Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Day 8: Tuesday

For Tuesday, we focused on group presentations of how far we had gotten on our work. My group presented on our critical problem of combining rural and urban aspects for a growing population, the process we would take, and the different discoveries we had made on the excursions. Overall we decided that we should do a (few) case studies to add to our presentation and make the implementation of our discoveries more real. Basically, from here on, we would try to find areas where we could develop in the way that we had suggested. Most of the day was spent on viewing other people’s presentations, which also turned out pretty interesting, although I felt that a fair number of them didn’t really have the same structure that we did. Nevertheless we also got some valuable ideas to supplement our own research process. After the presentations, we were supposed to have a break, but my group focused upon adding additional material to our project.

After working on it a while, I heard a lot of groups discuss how they were going to do some additional research at Fredricksberg Castle, since the rain would give some information about the possible strategies they could use for the drainage problem that would become prominent in Denmark as Climate Change continues. My group decided that I would be more valuable if I were to be sent out again on a mission to take pictures of additional housing structures near the castle, so I got to go with these other groups. After my work was done, there was still time, since the other groups were taking longer and there were only two buses/cars, so I actually had a chance to go shopping around. I was really grateful for this opportunity, since I needed to get some souvenirs for my friends and family. Things in Copenhagen were too expensive for me. In the end, I got to go to Tiger (home furnishing shop) and Netto’s (supermarket) which were key stores recommended to me by Aaron for cheap pricing. They were really cool and showed me that it was possible to get some nice and fair priced stuff in Denmark after all. J

We then had a lecture from Carmen Aalbers on “Concepts and Governance and Government in Peri-Urban Areas- Some Case Study Experiences.” She spoke about how governance worked in different areas and how they were arranged by a certain “priority list.” She also emphasized the difference dimensions of policy analysis including: rules of the game, resources, coalition, and discourse. While the technique in separating these out and considering them was valuable, I felt that she seemed to have applied many of these somewhat haphazardly to situations that didn’t really work. Overall, we ended up running out of time and I think that time with group projects would have been more useful.

(Group at Fredrickberg Castle)

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