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Amsterdam has more than 150 canals and 1,250 bridges, but it never seems crowded, nor bent and bitter from fleecing the tourist.

Stand outside De Eland, on the Berenstraat Bridge over the Prinsengracht, and you see what real Amsterdam life is like.

Historic Amsterdam, that old part you first see when you turn up at Centraal Station, may have its monuments, but it's also the most tawdry and overcrowded part of the city.

I love Amsterdam. The city is vibrant and alive. It's fresh and so open. It's definitely one of my favorite places.

I think Amsterdam is to Holland what New York is to America in a sense. It's a metropolis, so it's representative of Holland, but only a part of it - you know, it's more extreme, there's more happening, it's more liberal and more daring than the countryside in Holland is.

I am a village boy, and Amsterdam for me was always the big town.

I think the Netherlands will become one big city at a point. It is inevitable when you live in a country with so many people. You cannot afford to leave nature as it is. Some people believe that the dunes should be left in their original state, but I think it's strange to let things become how they were 500 years ago.

Life in cities is not a spring but a river, or rather, a water main. It progresses like a novel, artificially.

I am finished with cities. I spent four years in New York, ten in Paris, and I was in Belgrade for a while. To me now they are just airports.

The Delaware Estuary has sustained a human population for thousands of years, but by the end of the 19th Century, increased population and industrialization had transformed much of the upper Estuary watershed.