On Tuesday, October 10th, the department’s BPA & MPA Programs sponsored a seminar entitled “From Rotterdam to San Marcos: Building Resilience Through Street Design,” exploring how our streets and cities can be adapted to make them more effective in managing water, promoting safety and mitigating climate change. The event included presentations by Texas State’s Dr. Billy Fields and Liliane Geerling of the Delta Academy at HZ University of Applied Sciences in The Netherlands. Among the topics explored was how the city of Rotterdam had integrated their green infrastructure with active transportation planning through projects and policy.
A graduate student in the MPA program, Samantha Martinez, noted that the event was, “insightful because it highlighted an alternative approach to street design” and added she “appreciated the discussion on policy projects involving public space.” Braden Kropp, a senior majoring public administration concluded that “we, as Americans, can learn a lot from other countries around the world about how to better address the problems in society.” Michael Tahmoressi, a grad student in communications, said that the seminar “demonstrated how infrastructure design reflects cultural values.” Tahmoressi, who participated in a study abroad in the Netherlands that Dr. Fields directed last summer, hopes to return to the Netherlands to continue his studies in the future.
