Insights from a professional panel...

Hi All!

So the ride from Odense to Nijmegen was… awful. We got caught in traffic and our 10 hour trip turned into a 12 hour nightmare, 3 hours of which I spent desperately trying not to puke. But! We made it! This post is a little bit of catch up, and I’ll be talking about when we did a professional panel with Robert (trails planner at metro) and Catherine (Congress)! Hearing from industry professionals about what they’re excited to bring back from these countries is so interesting! I feel like I’m getting a real insight into what different careers in the profession might look like. 

Once again, the idea of livability was a strong thread. I was talking about it the other day with Rebecca and Brendan; it’s like this, every single professional we’ve met has started the conversation talking about quality of life and how they’re working to improve it. In the States, my talks with professionals start at what projects are lined up and the challenges they’re facing, only at the end do we start to talk about how the projects will help people live better. Just as much as I feel like I’m learning from the professionals, I feel like I’m learning from the cohort, there’s such a great mix of perspectives and life experiences. I really hope we can stay in touch after the trip! 

Catherine started by focusing on how many transportation options there are here. Public transportation, biking, and other modes all cost about the same (excluding cars) and all feel pretty easy to use. This access and choice is really impressive. Unfortunately, in the States transit and biking can be so challenging to use that they basically become unfeasible. It feels like true freedom here. 

Part of what makes these other methods easy to use is how dense all these cities are. This translates to active transportation actually not taking longer (and sometimes is actually faster) once you factor in parking and filtered permeability. Once again, I’m so excited to see the impacts of HB2001.

Surprisingly, re-framing the transportation system here didn’t actually take that long, only about a couple of decades. Nor that much money in the grand scheme of public infrastructure. In the States, so many of our current city design practices set communities up for bankruptcy. We can’t keep designing in this way and expect to get healthy livable communities. 

Here, innovation and trying new things are incentivized. When people use streets in unexpected ways, Danish planners attempt to figure out why, and help them do what they want to do better. We saw this so clearly in Copenhagen; bicyclists were not obeying traffic laws on a particular stretch of road, and instead were jumping the curb and going on the sidewalk to get to a particular street. Instead of putting up a fence (which would be a typical reaction in the States), they gave them a bike lane to make it easier to travel to their destination.  

Both Robert and Catherine stated that personal working relationships are so important to working together and getting stuff done. They think really strategically about how to approach projects and work to get people in support of them from many different places in the community/bureaucracy. 

We’re in The Netherlands now! In adorable little lakeside cottages! Biking here feels totally different, and I’m so excited to explore it more! For now though, I’m gonna go jump in the lake!