Luud Schimmelpennink

Laurens (Luud) Maria Hendrikus Schimmelpennink (born in Amsterdam, 27 May 1935) is a Dutch social inventor, industrial designer, entrepreneur and politician. As of 2007 he is Managing Director of the Ytech Innovation Centre in Amsterdam. Schimmelpennink first came into public view in the early 1960s through his association with the Dutch Provo counterculture and the White Bicycle Plan.

Since the mid-1960s Schimmelpennink has been active as an industrial designer and social innovator, with special focus on sustainable transportation concepts. His work aims to both reduce the number of conventional motor cars in cities or urban areas for environmental and public health reasons, and provide people with viable alternative means of getting around in the city.

Luud Schimmelpennink emerged on the Dutch social political scene as the main person behind the famous 1965 White Bicycle Plan in Amsterdam, whereby he and colleagues collected several hundred bikes, painted them white, and left them around the city to be freely used. This initiative, called the White Bicycle Plan, originally existed as one in a series of White Plans proposed in the street magazine and youth movement Provo. The Dutch Provos were, by the standards of the times, a radical group that thought to provoke the establishment with playful demonstrations.

On 22 February 1967 Schimmelpennink was elected to the Municipal Council of the City of Amsterdam, but was unable to get the needed political support for his White Bicycle Plan. However, the basic model that Schimmelpennink and his colleagues created became an inspiration and model for Community bicycle programs which today are gaining serious momentum in a growing number of European cities, including Helsinki, Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Lyons and Villeurbanne.

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