A quiet hope

Column by Geert Walinga

This winter in January, the weather gods blessed us with a week of snow fall. It is a phenomenon that many recognize and remember as delightful and nostalgic: a time to be like a child again, of spontaneous snowball fights, of gathering inside with red blazing hands for a hot drink. Like a soft blanket over the harsh reality, sealing imperfections underneath a white sheet. A magical world for a short while, silent and peaceful.

I have been thinking for a long time why those few days have felt so calm and real. And I was not the only one experiencing this. De Volkskrant ran the headline “Snow causes inconvenience, fun, and tranquility throughout the country. “I only know this from very old photos.”” (Kuiper et al., 2026). AD followed with “A snowball effect: snow acts as a pause button, bringing people together” (Mokaddem, 2026). Not only public transport stopped running but our society as a whole was temporarily set still. Snowfall does not speak loudly but rather whispers truths to us. If we take a moment, we may yet discover some. 

It may not be an exaggeration when I state that the pace of the world today is fast. The physical world is demanding enough, seemingly asking us to combine work, health, and a social life all into a 24-hour day. And that is not even considering the virtual world. How do we as landscape architects and spatial planners react to this state of mind. Do we support this behaviour by creating landscapes of efficiency? Or is our task a different one, countering current trends and keeping the landscape on a human scale? 

The infamous book The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961) by Jane Jacobs is one of the school examples of bringing back human scale into cities. Jan Gehl argues for the same point in his books Cities for People (2010) and Soft Cities (2019). Human scale can be seen in the city policy of both Rotterdam High Rise Vision (2019) and of Amsterdam High Rise Policy (2024): skyscrapers are required to fit into the city landscape, to keep the ground floor cohesive with the surrounding lower buildings, and to activate city life with the ground floor program. International projects that center around the human scale include the 15-minute City plan in Paris, the closing of Times Square for motorized vehicles, and the transformation of Barcelona housing blocks into superblocks. 

So, what has snow to do with bringing back the human scale? It is here that I would like to introduce the term sneckdown. Atrocious as it may sound, its definition and application are beautiful, nonetheless. Sneckdown can be defined as “a mash-up of the words ‘snowy’ and ‘neckdown’” and is a term seemingly used in American and Canadian urban planning (Headington Liveable Streets, 2021). When snow has fallen, the patterns of human road usage become apparent. Figures 1-6 show the sneckdown process in action (Pilsēta cilvēkiem, 2021). Snowfall changes the behaviour of motorized vehicles, often lessening their uptake of space (which is often induced by the lowering of speed). Patterns in the snow are evidence for this behaviour. [Interestingly, pedestrians often reclaim that non-used space, extending their space into the car dominated realm.] After identifying how much space motorized vehicles truly need, pedestrian spaces can be extended into the vacant space, attributing to the return of the human scale in cities.

The sneckdown process visualised (Pilsēta cilvēkiem, 2019)

Is this a very romanticized story about pedestrians taking back their homeland? Perhaps. However, every fairytale has a lesson. Let us bring our attention back to the present reality. The snowfall this winter should have been a wakeup call, a tug at the shoulder that would remind us of what life is actually about and what things can be forgotten. Nothing radical happened after the snowfall in January, I think. Though this year’s snowfall was only a whisper, halting the running world in its tracks for only a while, in the short silence, still, I hear a sliver of hope. Hope for the world to remember itself. Hope for its people as they were reminded of life’s pleasures that can only be experienced when the pace is slower. And hope for radical and necessary choices when we design our future landscapes. 

We are at a crossroad and we as landscape architects, spatial- and urban planners can influence partly which road we are taking. A snowy road may not be such a bad choice as it seems after all. 

References

Kuiper, R., Van Den Berg, J., Zijderveld, G., Hotse Smit, P., & Spit, L. (2026, January 7). Sneeuw zorgt in het hele land voor ongemak, plezier en rust. ‘Dit ken ik alleen van heel oude foto’s.’ Volkskrant. https://www.volkskrant.nl/binnenland/sneeuw-zorgt-in-het-hele-land-voor-ongemak-plezier-en-rust-dit-ken-ik-alleen-van-heel-oude-foto-s~baa66c75/

Mokaddem, M., el. (2026, January 11). Een sneeuwbaleffect: sneeuw werkt als een pauzeknop, het brengt mensen bij elkaar. AD. https://www.ad.nl/westland/een-sneeuwbaleffect-sneeuw-werkt-als-een-pauzeknop-het-brengt-mensen-bij-elkaar~a05988cf/?referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F

Headington Liveable Streets. (2021, 19 januari). What’s a Sneckdown? Geraadpleegd op 26 januari 2026, van https://www.headingtonliveablestreets.org.uk/sneckdowns/

Pilsēta cilvēkiem. (2019, 6 februari). sneckdown gif [Screenshots from Video]. Facebook. Geraadpleegd op 26 januari 2026, van https://www.facebook.com/PilsetaCilvekiem/videos/256223608618836/?t=8