Today we started off our day early once again, meeting at 9:15 AM. Getting up today was better than most days and our room was up and at ‘em early in the morning. Today consisted mainly a tour of Rotterdam and InHolland’s Rotterdam campus. First our tour consisted of walking around Rotterdam in which the concept to consumer and sustainability aspects really came through. In contrast to Amsterdam, Rotterdam had to essentially reinvent itself after 85% of it was bombed by Germany. Thus, the old architecture that is shown within Amsterdam is not showcased in Rotterdam and it is more modeled after a Manhattan ~ New York vibe in which it has a lot of modernistic architecture.
Our tour guides, which were representatives from InHolland, explained that Rotterdam had a huge port which was used for much product distribution and added a ton to their development as a city since the body of water connected to many other cities that were along the river that were essential to moving product. Thus from this, there were a ton of warehouses lined up along the shore that would make exporting and importing product so easy. However, in today’s day and age the port is moved farther up and does not even reach these warehouses and thus are left useless. However, especially with the housing crisis happening all around the Netherlands, these old warehouses are becoming utilized as apartment housing and being converted one by one to apartments for tenants to rent throughout the year. As for the concept to consumer, the government of Rotterdam realized that in the past they may have needed warehouses in order to effectively maintain their ports and imports; however, currently there is no use for those warehouses to just sit there and collect dust. So in turn, Rotterdam decided to tackle a problem that all of the Netherlands face today, which is the overbearing housing crisis. Warehouse by warehouse, the city of Rotterdam is turning their past into their future by considering the needs of the people and what would most positively impact their population and help the economy grow even further by reusing their old infrastructure.
In terms of infrastructure, Rotterdam is also trying to be more sustainable and open to the people, they have been trying to implement green spaces and also use old spaces in order to help Rotterdam not feel like just a city but a space where people can go walk with their dogs, have their children play, or relax in the grass with a good book. By implementing these green spaces, they’re allowing the population to come together and grow in their community by having a public space for anyone’s usage and also providing a space for rain water to go rather than just on the street. This helps sustainability of the people and keeping the community together while also being sustainable for the environment by taking in some of the rainwater and keeping the city from flooding and overflowing the city’s sewer system.
Afterwards, we went to go tour the actual facilities of InHolland – Rotterdam and learn about their schooling and programs that they have. Then once that had finished a group of us had gone to see De Hague, a neighborhood on the outskirts of Rotterdam, and we had tons of fun shopping and chatting over some dinner!
