Today was our second to last day :(. I can’t believe how fast this trip has flown by!!! We headed to the Rotterdam InHolland campus, which is different than the Delft one because it houses mainly social sciences and humanities, as well as business and law. We started off with a walking tour of the city.
On the tour, we began to notice that Rotterdam is unique because it is a total mesh of many different styles of architecture. Out tour guide explained that Rotterdam was bombed extensively by the Germans during WWII, which destroyed over 80% of the city’s infrastructure. Practically the entire city had to be rebuilt, and this has led to it having all kinds of buildings: old buildings that survived the bombing, industrial buildings where workers who were rebuilding the city lived, new and modern skyscrapers, and sometimes fusions of these!
What I thought was the most interesting about Rotterdam was that it was kind of like an experimental ground for new modern ideas for sustainable city life. Not only is The Netherlands the most densely populated country in Europe, but they are also experiencing a country-wide housing crisis. With the limited space in Rotterdam, engineers have had to get creative. They are using Rotterdam as a way to test these future-thinking ideas for urban living and development. Some examples I found really interesting were floating airbnbs on the river and a linear park that will traverse multiple neighborhoods being made out of an old subway line. I love the idea of using existing projects and turning them into something new so this was very cool to me. I thought this related to concept to customer because the concepts have been uniquely influenced by the housing situation as well as the current layout of Rotterdam, and the solutions are very much a product of the customers needs.
Something that the professors made sure to point out was the idea of social sustainability going hand in hand with the traditional idea of sustainability. They pointed out how a decision of where to build schools for the wealthy had indirectly created poorer and underprivileged districts throughout Rotterdam. My big takeaway from this was that it is important to think about engineering projects on a small and large scale, in terms of social effects as well as the actual functionality of the product. Just because an idea is “sustainable” or innovative does not mean that it will impact everyone the same or will benefit everyone. All angles of this need to be considered before these projects break ground. Another example is that Rotterdam is building an experimental man made “city beach” in a rougher area which they are not sure how this will impact that community. This is something I can take to my career because often sustainability is thought of from a technical standpoint in engineering as far as numbers of emissions or numbers of waste reduced, but creating communities that encourage equality for all are also needed for a sustainable future that will last as time passes.
After the tour we headed back to the campus to talk about international studies in The Netherlands. We discussed how InHolland has many international students and this fosters the interchange of cultures and ideas. They said they would love to have more students from America and that America is one of the top places Dutch students want to study abroad, but many Dutch students do not study abroad. I felt very lucky to be part of this program and have this experience!! I also loved seeing their campus. One thing I loved was that they had the UN sustainability goals on the wall, with the Dutch motto: “geen woorden maar daden,” which translates to “not words but action.” I had never known this was the Dutch motto, but I thought it summed up everything I have seen in the last couple weeks so well. You can see that the Dutch do not just talk about sustainability but actually implement it all around. For some small examples, the university does not serve meat because the meat industry adds so much to climate change, and even the escalators at the subways are sensor automated to reduce background energy usage. Even making small modifications in all these areas adds up.
Afterwards we had free time so me and a few of my friend explored the public transportation of the city and had a little excursion to a cat cafe. I keep thinking how amazing and easy their public transportation is and I really do wish Pittsburgh had such a good system, I would use it all the time. Anyways, the cats were sooo cute and I had the best time talking to the owner and a couple other Dutch people in the cafe. They seemed intrigued that we had come all the way from America but we could still talk about the cats. The food was also really good.
Today was really fun and I’m so sad tomorrow is our last day, but I am so excited to see the cows at the floating farm. See you tomorrow Rotterdam!