5/21/25

Today, we had the pleasure of touring Dakakker, a facility with over 1,000 square meters of green roof space. This space includes a vegetable farm, bee hives, and a chicken coop.

This space is extremely sustainable in many ways. To begin, producing local produce and animal product is inherently more sustainable. The roof top farm allows this kind of farming. Moreover, it is a very space efficient design; by using rooftop space, farms are kept closer to the community eating them. The use of green roofs also mitigates the common urban heat island effect where cities are hotter than surrounding areas due to them attracting heat.

During this day, we also toured some areas in Rotterdam. One of the first things our guide showed us was a rain water collection system (shaped in the form of letters) which can be seen below:

Another interesting difference between the United States and the Netherlands is that they build their train / metro / tram tracks on green space as shown below.

On this tour, we also saw a local neighborhood (pictured below). This neighborhood contains a playground which is socially powerful as it encourages community building and relationships. Additionally, a public compost system exists, allowing residents to compost any compostable objects instead of trashing them.

After leaving this area, we had the opportunity to see a public garden. This area is maintained by locals, and anyone is allowed to come and take the produce produced. Additionally, this area has a soccer (or football) field for anyone who wants to play.

After the tour of Dakakker and surrounding areas, our tour guide, Brian, showed us around Rotterdam. One place we arrived at was the shopping district which, interestingly, had many American brands. We also saw the Depot Boijmans Van Beunige which is a depot for many art pieces within Europe and keeps them safe from flooding, which is a continuous threat to the Netherlands due to the pressure of climate change. The building itself is extremely interesting, made of mirrors, and it faced protests when being built due to privacy concerns.

All in all, today, we learned about sustainable farming methods and the culture of Rotterdam.