Phase 1 - Individual Blog Post

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The past week in Belgium has been an eye-opening experience for me. Prior to this week, I hadn’t envisioned many differences between Europeans and Americans, as I’d always imagined the two demographics were two sides of the same Western coin. The US and EU are similar sizes and are generally in similar stages of socioeconomic development, so I hadn’t really considered too many of the differences. Rather, I always attributed the problems faced by each country as a failure of each system, such as the lack of competent public transit in the United States or the intense discussions over migration in both entities.

However, listening to the different speakers that we had the priviledge of interacting with over the course of the semester so far has provided a unique opportunity to give context to the reasoning behind the different changes. For example, one of the biggest changes I noticed upon arrival in Leuven is the prevalence of bicycles in comparison to automobiles. While Boston can be considered a fairly walkable city where the pedestrian is king and my hometown in Connecticut is on the opposite end of the spectrum with a major car dependency, the difference in Leuven is staggering. Rather than my initial assumption that bicycles were just better promoted by the government or that Belgian culture was just more bicycle-centric, Professor Müller from KU Leuven put this phenomenon in context of geography: Belgium is simply flatter. Bicycling is an easy form of transport for most Belgians, and while the US has plains, the distances that need to be traveled in those sprawling midwestern cities are not as short as the typical Belgian city. Of course, cycling isn’t the only example, but the same can be attributed to concepts such as differences in policy between the two entities.

Aside from some near-injury experiences with bikers in the town square, I had the opportunity of getting started on our project. Website-wise, I assisted in setup of the project formatting in general, although the vast majority of the initial setup and commands was spearheaded by Michael. I also provided support for ideation, as we transitioned our ideas from something with misinformation to energy usage and climate change, to eventually a carbon footprint tracker. These discussions provided the framework for the rest of Phase I, as I helped in finding a few auxiliary data sources and also contributed to the user personas. I’m excited to see the direction that this project goes!