Personal Reintroduction and Italy Imagined Once More (2022 DaVinci Class)

Personal Introduction and Italy Imagined Once More

My name is Blake Hakimian and I am a student in Purdue's engineering program. This is still true from when I first introduced myself on this blog two years ago. Some things have changed since then and I believe that I have grown, but I believe that I am still essentially the same person. A bit more information about me that was not shared before. I am an active member of orchestra, board game club, and seismic design team. I am studying transportation engineering and am doing my own research into a new type of road network. I also love history and love to travel.

As mentioned in my last introduction, my family has a history of travel. The yearly trips have become sidetracked by both COVID and the kids growing up, but everyone in the family still continues that tradition. I have always loved going off the beaten path and just exploring places more than anything. My love of travel is one of main reasons for going on this trip.

The other reason is that Italy is the country I want to visit the most. This was true 2 years ago and is especially true now. The previous class simply got me even more excited to visit. COVID has done little to weaken my desire to travel there and I found myself wanting to go even more. It reminds me of the time my family almost hiked to the top of Half Dome in California, but my dad lost the passes. I was extremally distraught and disappointed, and found myself wanting to do it even more than before. This is my chance to try Italy once more, and I will not waste my time there.

What I plan to get out of the trip has also changed slightly from last time. Last time I was there to see the cool architecture and go to places that I knew from historical games and books and get lost in the winding streets of Venice (I never really get lost so I hoping Venice can make it actually happen). While these desires are still true, I am now much more interested and informed about transportation and urban planning.

I want to feel the effect of streets planned for people, not cars. I want to see how the lack of cars makes cities quieter, as should be the case in Venice. I want to see how uniform building heights approximately the height of the street width improves the atmosphere of the street. I want go on high speed rail and take notes for how the stations operate and how the trains run and compare them to projects that I have worked on like the Phoenix LRT. I want to look at the distribution of shops in the city and see how it makes the street livelier and the mixed use developments makes the streets safer. I want to see if Venice's boat ferry system is effective system and compare delays to NYC taxi cabs. The arts and culture of Italy that I want to see is still the same, but I have become much more passionate about my career as a transportation engineer and I am very excited to compare Italy's systems with America and try to see how we can improve. I am now very excited about Venice's lack of cars and want to try to figure out ways to make little Venice oasis's in the US that aren't amusement parks.

COVID itself has had little impact on what I think of travel. I was worried at first, but have done plenty of traveling during the pandemic (admittable all domestic), including a road trip to my internship in Arizona last summer that ended up being a road trip from coast to coast. COVID made planning trips slightly harder with more uncertainties, but I still see it as enjoyable and fun and a great way to learn more about the world and yourself.

If you want to see more information about the cultural stuff I wanted to see and more real connections to the reading, see my original post from 2020: https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/3873643513539145854/3876812083958471372.