Europe's Sustainable Urban Design

On our final day together as a group, we had rented out a private room in a restaurant to give presentations on our final project and share a final dinner together. Although the presentations only lasted three minutes per student, by the end of them all it was evident we had all learned a lot, so much that literally none of our final projects were on the same topics. It was really cool to see what everyone pulled from this trip with their different perspectives. As a person whos studying landscape architecture I focused on rethinking the street as a public space rather than just pavement for transportation and how the location infrastructure is in can encourage or discourage bicycle use. So many people had ideas that weren't completely centered around planning... even the planners. But, all of our ideas were still based around the idea of using the bicycle as the main form of transportation. As this is, unfortunately, my last blog post about my study abroad experience I thought i...

Today we didn't have anything planned but a canal boat trip at 4:00. Prior to the canal ride, I decided to chill and work on my blog... nothing special. The canal ride was nothing less than special. It gave us a chance to just relax, take the city in, and enjoy each other's company. And that we did. We filled the boat with drinks and food... maybe a little too much wine, and set off. During the ride, I realized how special not only the experience of this whole trip was but how special the group itself was. I want to give a special shoutout to everyone that was part of the group if it wasn't for everyone's openness and eagerness to become friends with each other I don't think this program would have been so great. Very early on I felt comfortable with everyone on the trip and this allowed me to open up more and be open to new experiences and learning opportunities. I honestly think if our group didn't gel like this we wouldn't have learned so much, because ...

On our second and last day with Merideth started with a change of plans. Rather than have a lecture then go on a bike ride we decided to go on the bike ride first so we could beat the heat. Thank God. On the bike ride, we learned a lot about the infrastructure of the city and some of the recent projects put into place. What struck me most was the banana and the chips cone intersection design. In this instance, the designers realized that they should design in a way that facilitates peoples natural behavior, because if they do that there is a high chance of people following the design and its rules. On this particular intersection, the designers opted to shrink cycling protective barriers to the shape of a small banana and widen part of the bike lane to make it look like a cone. This added 33% more space for cyclists without having to actually enlarge the intersection. This made the packed house that was the Mr. Visserplein intersection run a lot more smoothly, so smoothly, in fact, t...