culture, are they kind of for the farmers or against them? Is it split?

Ruben Hanssen

Yes. Yeah.

Ruben Hanssen

Yeah.

Ruben Hanssen

Yes.

Austin

Um, is it seem as tyrannical at all authoritarian?

Ruben Hanssen

Yes, a lot of people see this tyrannical. The point is there is kind of a split between kind of the political and let's say intellectual elites of the country who write the newspapers, who create the news programs, who, yeah, you know, reporting the news from their, yeah, from their kind of intellectual, you know, Amsterdam chai latte positions. And the hardworking kind of farmer, regular Dutchman who see like, hey, this doesn't end up. They're taking farmers away. I know where my food comes from. It comes from the farmers. And there's a lot of sympathy for the farmers and the farmers themselves. Yeah. They see it absolutely as tyranny. And I think there is something to be said for that. But yeah, the funny thing is that a lot of the Dutchmen don't, don't agree with, with. what the government wants for these farmers and how they're dealing with it. So the farmers party rose enormously in the polls. So yeah, there is definitely a huge effect in our society and it's getting more populist as well because of that.

Austin

Very interesting.

Ruben Hanssen

Yeah. But I see the same with architecture. It's kind of people have been ignoring what a lot of regular people like. And I feel that's something that is also that should be, yeah, that should be done. Yeah, it should be addressed because there is too many places in society where, yeah, where they're not really listening to the population. And I think it's because of bureaucracy is, yeah. It's also this elitism of a select few who think like we can decide this for others and they don't show any understanding. Even though they might be understanding, but then you get terrible outcomes because we have now like a, what is it kind of a right wing populist? a politician who won the, what is it, the elections in a huge way. And if today would be elections, like they would win even, even more. Because the ruling parties who have been in the saddle for so many years, just, they just won't listen and won't like try to understand where all this anger comes from. So yeah, it's.

Austin

Man, that's exactly what you said there. That was, I think that's really the connecting thing. I hadn't thought about it quite like that, but just that it is this, yeah, ignoring of normal people. And I think there's this perception that it's the intellectuals that want what we're talking about. And in some ways you have a little bit of that, but I mean, when you talk to normal people, like in America.

Ruben Hanssen

Yeah.

Ruben Hanssen

Yeah.

Austin

There is a real statistic came out last year from the realtors association. That says 78, 78% of Americans say they want to live in a more walkable community and would pay more to do it. 74% of, of Americans say they feel a sense of non belonging in their own community, you know, it's, it's like, they're telling you, and I mean, they're not, not people aren't necessarily saying, Hey, we want it to look like Amsterdam, but

Ruben Hanssen

Yeah.

Ruben Hanssen

Mm-hmm.

Ruben Hanssen

Wow.

Austin

people are set, you know, and it's like these institutions that have just, um, require this is how the rule, this is are the rules and it overrides the people, you know, and then the people that are enforcing those rules, like, they're not even really decision makers because they're just enforcing the rules that are in place, you know, and they have a hard time, um, working around that. Um, but, but yeah, I think there is this

Ruben Hanssen

Yeah.

Austin

really deep need to get back to once again. And I think it's actually what you're saying is getting back to people again. It's about people. It's not about the institutions. It's not about the intellectual conversations about it. It's about creating a great stage for people to go out and live a rich and meaningful and vibrant and healthy and safe life. But yeah, that's really, really good.

Ruben Hanssen

Yeah.

Ruben Hanssen

Yeah.

Ruben Hanssen

Yeah, is it perhaps it's modernity, which, yeah, we're starting to feel so it's estranged from, yeah. So we let go of all these traditional ways of living, ways of life. And we embrace modernity and everything that came with it. But now, we discover kind of the dark side of it very slowly.

Ruben Hanssen

And I think it doesn't mean we need to go back to the past and repeat everything that we did, but it should at least mean that we learn from the things that went well in the past and adapt those to current times.

Austin

I think, yeah, absolutely. Like there's this, there's this arrogance in modernity that thinks that just like, we know everything today that we're at the height of all of human civilization and that this idea of tradition is stupid and outdated. And in my opinion, tradition is the best of innovation. Tradition. was once new, right? Tradition was once modern. And then over time, it becomes a tradition because it works and it's been proven over and over and over again. And I think we have that message together, you and me, just that idea of, yeah, it's not about copying the past or doing something exactly like it was done 100 years ago because the world is different, but it is about building off of that knowledge that of thousands of years of human tinkering and evolution with the... the built environment and building wonderful places for people. And we just kind of threw all that out in the past hundred years. But, you know, whether that you've, you know, you've been for a couple, two and a half years now, you've been traveling around talking about this. You filmed some really amazing things like Chiola and I'm going to say it butchered, but you know, L'Epoxy Ravisson outside of Paris, you know, just an amazing story of, of new construction and all that, you know, what

Ruben Hanssen

Yeah.

Ruben Hanssen

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Austin

What gives you hope and like what drives you to keep doing this just even based on the things you've seen and the people you've met?

Ruben Hanssen

Well, there's a lot of things. So first of all is our is kind of education. It's a summer school we organized in Utrecht this year and last year, year before. Which where you see, yeah, where you see like how happy students of architecture or just general people get when they get the chance to finally design something they really like. And I'm just curious to see what would happen if we change something in universities, for example, and we let, if we unleash all this creative power people have into a different channel, into designing with traditional classical principles again, because we did a design

Ruben Hanssen

on the Leipzig plan, which is an important square in the city. And you see so many wonderful different designs coming out and like, holy moly, if, if only one of those things would be built, just, you just see the amount of creativity and skill there still is. Uh, but yeah, so, so it's kind of my, uh, curiosity and wanting to see what comes out of that. And that's just, that's something that keeps driving me. But also seeing that this is a movement that is growing slowly, but surely, you know, you see more, not less new urbanist environments. You see more, not less, education in traditional architecture springing up, being created. You see more and more architecture uprisings. You see more and more, you know. architects, firms, it's a growing thing and it's developing and that's exciting. And I think we are really close to some sort of a paradigm shift because we have all the energy. It's within this group where all the exciting things are happening. Modernism is dead. They know it's dead. It's sizzled out. But it's kind of a zombie that keeps on walking and they try to act as if nothing is there. But some architects are already kind of jumping shit like Thomas Hatterwick. He feels something is terribly off. He started his own new, yeah, what is it? Yeah, humanized movement.

Austin

humanize. That's who I thought you were talking about earlier is Thomas Heatherbrook. I recently ran across him. He's quite interesting.

Ruben Hanssen

Yeah, exactly. But he is just a modernist who is smart enough to sense that something is terribly off with modernism. And he tries to do something about it, but I don't think his direction is the right one. But anyway, he would still be really interesting to talk with and to see what he really thinks, because I haven't fully dived into what he's talking about. But anyway, yeah, there is so much exciting stuff happening at the moment. And there is just, the world is ripe for a change. Only I feel like all the change is coming at once. And I'm a bit, you know, nervous about the whole worldwide situation with Russia and AI and everything, it's kind of the most interesting of times. So yeah, we'll see what comes out of it. We either die together or we build something really nice. Um, I guess, but yeah.

Austin

Yeah, I think there really are a lot of reasons to hope because there is, even with all that kind of bad stuff out there, things have gotten kind of bad enough in certain areas that in my opinion, it's kind of created and galvanized this counterculture. And what's cool about a counterculture is it always starts with a small group of people, and it's all about relationships. And everything else is all about institutions and rules and regulations and these non-human things and the counterculture is all about.

Ruben Hanssen

Thank you.

Ruben Hanssen

Yeah.

Austin

people. And so I have, I think that's really cool. And I think it's really going to be fun to watch it unfold in our life and what we, what all we can get done together. Um, but I want to hear a little bit as we wrap up. Uh, so just a small kind of rapid fire questions. And the first one, you know, tell, tell everyone about kind of your plans for 2024 and your upcoming trip to a very special place.

Ruben Hanssen

Yeah.

Ruben Hanssen

Yeah.

Ruben Hanssen

Yeah.

Ruben Hanssen

Yeah, yeah. So this year I'm working on way, first of all, ways to improve my production. Work on a new video right now, of course, but I want to make much more videos. I just need to find a process which is fast enough, but also keeps the quality so I can say everything I want to say, because I feel if I keep continuing in the pace of last year, it won't be... Yeah, you know, it won't be fast enough. So hopefully growing the YouTube channel a lot, but also, as you said, I'm going on a nice little trip, so on 30th of March, I will fly to the United States of America to come and visit your wonderful country and see a lot. I'm going to visit like 11 states or something. And I'm even thinking, well, maybe we should just come back sometime. continue because there's more stuff I want to see than I can actually visit. But I'm also going to visit you in Oklahoma. So can't wait for that. It's going to be a yes, that will be wonderful. Yeah, no, I can't wait. I can't wait to see the see everything there. Yeah, experience America and not just you know, the West Coast in a camper or New York. No.

Austin

Maybe we'll do a second one of these, yeah, in person, so. Ha ha ha.

Austin

Yeah. Oklahoma, baby. Yeah, come on. I'll have to think about the most Oklahoma things we can do to. So.

Ruben Hanssen

real America. Just... yeah. I mean, it doesn't get more... Yeah, exactly. I kind of want to also just try some shooting in a shooting range, for example, just really feel like I'm in America. Well, that's something that's got like completely, well, we have some gun ranges here, but it's something you don't think about, you don't see, it's just outside of our national kind of... And that's, yeah.

Austin

Oh, yeah, yeah. That, that, yeah, we got, we got plenty of guns. I mean, you're, you're coming to the right place. Boy. Austin (01:00:14.571) Right. It's weird if you talk to people just in their 50s here in Oklahoma, so not very old, in their 50s, maybe 60s or something, heck, I feel like even 40, anyway, no, it would be 50s, 60s, something like that. And they talk about going to high school and people just had gun racks on their pickup trucks and they just had their rifles on there and then after school they go out and hunt or whatever. And you're just like, oh my gosh. And it worked, you didn't hear about shootings or anything. Ruben Hanssen (01:00:19.521) Yeah. Ruben Hanssen (01:00:35.598) Wow. Austin (01:00:42.33) Um, things have changed a bit. Well, very cool. I'm super excited about you coming here. Um, that's going to be fun. Uh, some, some kind of fun, a couple of things, you know, since, since you're, uh, Dutch and for anyone listening that might be interested in visiting the Netherlands and like I said, I've been trying to get over there for a while. That's whole, uh, bus accident and being, um, very difficulty walking for me has, has put a, throwing a wrench in that, but still, you know, what would be, what are you're, what are the top Ruben Hanssen (01:00:42.573) Incredible. Wow. Austin (01:01:10.162) cities that you would kind of recommend in the Netherlands of people coming that might not be Amsterdam or something because most people just think of Amsterdam and drugs. Like people don't think of like, when I say the most pleasant cities in the world, I don't mean because of the drugs, I mean the actual most pleasant to experience, by the way. Ruben Hanssen (01:01:17.881) Yeah, well. Ruben Hanssen (01:01:24.997) Yeah. Oh man, there's so many. The point is AmSWAM is actually kind of the worst place to experience through Holland and also the beautiful part of Holland. Just take the train to Utrecht for example. It's like literally half an hour, 25 minutes by train. It's like a direct train ride. Like bam, you're in this, you're smacking the centre. Just then put on like blindfolds and continue to centre until you leave all the new stuff around the central station because it's... absolutely horrendous. You're like, you arrive in Utrecht, like I came for this, but just hold on, walk out of the, walk through the whole shopping mall and then you get to the city center and then it's wonderful. And like the city is just a complete medieval pearl. The same is for Amersfoort, which is really close as well. Beautiful medieval town. Leiden, which is my hometown. Beautiful, super walkable and less destroyed, but they're... Austin (01:01:54.902) Ha ha. Ruben Hanssen (01:02:24.273) destroying it anyway. Haarlem is another beautiful, actually Haarlem in Amsterdam, got its name from Haarlem in the Netherlands. Man, all those cities which are really close by train, everything under an hour is absolutely stunning and worth it. And you don't have to terror all the tourists, you don't have all the kind of the gusts of weed. flying. Yeah, you know, it's so smelly in Amsterdam, just everywhere you have drunk Brits, stoned Germans, whatever. And if you're in Leiden or in Utrecht, you won't notice that you're just you're there. Barely any tourists, you can walk everything, or you get one of the bikes and you can just explore by bike. I think that would be really good one as well. Just get a bike and just go somewhere and just see how far you can get just Austin (01:03:05.771) Hmm Ruben Hanssen (01:03:21.198) without finding any places where you can't really get, you can literally go to the harbor areas where normally only big trucks come and even there they created cycling paths. It's just madness almost. Austin (01:03:29.518) I think Uhtstrakht is a very good name for Uhtstrakht. Wow, wow, that's pretty cool. You know, our lead urban designer, building culture, Thomas Daugherty, his wife is from Uhtstrakht. So I've never been, once again, it's really just very, very high up on my list, but he really loves it. And... Ruben Hanssen (01:03:42.535) Ah, nice, yeah. Austin (01:03:53.446) is informed by a lot of the Dutch urbanism a lot, because he goes over there and he was actually over there biking, I think last year, just like you said. Ruben Hanssen (01:03:59.897) Yeah. And it's like a day trip, you know, you can, you can stay in Amsterdam and then just take, take a train to, uh, to Utrecht every day and explore, or better yet, take your hotel in Utrecht actually, and then just visit Amsterdam when you feel like it. And then visit the rest of the country because Utrecht is really in the center. And, uh, and then you have in the East, man, you have all those cities, uh, Deventer, Zwolle in the North, Groningen, Maastricht in the South, which is, it's almost like French. Uh, Austin (01:04:15.178) Yeah, yeah. Ruben Hanssen (01:04:29.765) Belgium, it's really, that's like completely surrounded by Belgium, Germany, Luxembourg is close by. So yeah, there is so much more than Amsterdam. Austin (01:04:42.146) Do you know, you might not know this, but being Dutch, but like, do Dutch people generally like Americans coming over? They're like, hey Americans, tourists, yeah. Ruben Hanssen (01:04:44.958) Bye! Ruben Hanssen (01:04:50.197) Yeah, I think the Dutch love Americans because I think we really love the enthusiasm. And I think we also really look up to Americans a bit because we are, I think, from mainland Europe, one of the most Anglo-Saxon, I think. I mean, of course, Ireland and Britain are way more America-focused. But I think apart from those, we are most, I think, yeah, we look up to America the most and have best relationships as well, I believe, with the United States. If that's just what I, from what I think, maybe there's a, but yeah, so absolutely come to United States, you will be opened with, with wide open arms. And yeah. Austin (01:05:34.146) Yeah. Austin (01:05:42.902) Well, great. Ruben, thanks a ton for coming on, and I look forward to seeing you here in person in just a couple months. Ruben Hanssen (01:05:50.425) Yeah, thank you, wonderful. I can't wait to see everything there. Austin (01:05:55.299) All right. Talk to you soon. Ruben Hanssen (01:05:57.893) Thank you so much. See ya. Austin (01:05:59.882) Bye.