Netherlands – Sustainable Urban Transportation (Closed)
Delft, Netherlands
Dates
- Summer 2 Semester - July 1 - July 31, 2012
Application Deadline
- Summer 2 Semester - November 18, 2011
Description
Information Session: 11/4 at 11:45 Am in 243 Ryder hall
Faculty leader: Prof. Peter Furth (p.furth@neu.edu)
The Civil & Environmental Engineering department is offering a faculty-led program to Netherlands for engineering credit.
Students will learn about Dutch transportation planning by a combination of experience and instruction. Students will use bicycles as their main mode of urban travel for a month, and make frequent use of trains, trams, and buses as well. Through field trips, exercises, and daily life, they will see how Dutch planning has worked in practice in several cities, concentrating on sites of recent urban expansion because the lessons there are the most transferable to the United States. Our days will be roughly divided into three equal parts: lectures, field trips, and working on projects. Students will do two projects: one documenting an aspect of Dutch transportation planning, and a transportation planning / design project in the U.S. in which they apply lessons learned from the Netherlands.
Courses
- CIVE 4566 Design for Sustainable Urban Transportation: European and U.S. Perspectives (4 credits)
- INTL 4944 Dialogue of Civilizations Globalization and Social Sciences (4 credits)
Host University
Delft University of Technology
Eligibility Requirements
This program is open to all majors; qualifications that will be considered for selection include GPA and demonstrated interest in urban planning or transportation (i.e., through courses taken, coop and internship positions, and volunteer activity). Students entering their final summer at NU will also have a level of preference over those who, if not accepted, will have the chance to go another year. Students must be physically fit, able to walk and ride a bicycle (at a relaxed pace) for several hours. Accommodation can be made for students with disabilities - please inquire with Prof. Furth.
Application Procedure
- Online Faculty- Led application (application open 10/17 - 11/18)
- Upload one unofficial transcript
- Upload one copy of passport ID page
- Upload essay questions
- Faculty may require additional information and/or interview (after application deadline)
Cost
$9, 460 plus a possible accommodation charge.
Accommodations
Students will live in apartments in the city of Delft, and will interact with the community as part of their daily life shopping, eating, going out in the evening, etc. Students will have bicycles to use during their entire stay. In lectures and site visits, students will hear from a dozen or more Dutch leaders in transportation planning. Two social events – a 4th of July barbeque near the start of the program and a cookout near the end of the program – will involve mixing with students and staff from Delft University and Rotterdam University. Smaller dinners and lunches in which students talk with Dutch students and staff will also be organized.
Destination
The Netherlands is a country as affluent and urbanized as the United States. They can afford cars as much as much as we Americans, yet they drive only half as much per capita, enjoying the world’s finest bikeway system and an excellent public transportation network. They plan cities to make people less reliant on driving by keeping homes within walking or bicycling distance of shopping areas and schools, by building shopping malls only at major public transportation nodes, and by ensuring that suburban expansion areas have excellent bicycling and transit networks. Their streets give priority to buses and trams, and systematically employ traffic calming to keep streets safe in residential and commercial areas. Thanks to their aggressive traffic safety program, their rate of traffic deaths per person, once the same as America’s, is now less than half the American rate.