Wow, I can’t believe it is our second-to-last day here in the Netherlands! Time has definitely gone by quickly. Today, we set off at around 9 am to head over to DakAkker, a green roof in the middle of Rotterdam. Once we got there, we met our tour guide, Rob, who would show us some of the sustainable features all around the middle of the city. We first started walking around until we got to some places that focus on saving rainwater in deep reservoirs all around the city. The first one we visited was turned into a recreational area with basketball courts and nice areas to sit that can be used when it is not full of water. Our tour guide told us that it fills up around 2–3 times a year. After, we moved to another neighborhood that focuses on the same things. They have some dents and smooth areas that lead to an area where water is recollected. In that same neighborhood, they also had an area where they collected compostable things, like potato peels and banana peels, in order to form fertilizer and for them to be able to grow food and vegetables.

Moreover, we later crossed a bridge made out of wood that was bought by people in the area to put on top of old railway tracks. As of right now, this bridge is pretty short, but they intend to make it about 1.9 km long to simulate a similar concept to the High Line in New York City. This was a very innovative idea, placing trees and plants on top of the main road to both capture some rainwater and make the area more sustainable. Finally, we headed over to the main area. On top of a business building, they started wishing to make the area more sustainable, so they took the roof of the building and formed it into a flower and vegetable garden. The entire roof is filled with large amounts of flowers, lettuce, and a lot of other plants. To do this, they took a few layers of soil and plastic to both capture rainwater and make sure that the roots of the plants wouldn’t go into the ceiling of the building. These many innovative ideas make for a very sustainable city that also stays beautiful and different.

Right after the tour, we headed over to the Rotterdam City Hall in order to learn a little about the history and background of Rotterdam with our trip guide, Brian. Although it was a very long tour, it did help us learn a lot about how Rotterdam came to be the city that it is today. Compared to Amsterdam and other cities in the Netherlands, Rotterdam is a very modern city. Through this tour, we learned how the entire city of Rotterdam was bombarded in 1940, destroying and burning down the entire city, except for 4 main buildings: the city hall, the mail post, a church, and the World Trade Center. Through this, Rotterdam has then become a very industry-based city and especially a very modern city. The entire day was very much filled with important information to what Rotterdam is today, a very sustainable based and one of the “newest cities” in the Netherlands.