Visiting address: Erasmus University Rotterdam Room H12-05 Burgemeester Oudlaan 50

Postal address: Room H12-07 P.O. box 1738 3000 DR Rotterdam

Year 2007/2008 - Number 3– April, 2008

InTrans

It’s a new year

Barcelona

Caught between a truck and a hard place…

Introduction Days

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page 8

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How’re you doin’?

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InTrans April 2008

The editors of the InTrans are: Linette de Swart Sanne de Jong Lenneke Wester

This is the last InTrans of this committee. Would you like to fabricate the InTrans in the coming year, please contact us at intransredactie@gmail.com

The editors would like to thank for this issue: Prof. Paolo Russo Kasia Kurek Karin van der Plas

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Hi everyone! My, my, a new year has started. It seems like the last year was over in a flash. Some of the master students of last year are writing their master thesis still: struggling through the last phase of studies during the summer. I would like to offer them a little bit of distraction with this new InTrans. For the new master en bachelor students: a warm welcome! You are holding in your hands the InTrans, the magazine of the study-association of Urban, Port and Transport Eco-nomics: Transito. Transito will organise a lot of fun things for you; already in October there are introduction days. It is a fast way to get to know each other and the field of UPT. It is the first year this is organised, so we hope it will be a huge success: please join in and it will be!

In this InTrans we have a full account of our study trip to Barcelona in June. It was a very nice conclusion of our year as UPT students, but for me also as president of Transito. In Oc-tober, a new board will take over our tasks and our room. That could be you: we still are looking for new board members! Would you like to give your last year something extra? Then come and join Transito! And we also are looking for members of different com-mittees like the study trip committee and the InTrans committee. If you are interested, or if you would like to have a shat about it, please contact me, Lenneke, Ying Ying or Kasia at studievereniging.transito@gmail.com. Hereby I would like to wish you all a very inter-esting and fun year! Greetings, Heidi Mauritz, president of Transito 2007-2008

From the (almost former) President

Transito is a study association for the students of Urban, Port and Transport Economics. Transito tries to bring the theory of the classes alive in practice. That can be by visiting companies and institutions ‘in the field’, but also via the articles in the InTrans. If you would like to be a member, please visit us at H12-05, or download the subscription form from the webpage www.transito.nu. If you would like more information about us, you can contact us at our addresses that are stated on the right.

Visitor address Room H12-5 Burgermeester Oudlaan 50 3062 PA Rotterdam T: 010 - 408 2070 F: 010 - 408 9156

Mail address Room H12-7

P.O. Box 1738 3000 DR Rotterdam

E: studievereniging.transito@gmail.com www.transito.nu

We’re on the web!

Visit us @ www.transito.nu

Barcelona is the second city of Spain, and the capital of the Autonomous Community of Catalonia. One of the largest and more dynamic cities of the Mediterranean, nowadays, Barcelona is taken as an example of successful urban regeneration and image change from a grey industrial city to a spectacular leisure and cultural capital. In fact, the city of Barcelona is a model of urban renewal at least since the 19th century. It used the organisation of two World Expos, namely in 1888 and in 1929, to rebuild, respectively, the northern section of the city centre −characteristic “chessboard” city plant (Eixample) which is still today the city’s economic heart and pulse −and many other city icons, like the monuments of the Montjuic hill. Even the construction of the most celebrated monument of Barcelona, the Sagrada Familia, is linked to a religious mega-event, the Eucharistic Congress of 1952. However, Barcelona’s most famous redevelopment efforts are linked to the post-dictatorship cultural and political rebirth, reaching an apogee with the 1992 Olympic Games, in occasion of which the image of the city was virtually rebuilt: the post-modern, ephemeral and symbolic entered the scene as

main attributes of “new Barcelona”. Since then, a steadily increasing number of tourists (5.1 millions in 2005, surpassing for the first time the Spanish capital Madrid) are attracted to this city every year, but also highly mobile and skilled creative workers, students and researchers. The efforts to defend the successes of the 1990s and promote new growth opportunities continue. On one side, after more than a decade of relentless growth, Barcelona needs to make new room for the tourist and leisure economy, which is for the first time perceived as a “problem” by sectors of the public opinion. Secondly, Barcelona has to catch up with some key social and economic challenges: the fight to exclusion and marginality, but also the development of new economic specialisation in the advanced tertiary sector, which has been to some extent left behind. Thus, Barcelona represents an ideal setting to study how culture and knowledge functions can transform the city, and how policy can influence this encounter. Currently Barcelona is considered a creative city, in a variety of fields ranging from architecture to gastronomy and design. Its

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Barcelona

Based on the article The Case Study of Barcelona: Culture-Led Regeneration of the Raval and the Transformation of Eastern Barcelona: Complementary Area Approaches in the Redevelopment of Barcelona by A.P. Russo, L. Capel-Tatjer edited by Kasia Kurek

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creative class surfaced during the first years of democracy, when radical changes in the social and economic sphere were called for after the grey days of the Franco period. Today, however, the city is known as a real magnet for creative talents, from Catalonia and abroad, thanks to its extraordinary cultural endowment and its open and tolerant atmosphere. The image change of the last decade contributes to such attractiveness. In a nation which scores relatively low among “creative countries” of Europe, Barcelona is generally recognised to be among the more vibrant, well-endowed and socially inclusive cities of Europe, which is a key precondition for economic success. Urban planning in the city has become paramount, giving birth to an own style, the “Barcelona Model”. This model of urban planning is innovative because of its procedures, “especially in the search for consensus between public and private actors”. It is based on large and prestigious interventions aiming at the attraction of private capital, while the public administration acts as a promoter of private investments. At the same time, there is a clear marketing strategy aiming to produce an image of the city that can be sold internationally. Indeed, since the beginning of public interventions, Barcelona has quintupled its level of tourism activity, surpassing Madrid in 2005 after a long catch, and becoming the third most visited European city after London and Paris for leisure purposes. Interestingly, a city with a strong level of public participation in political decisions and a socialist orientation in local policy, has been able to balance careful public control with the attraction of private capital and foreign investment, making it become a template of socially acceptable development. Since the beginning, culture and urban regeneration have been associated. The cultural policy of the city is remarkable, especially if compared with other Spanish public administrations. Indeed, the City Council of Barcelona spends 6% of its expenditure on cultural policies, while the autonomous government and the central state only around 1.5%. However, the latter

administrations contributed considerably to the urban transformation of Barcelona, funding infrastructure development and supporting directly specific projects, as the Olympics or the Forum of Cultures. The European Union, through Cohesion Funds and programs as URBAN has also an important role in the metamorphosis of the Catalan city.

In 1999, the City Council took the initiative and with the help of the Institute of Culture of Catalonia, drew up a Strategic Plan of the Cultural Sector. The objective of the plan was two-fold: on one hand, it should have been a tool for the development and sustainability of the cultural sector; on the other, an instrument for extending the role of culture to the redevelopment of the city. The urban strategy involved by the challenges and policy responses spans the whole metropolitan territory: the entrance corridor at the western end to the city is being refurbished and transformed in a first-class business location including congress facilities and shopping malls, and new directional functions are being transferred in the port area of Zona Franca. Various “hotspots” in the city centre are also undergoing important changes to accommodate upscale new civic and commercial function. However, the two areas that most vividly encapsulate the latest wave of social and economic regeneration

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Antonio Paolo Russo ( on the photo: second from the left in the front) is assistant professor in tourism at Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona, and director of the Science Park of Tourism and Leisure. He collaborates with the European Institute of Comparative Urban Research at the Erasmus University Rotterdam, where he received his Ph.D. in Economics in 2002. Previous appointments were with the Universitat Autònoma of Barcelona and with IULM University Milan. He is author of various publications in academic journals and books. His research interests range from tourism studies to cultural and urban economics.

programmes are Raval and St. Marti. The Raval, also known as “Barrio Chino” in depreciative terms to nick its diverse character, was until a few years ago a no-go area especially for tourists. Today, it stands out as a partially gentrified neighbourhood, which has become a favourite meeting place and a playground for Barcelona’s creative class, including local artists, university students, skilled workers in knowledge-intensive firms, and young culture-aware tourists. The “regeneration frontier” is slowly moving eastwards, changing but not destroying the identity of the neighbourhood: from the spectacular Plaça dels Angels, the location of major cultural institutions like MACBA and CCCB which have “contaminated” the surrounding space, towards the port, where most of the ethnic minorities and large areas of deprivation are still found, together with some of the sleaziest attractions of Barcelona’s nightlife. St. Marti is the easternmost district of Barcelona and one of the most severely struck by deindustrialisation and hurried growth under the pull of immigration in the 1950s and 1960s. It includes the Poble Nou, the heart of

Barcelona’s working-class past and a noticeable example of industrial architecture and urbanism. Partly redeveloped in occasion of the Olympics, what was left of the 1992 shift of the city to the east has become valuable again as a redevelopment area in the last part of the 1990s, together with surrounding areas like Glories, Sagrera and the Forum area (which crosses over to the neighbouring municipal territory of St Adrià del Besos). The city foresees that this will become the “knowledge district” of Barcelona, and has made grand plans for its redevelopment. While the process is in its preliminary stages, huge changes can already be appreciated especially in land values and in ongoing building activities. Together with culture, urban regeneration is the landmark of urban policies in Barcelona. The city is given as an example for international urban policies as it switched from an industrial port city to the exclusive and socio- dynamic city with the growing in importance international port. The metropolitan spirit is been captured by the courageous policy tools that effected in achieving socio- economical balance.

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Barcelona Studytrip By Linette de Swart

On Friday, the first full day of the trip, the group started with a visit to one of Barcelona’s universities. Here a lecture was followed, given by Professor Russo, a former lecture of the Erasmus University. He told about several regeneration programmes which where intro-duced in the 80s and 90s. After the theoretical part he toke the group to the Raval, a neighbourhood which is generated into a new modern centre, but which also shows how it used to be. Raval gives a nice picture of the programmes introduced. After this visit the group went to a small Dutch consultancy company called Transfer. The company advises Dutch companies that want to start operations at the Spanish market. They gave the group a presentation about Spain in general and showed some important differences between the Dutch and the Span-iards. In the afternoon there was a more informal ex-cursion. The group went to a winery just out-side Barcelona. The area in which the winery is located is beautiful. At the winery the group followed a guided tour and was introduced in the process of making Cava, a Spanish equivalent of champagne. The storage rooms were impressive. The total amount of corridors in these rooms was about 30km and to find your way all the corridors had names of cities. One can say that the storage rooms are a city in itself. On Saturday and Sunday the programme was entirely informal. Everybody was free to do what he or she wanted. Most of the students did a lot of sightseeing and shopping. Also the Euro championship was followed. The best match was of course The Netherlands- France (4-1).

At Monday it was a formal day again. In the morning the group visited Fira Barcelona. This company has two large exhibition complexes in Barcelona. They organise all sorts of fairs, but mainly for a business purpose. The group followed a lecture about the logistic aspects that are involved in organising a fair. Later the group visited the exhibition halls and saw which possibilities are available for organising a fair. In the afternoon a visit to MSC was planned. MSC (Mediterranean Shipping Company) is the second largest shipping company in the world. Only Maersk is bigger. Here we fol-lowed a presentation about the company and one was able to ask all kind of questions to people of the company. The last formal visit was to a company called Norgestion. This is an advising company which is specialized in the areas of Economic, Financial, Legal and Tax advice. The group spoke with one of the founders of the com-pany, a man from The Netherlands. The visit was very informative. After a long day with formal visits the group went for a drink together and after this every-body to spend the last hours of the visit as he or she liked. Most went for diner and a disco. In the middle of the night everybody had to be ready to leave for the airport, because the plane would fly around 7. Unfortunately there was an hour delay. Although everybody was very tired after this trip, the trip was a huge success and can be recommended to everyone.

At June 12, 14 UPTE students gathered at Schiphol Airport to take the plane to Barcelona for the study trip of Transito. For 4 full days this group would visit several companies which operate in the field of the master UPTE. The group would also do sightseeing, shop-ping and experience the Spanish way of life.

Barcelona Studytrip, 12-17 June 2007

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From the Organising Committee, There is more and more to hear about Spain every day in news. Its rapid economical growth, social dynamism and modern spirit are present in the media. The aim of a studytrip is to bring closer the urban and transport devel-opment to the academic theories. That is why this year Transito studytrip was dedicated to explore Barcelona, the Catalan capital of Spain. We were delighted by giving the visit to that part of the Mediterranean Sea region. Fourteen of Transito members have con-quered Barcelona in five days learning its business, education and leisure aspects. The weather has not gifted us with sun, but we did-n’t mind that detail enjoying tapas and sangria at the local gastronomy places. Barcelona of-fers much more than a couple of days to stay, but even though we have visited transport and logistic related companies and we have got familiar with the Barcelona urban redevelop-ment policy by the lecture of Professor Russo, the urban economist. It is an example city showing its complex development of urban and commercial sectors. The balance of inter-est is been kept, thus the intense economical growth is accompanied by the cultural explo-sion and social liberty. The city of Gaudi archi-

tecture is inspiring by the multicultural view and the strong reference to the typical Catalan traditions in the background. The port of Barcelona, an economical trigger of the region was one of the important reasons for selection of the studytrip destination. We were honored to be host by one of the biggest market players: MSC Shipping Company. By the series of company visits we could observe strong Spanish- Dutch commercial relation-ship, mostly in transport and finance coopera-tion. I am sure that we all reconsidered Barcelona as our possible job opportunity place. All, be-cause it is very difficult to resist Barcelona charm and the city magnetic atmosphere. I hope that lots of memories about the Barce-lona studytrip will last for long… Hereby, I would like to pass my warm thanks to everybody that contributed to the realization of this adventure. Muchas Gracias Amigos! Kasia Kurek The Barcelona Studytrip Project Coordinator

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A truck driver in Holland was stuck in a traffic jam. Nothing new, this happens all the time. But this truck driver was approaching his legal limit of 6 hours driving time. He should have parked his truck but he got stuck in traffic... About ten minutes later he reached a parking space and he parked his truck. He took his rest as he is supposed to. A few days later, the truck driver is stopped by the police for a random check. The police sees that the driver has driven 10 minutes too long earlier that week. The truck driver explains that he was stuck in a traffic jam, and he really couldn't help it. It didn't help. The police gave him a fine. One fine? No... The police gave him 21 fines, be-cause during the traffic jam, the truck driver stopped and pulled up 21 times. To the police officer, it looks like the truck driver violated his mandatory rest 21 times. The Dutch truck dri-ver had to pay a fine of thousands of Euro's. His company went bankrupt at the spot. Truck drivers are having a really hard time. And not just because of the fuel prices. Prices are under pressure. Most trucking companies regularly haul cargo for less than cost price. They cannot stop driving or raise their prices. If they do, their job will be taken over by chea-per Eastern European drivers, which are free to do anything in the European Union. Next to that, the government has a strickt ban on older trucks. Trucks as old as 3 years are no longer allowed in so-called “environment zones” and they have to pay extra taxes and tolls (such as the Maut in Germany). Because of this, the second-hand marked for trucks has collapsed, as nobody wants an older truck. Trucking companies suddenly find their trucks, only 3 years old, worthless. They can no lon-ger use their truck to finance a new one. They have no option to keep driving their trucks and pay all the taxes, fines and tolls, until the end.

And above all, there is the tachograph, which records the driving time. The fines for any vio-lation of driving times are huge, and the police is allowed to fine any irregularity up to 28 days in the past, in the entire European Union. You can explain a Dutch policeman what happe-ned yesterday, but can you explain a French policeman what happened 3 weeks ago? Also, it is widely known that corruption is flourishing in Italy and Eastern Europe. The future isn't bright either. Germany is for-cing its own Bundesländer to raise the Maut (toll). The Dutch government has just raised the diesel prices even more, and is planning to raise the VAT to 20% at the end of this year. Also, they are rolling out more restricting rules, so-called to help the environment. The Euro-pean Union will also implement rules to further restrict the working time of truck drivers to 48 hours per week.

More and more companies are going bank-rupt, or are ending their business. Especially the owner-operators, with less than 5 trucks, are in trouble. Because of all government re-gulations the little trucking companies cannot make any money driving. The government has squeezed them until there is nothing left. Until now, the Dutch public hasn’t cared much

Caught between a truck and a hard place… by Maarten van der Westen

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for the truck drivers. And why should they? It doesn’t really matter that shops and supermar-ket cannot maintain their stocks because there are no trucks to deliver them. We can live on milk and cookies alone! And why should it bother us that these truck drivers will get un-employed and need government support? We like paying extra taxes! Why should we care that logistical companies avoid settling in our country and take their business elsewhere? All these jobs would interfere with our free time! And all these Polish and Romanian truck dri-vers, who cause a lot more accidents than their Dutch colleagues, that is okay. We enjoy experiencing other cultures! There have been some protests, but nothing substantial. It hasn't helped. Most truck drivers and company owners are too busy keeping their company alive, and their trucks rolling. They cannot afford to protest. Just drive. Drive until you can't. And besides, a truck driver who used Hyves to organise a protest, was arre-sted by police. You're only allowed to drive. Don't say anything. Just drive. And pay.

But fortunately, some bright minds within the government have seen the light. These politici-ans have looked down from their ivory tower and they have seen the trucking industry is in trouble. That is great news, really! The govern-ment has done some research and guess what? They have found the main problem why the trucking companies are in trouble and go-ing bankrupt by the dozen. Their findings? The trucking industry is coping with a serious image-problem. The public has a negative view of trucks! This is the source of all their problems. So the government has thought up a great solution: just like a few ye-ars ago, they will launch a campaign to give the trucking industry a positive image. Some TV-commercials, some billboards. To be seen very soon. The trucking industry will florish on-ce again! How will the government pay for this cam-paign? That's easy! Just raise the taxes a little. That should do it… Maarten van der Westen

Introduction Days 2/3 October

Already in the first month, Transito gives you the opportunity to get to know eachother bet-ter. In two introduction days (2 and 3 October) we want to take you on a tour through Rotter-dam and the topics of Urban, Port and Trans-port Economics. On Thursday, Erik Braun will give you a full explanation of what to expect this coming year. After this lecture, we will visit the city of Rotterdam to learn more on the topic of ‘urban economics’. This night we will have dinner with lecturers from UPT in the

city, have a drink together in Rotterdams buzz-ing nightlife and have some sleep at the ROOM hostel in the city centre. Friday we will take you to the port and we will visit Wim Bos-man, a logistics company and we will visit the refinery of Exxon Mobil. Here we will cover the fields of ‘transport and port economics’.

Sounds good, doesn’t it? We would like to in-vite you all to engage in this activity. In the first few lectures of the year we will come to you with a subscription form. Join in!

For the first time, Transito will organize introduction days for the new Master students of Urban Port and Transport Economics. You are very welcome to join in!

This activity is sponsored by:

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Het bestuur bestaat in ieder geval uit een voorzitter, secretaris en penningmeester, maar wordt de meeste jaren ook uitgebreid met een commissaris extern en/of commissaris ac-tiviteiten en soms ook met een commissaris studiereis.

Het bestuur zorgt voor de dagelijkse gang van zaken bij Transito en organiseert regelmatig interessante activiteiten voor leden zoals lezin-gen, inhouse-dagen, excursies, bedrijfsbe-zoeken en natuurlijk borrels.

Daarnaast houdt het bestuur intensief contact met de docenten van de vakgroep. Eventuele activiteiten en vacatures die via hen binnenko-men kunnen zo aan alle leden kenbaar

worden gemaakt. Op deze manier kan Tran-sito een goede schakel zijn tussen studenten en de vakgroep, maar vooral ook tussen stu-denten en het bedrijfsleven.

Een jaar bestuur doen is interessant, leer-zaam, soms stressvol, meestal heel relaxed en vooral superleuk! Je leert je medebes-tuursleden goed kennen en ontmoet mensen die je anders misschien niet was tegengeko-men. Daarbij ben je op een andere manier be-zig met je studie en bereid je je al goed voor op de arbeidsmarkt.

Kortom: Kom bestuur doen bij Transito! We zoeken nog een aantal studenten om ons team van 2008-2009 te versterken!

Master Recruitment Event ‘New Arrivals’

In the morning, after some unfortunate mis-communication about language, there was an interesting workshop on assessment training. Several tests were done with the students to teach them some tips and tricks to get through assessments at job interviews. A lot of positive reactions from the students (“I would certainly not have been hired without this training”) were the result.

During lunch, there was a lot of amazement on the result of some of the questions. And it was time to put some of the tricks into practice: the speeddating could begin.

There were 8 companies, like Ecorys, MTBS, and CAT, which did come to Hotel New York to meet the students in person. They had the chance to review the resumes of the students and then had 10 minutes to speak to them.

Because of the capacity (8 students per round) all students could profit from the nice weather outside and the beautiful view on the Maas River. Totally recharged, they were all very enthusiastic in their ‘dating time’. Some of the students even scored a job interview! Even during the social drink, there was a lot of net-working going on.

After the drink, some of the participants joined in for dinner. We hopped on the watertaxi, which gave us an extra spin around the Maas, and got off at the Spiezenboot, where we had a wonderful dinner together.

It was a wonderful event: all participants, com-panies and students, were very enthusiastic. If you have the chance to join in again in the coming year: do it!

On the 21st of May 2008, Transito - together with STAR MSC Supply Chain Management - organised the master recruitment event ‘New Arrivals’ at Hotel New York in Rotterdam.

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How’re you doin’? In this part of the InTrans, we ask former Tranito members to tell us something about their job. In this issue: Karin van der Plas, Transito boardmember in 2006-2007.

How am I doing? I’m doing fine, thank you. In this edition of InTrans it is my turn to inform you about my current whereabouts. Well, I started working at DSV Solutions, a logistic service provider, in March.

My location is Schiphol-Rijk, where we provide logistic and transport solutions for our custom-ers in the high-tech industry. I am working on the Projects and Engineering department, which takes care of all projects that cannot be done by other departments. You should think of projects like the analysis necessary to de-cide to acquire a new or to expand your cur-rent warehouse, but also the calculations for a cost saving proposal for skipping a hub in the transport network.

How I got to DSV (or how DSV got me); through the vLm Speeddating event, last year. I went there as a representative of Transito, but ended up having valuable conversations. One of the companies that was very eager to

keep in touch afterwards was DSV. My first appointment at DSV’s office was in October. Soon afterwards a second appointment fol-lowed and we came to an agreement. I could have started working there as soon as possi-ble, but I chose to wait to finish my thesis first. I defended my thesis on March 20th and passed.

The routine of a student is still a bit in me. Even now I have trouble getting up in the morning. Six o’clock is just not a reasonable time to start the day. However, starting your job early in the day has the advantage that you can finish early too. That is the reason I chose to work these hours, although I could shift my working hours anytime if I wanted to.

With Transito I keep in touch from time to time and of course with Sanne (President Transito 2006-2007) and the other UPT girls of my year. I promised to visit H12 now and then, but until now I didn’t succeed. I hope to join the

next General Members Meet-ing, when the new board is be-ing introduced.

I can advise anyone who wants to do more than just follow the general study program to join Transito and/or to become a board member. It really makes your time on Erasmus a lot more fun.

Karin van der Plas

(Secretary of Transito 2006-2007)

On Friday, the first full day of the trip, the group started with a visit to one of Barce-lona’s universities. Here a lecture was followed, given by Professor Russo, a for-mer lecture of the Erasmus University. He told about several regeneration pro-grammes which where intro-duced in the 80s and 90s. After the theoretical part he