Jacksonville, FL — The Amsterdam of the South That Never Was

Two weeks ago I was in Amsterdam. Also spent some time in Antwerp, Gent, and Brussels. I was walking and biking everywhere, and when I wasn’t, trams came every few minutes. Bikes woven into the fabric of the city like they belonged there. Corner stores and cafes just existing at human scale. I didn’t think about transportation once. I just moved.

Then my manager called. Last minute, no real room to push back. An offshore engineering team couldn’t fly in for a vehicle integration project with a transit client in Jacksonville, Florida because of the war, and somehow I was the next best option. A red-eye Thursday night, straight to the client site Friday morning with no buffer, hotel check-in not until 4pm. I didn’t design this trip. It just happened to me.

Jacksonville is technically one of the largest cities in the United States by land area. You wouldn’t know it walking around. Or rather, you wouldn’t be walking around at all, because the city wasn’t built for that. The Southbank Riverwalk is genuinely beautiful. The parks are nice. The St. Johns River has real potential. But two steps outside of any green space and you’re back in a world of fast cars, missing sidewalks, and intersections that feel like a dare. Long waits, no shade, nothing between you and the sun. The people-mover monorail connecting parts of downtown doesn’t run on weekends, with zero notice about the cancelled schedule anywhere. I found that out the hard way, right after almost getting clipped crossing a road that had no business being that wide. That’s a story for another day.

I keep thinking Jacksonville has the bones to be something. The waterfront, the climate, the geography, it’s all there. It reminded me of Amsterdam in that specific way, the way a place can have all the right ingredients and still miss the mark completely. Amsterdam built around its canals and its people. Jacksonville built around its highways and its parking lots. Same river energy, completely different philosophy.

This morning I decided to just walk. Started from the hotel, did the Riverwalk, then decided I needed supplies so I looked up the nearest Walgreens. It was inside Baptist Medical Center Jacksonville, which is a massive hospital. Fine, I thought. How hard can it be. Turns out, very hard if you arrive on foot. There’s no obvious entrance for people who didn’t come in a car or an ambulance. I was circling the building when I ran into a woman doing the exact same thing. She thought she had some idea of how to get in. She didn’t really. We ended up going through the ER and just asking anyone who looked like they knew where they were going. At some point we parted ways and I found the Walgreens. Mission complete. Getting out was the same ER route since the Walgreens entrance was also closed for security reasons.

The whole thing was absurd and also kind of perfect. A hospital, a place people go when things go wrong, with no easy way in unless you drove there. But the people inside were genuinely kind. Everyone I asked for help actually helped. No performative niceness, just real. Jacksonville has that. It’s not nothing.

I’m here for another week. I’m going to try to make the most of it. But I’d be lying if I said this trip hasn’t just made me miss Europe more. Not in a romantic way anymore. In a confirmed way. I’ve felt the difference in my body. I know what it’s like to just exist in a city without fighting it. Jacksonville is a good reminder of what I’m working toward, even if it’s not where I want to be right now.